Argot Navis

I just read this story from the BBC on this year's Earth Hour. For those who are unfamiliar with the event, it basically involves turning the lights off for one hour at night. Once a year. I, personally, think it's great that they're trying to build awareness for this, although I think doing things like turning off the lights one hour a year really reinforces the idea that we can continue living exactly the way we are and still save the planet by doing virtually nothing.

What got me about the article was this quote: “In its own contribution, the Google web search engine is putting a dark background on its homepage.” This made me laugh, of course, because of Blackle, the “energy saving” search engine that achieved mild internet fame last year. Dan blogged about it last year, and pointed out, rightly, that for LCD screens, it saves roughly no power at all. I decided to actually check out Google's page on Earth Hour, and found that they have this to say about it: “As to why we don't do this permanently – it saves no energy; modern displays use the same amount of power regardless of what they display.” Apparently the Official Google Blog had something to say about this last year, too. Good to know.

Also amusing was the fact that the second most read story on the BBC at the time I read the Earth Day story was this two-and-a-half year old story about that python that died after eating a gator. Why yes, someone did write a blog entry about that. Two men enter. No man leaves. Rated R.