This evening was Earth Hour again. Earth Hour is a rotating, evening-following event lasting approx. one local hour and 24 global hours. People are supposed to turn off their lights as a message towards wasting less energy. Instead, they gather and light candles, which as some including myself point out, is actually very energy-inefficient. Early news reports show people gathering under slogans such as "screw current events" (ro: nu fi la curent), obviously referring to electrical current, and lighting tons of candles. This is incredibly stupid. Electricity is one of the cleanest means to transport energy, and is readily obtained from solar radiation, wind et cetera. Candles release toxic gases into the atmosphere and some are actually made from fossil fuels (paraffin wax). Their luminous efficiency is shit, compared to even the most inefficient incandescent light bulbs and electrical power plants. Way to go dudes, way to go. Now it's actually cool and eco to burn oil derivatives, at least as long as it's diesel which doesn't need electric sparks, because, you know, electricity is satanic and stuff mwahahah \m/.
As a response to critics, the World Wildlife Fund (who came up with Earth Hour) said it's purpose is not to save energy or money, but symbolic. LOL!
Therefore I say: the purpose of hunting is not to kill animals and endanger more species, but symbolic. It's also fun. Not that I endorse it, but I can certainly see how some people find hunting challenging, rewarding, fun. Coincidentally, about 1 hour ago I saw a documentary claiming that the guy whose killing started World War One was a prolific hunter who used to travel the Austrohungarian Empire by train shooting every animal in sight. He supposedly killed about 300 k before being shot to death himself.
Sometimes I just get tired of ranting. Sometimes I just accept the fact that I live in a defective world full of defective people, including myself. For instance, if astronauts can phrase their speeches in such defective ways as to suggest that space smells, what the fuck can I expect from normal people? Please spare me the "it's metaphoric, dude!" explanation -- many people actually don't know that void can't carry sound or smell and many people couldn't care less, sadly. Wordings like "space smells of ozone" and "a whiff of vacuum" do nothing to help that.
After all, why the hell do I expect stuff from astronauts. Astronauts are more like soldiers than like scientists. They get too much hype anyway: Dood, let's off the lights and light them candles and watch the space shuttel land and celebrate urth our!!
Whatever makes you happy, people.
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2 comments:
True, earth hour sucks.
I mean, I am a guy that tries not to waste electrical energy. I am using laptops more and more, one of which is an Atom / SSD netbook, with significantly low power consumption. I turn the lights off if there's no one in the room. As for other ecological actions, I use a bicycle quite often.
Given this context, I find it useless and meaningless to turn the lights off one hour in a year, and use obsolete things like candles. Why? A symbol?
'Symbol' is an euphemism for 'of no effect whatsoever'. People won't be more aware. They will turn the lights off because it's cool and hopefully the television's chopper will pass over their building too and everybody will see that the guy turned the lights off.
Truly understanding the need to use less electrical energy (should there really exists such need) is done by continuous effort, not once a year. If some organization wants true effect on the population, it should make a continuous campaign for people to be aware that they have to protect earth every day, not just for one hour.
"many people actually don't know that void can't carry sound or smell" - Well, this is not 100% accurate because if you use an ADC that can convert analog signals (like sound or even smell) to a digital signal then you could easily transport it in void and convert it back to an analog signal via a DAC :D
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