Stirring the pot.

My problem with any 'campaign' pertains to the question - is it worth getting up off my ennui laden backside to participate and expend energy?

Did protest end the Vietnam war - I rather think it was the Viet Cong and economics that won, not the public pressure put on Nixon despite what the ageing hippies will tell you. Has protest stopped the lamentation of many an arab (or for that matter, US) mother in the recent US Arab wars? Protest doesnt seem to stop the slaughter of whales either - the land of the rising sun is at it again. Lets not even mention the environment, look whats happening there.

Mind you the Russian and Chinese revolutions worked but they were violent!

As Tolstoy remarked, any argument using analogy is alike to comparing dog shit and cat shit.

The point is, are the running dogs of capitalist corporatism going to take any notice of a few lights out while the rest watch mind candy such as 'survivor' or the Cantonese alternative? As they say in Democracies, 'your vote counts'.

Vive la revolution!

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Age. Fac ut gaudeam

Getting up to turn off a switch doesn't seem to require much energy (and, as I've explained elsewhere ad nauseam, actually will save electrical energy, but fighting pseudo science is a losing game).

However, as no one can even see whether my lights are on or not unless they're standing on the path opposite my house, the impact I personally might make is zero. If an entire tower block went dark, that would be dramatic, but I fear the number of participants will ultimately be negligible and allow the power companies to brush it off.

Exactly,
I guess one would save on electric bills but heck I might miss survivor!

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Age. Fac ut gaudeam

It's only "lights out", if you can't miss three minutes you can leave the TV on with a clear conscience. Though I don't think Survivor, or anything worth watching, is on at 8 pm anyway.

<center>
Try <a href="http://www.self-preservation.freeserve.co.uk/watches.wav">this.</a></center>

yes you have indeed explained ad nauseum, even though I admitted twice my calculation was wrong.
But your calculation was just as bollocks as mine. I don't see how the fact that an amount of energy would burn out a house fuse proves anything. It's a shoddy argument, Alan. If you want to go on and on, then why don't you do it right?

My problem with any 'campaign' pertains to the question - is it worth getting up off my ennui laden backside to participate and expend energy?

I was up on the Peak last night, thinking of the Lights Out campaign and how much work it has to do. From the Peak, the mid-levels looks kinda patchy anyway, and maybe wouldn't be so dramatic with the lights out.
But over on Kowloon, getting One Peking to turn off its lights would look quite cool - if even just that and the PCCW sign in TST went dark, it would be very noticeable from up there.

My point was that the myth has taken a life of its own. Alastair wrote "if we use 200 times the power usually needed during these three pinned minutes, so watt?" That's what I was despairing of.



No, it's a scientific argument. It embodies an empirical proof: if the amount of energy required was the vast amount originally claimed, your household circuits would blow when you turned on the light. Since this does not happen, we conclude that a the maximum power drawn is much less. And as the power spike is very brief, the total energy is negligible. I could work out more precisely, but neither empirical proof nor simple high school physics make any impact. So I give up. The world is flat.

I knew it!!

By the way- the argument is futile. Just turn your lights off for 3 minutes and be content that you tried something regardless of whether 99% of the rest of the population do or not.

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Time flies like an arrow, fruit flies like bananas

Ok Does everyone care about the environment here Well We will have a lights out night soon! Will everyone do it? Tell me please. I am doing a survey to see if we should have one. If possible the entire Lamma and Aberdeen. Thanks. please as your neighbours and friends