I have replaced all my halogen down lights , 50w each, with LED lights that use only 5w, and actually provide better light.
I typically have 15 on, 4 hours a day.
As a proportion of my overall power usage, my lighting has dropped from about 15% to 1.5%
The LED bulbs will last longer (10,000 hours) than halogens, and pay themselves off in terms of saved electricity, in 2 years.
Electricity is $0.26 /kwh here, and each bulb saves 0.045 kwh every hour it is being used.
it will take 777 hours for it to save it's own purchase cost in electricity, or approximately 194 days of typical 4 hours a day use.
Definitely worth while both economically and environmentally.
 

I don't remember Captain Nemo ever losing his shirt and making out with every mermaid, daugters of Neptune or any other female denizens of the deep that get in range of his tentacles... I guess they got Kirk's predilections from elsewhere.

There are plenty of smokers who don't die of cancer, so that must also be safe, right?

Look at it this way - it's not like buying stocks or something where you only buy it as an investment to sell later.

At the time you purchased it, the software offered you enough utiity to be worth buying.it was worth what you paid to get it - and as an added bonus, your purchasing it helped feed the developers and enable them to be able to afford to release it for free for the betterment of mankind - so by proxy, your payment has also helped benefit mankind. You should get a warm fuzzy feeling about that instead of feeling bitter!

Argh - never post before your first coffee.
I meant to say
"How about play a sport that doesn't require heavy physical contact?" of course.

How about poay a psort that doesn't require heavy physical contact?
nearly all athletics events, swimming, baseball, basketball,as well as numerous other field games exist that manage to be entertaining without having to put players at huge physical risk like (American) football does. Same deal with rugby and league, but even those games have rules that avoid the worst of the heavy impacts - and lack of body armor in those sports means the players are required to play more within limits that will tend to have less impact on the brain.

I don't see how a green marker would help.

I think they would have gotten much better performance if they used a Chuck Norris disc though.

Better yet, in the case of shopping centres, you can have solar panels providing shade in the car park to provide the power while also keeping cars shaded and cool. It wouldn't have to be a guaranteed supply - just whatever the sun gives out while you are parked. That might not be much of a draw for customers in Buffalo with all that snow right now, but here It's already hitting 35 to 40 degrees Celsius every day, and it's not even summer yet.

How about inventing a planetary wide gamma ray shield instead?
Surely in a gamma ray prone galaxy there would have to be at least a few systems that had an atmosphere or oceans that would shield from gamma rays? In as little as 100 to 200 years I think we would easily have the technology to sustain a colony deep in the ocean, if it were necessary.

for values of infinity that approach 420.

Either way you cut it, it's just another tax that gets paid by the end consumer, a big fat windfall for consolidated revenue.

I think a much better way would be for companies to bid based on the value they bring to the end consumer public, with the company that promises the best value winning.
If that company fails to deliver within some reasonable time frame, the spectrum should be passed on to the next best offer.
Value wound be measured based on dollars per GBit that they agree to offer the end service for. (voice calls really should be priced this way too, these days - now everything is digital)

if it really isn't practicable to implement something like the above, lt'd be nice to at least see the money spent on a fibre roll-out or other physical media based infrastructure.

The gravitational potential energy in a ton of water - a cubic meter (ie. 1000 litres) elevated 3 meters, the typical 1 storey roof height, is about 8.1 watt hours. you would need a 1200000 litre tank to store the typical household load of 20 kWh., even assuming 100% efficiency in energy conversion to electricity.

Hopefully you can't get antibiotics even after seeing the doctor, if you only have sniffles.
Antibiotics generally don't work on viruses, which is what usually causes sniffles.

I think that while it is iportant that the greatest nation on earth should have it['s own spaceflight capacity, it really just isn't worth the return on investment for Australia - we are better off spending the money on bbq's and beer.

Good idea for the US though.

One of the things that makes US reasearch strong is the ability of it's universities to attract te best and brightest from all around the world. This is nothing new - it has always been thus - though perhals this is incresingly so as the state of secondary education seems to be in decline compared to opter parts of the world.

When researchers stop coming to the US, the state of
research there will go into rapid decline.The US isn't alone though - it's the same story in Australia too.

Given the already established centres for excellence in the US, it's a favoured destination for smart and motivated people from India and Asia, as well as other parts of the world to further their education and opportunities.

Half the world's population is Asian or India/Bangadesh/Pakistan, so naturally you are going to see many from those regions. Be glad for it - or they would be busy innovationg wherever they came from instead of the US.