No kidding. A few years back, I borrowed an AC ammeter to measure the power used by my monitor. (you remember those old things, with the big glass tube in them. ah, memories).

it was like 70 watts when on. What was surprising was that when it went into standby; it still drew 50 watts. ???

for the record, from what i read, that is very unusual, though; most articles on the subject tell you the monitors consume basically zero when on standby. i don't know if they know that for a fact, though.

actually nukes are planned to be down for big chunks of time for routine inspection, maintenance, etc. not including when things really need to be fixed or upgraded.

or when there is a drought and there is no cooling water available any more, like down south these days...

"but I was under the impression that the "base load" of electricity generated in most areas was so large that there was essentially "excess" power on the grid at night. If this is the case, does it really matter if you unplug things at night? It's not like they are going to shut off the nuclear/coal plant."

absolutely true. since we can't store electricity very efficiently, we have to set up the grid to handle the hightest loads, i.e. hot summer daytimes, and the rest of the time there's a lot of excess capacity. one good reason why solar cells, as inefficient and expensive as they are, would pay off if used locally to absorb some of the excess load of air conditioning on sunny days, and thereby avoid having to enlarge the grid's capacity even more.

my local electric company is paying folks to install a gadget on their central AC that allows the utility to remotely shut it down when necessary to avoid brownouts etc. the punchline is that they only do this on workday afternoons, when most of the units are off anyway, and for only half an hour at a time; yet this still pays off enough that they can afford to pay you like $100 to install the gadget and like $50 a year to keep it.

what this really affects is the concept of plug-in electric cars, though. i recall like 20 years ago before the current craze, a talk by an electric company guy about how wonderful electric cars would be. somebody asked at the end, "but how could you deliver the energy to recharge them during summer days when the grid is already buckling?" to which he replied that of course, you wouldn't recharge them on summer days, only at night. the audience was not thrilled. it became apparent that the electric company like the idea of plug in cars because it allowed them to get a lot more revenue out of their fixed investment in the grid, which sat underused for 90% of the year.

of course, a lot of the current proposals re fuel cell cars, etc. allow you to use your car to generate power to run your house or even feed power back into the grid.

dick cheney's cabal

"Both types of container are frequently made from virgin materials"

Yeah, but they don't have to be. aluminum containers are frequently made from recycled aluminum, at a huge savings over getting them from ore. AFAIK, plastic containers for human drinkables are never made from recycled material, for fear of contaminants.

"Watch the openness of the border, and note the number of rockets, and see if that number increases when the border is closed, as it will very likely be at some point. Then take from that observation the possible conclusion that opening Gaza to the outside had a positive effect and act accordingly."

but it didn't exactly go down that way when israel pulled out of the Strip.

patient: "He told me I looked sad. He said it suited me. Do you think I look good when I'm sad?"

shrink, after a split second, deliberately: "I don't think anyone looks good when they're sad".

whatever happened to bush's promise of a manned mission to mars? or his promise to get the steroids out of sports? or that clever idea to privatize social security so we can all invest in the stock market and be rich by 2008?

As it happens, "top gear", the bbc's car show, reran their "go to the us, buy a car instead of renting, and drive across the US" show last night. Unfortunately, their original plan was to drive to New Orleans and sell the cars.

Interesting comments from them as objective third parties, upon arrival in New Orleans, a year after Katrina: "You'd think the richest nation in the world would have done something about this in a year". "How does the rest of America sleep at night?"

In the end they feel bad about trying to sell their cars there, and end up donating them to needy residents. Which is more than most Americans or American TV shows have done, ironically.

I was going to refute some of the points in this diatribe/comment, but when I got to:

"Israel created Hamas in a divide and rule strategy to weaken Fatah who were left-leaning and secular."

I figured any further comment I could try to make would be superfluous.

"That is why Gaza has been a 'camp' since the beginning."

You mean, between 1948 and 1967, during which time the Egyptians ran it? I mean, it was pretty nasty at that time, but I don't see how exactly it's Likud's fault. Of course, I don't even see how "Israel created Hamas", so maybe you should explain in more detail.

"People disagree about who's responsible for the situation in Gaza but it seems to me that Israel's blockade of Gaza is close to, if not in fact, a war crime. Israel is making an innocent majority pay for the sins of the guilty minority. "

??? You think during WWII, stuff was flowing across the border between France and Germany in both directions, so that the civilians wouldn't face hardship?