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Cool-Factor Predicted To Spur Energy Conservation
An anonymous reader writes "Panelists at a recent technology expo argued about how to motivate people to conserve energy, dragging out all the usual suspects, from financial incentives to emotion appeals to 'save the planet.' However, one panelist trumped the status quo by noting that adding the 'cool factor' could make energy conservation fun via apps on smartphones and tablets. By making energy conservation as fun as a video game, the fickle on-again, off-again of human nature might just be overcome."
Will I be able to use a Doom interface to shutoff the lights in my house?
If I were God, wouldn't I protect my churches from acts of me?
... is not even a week old. http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=2286#comic
I don't think the effect is huge, but since i switched from a Rav4 to a Prius i've noticed that my driving habits have gotten a little more conservative, and i think the main factor is the little current and cumulative "miles per gallon" readings on the display. Trying to keep it above 45 mpg can be kinda fun, and it really doesn't seem to affect how quickly i get anywhere very much.
I used to gun the motor a lot more in the Rav4 just cause it was fun and there wasn't much reason not to (the difference in mileage and thus the difference in how often i had to fill up seemed pretty marginal) but now that i've got direct and immediate feedback playing with the mpg gauges is also fun, even if in an entirely different way, and now it's the marginal difference in time that i'm dismissing rather than the marginal difference in mileage. (And i still drive faster than i probably ought to, and i still will gun my car from time to time just for the fun of it, just nowhere near as often.)
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Maybe we could do one of those rapping songs the kids are so keen on these days?
if the light switch were shaped like a clitoris, men would be stumbling round in the dark trying to find it.
I was thinking
I'm not sure you were. ;)
tax credits for small families, and tax burdens for large families
People with large families aren't doing it for the money. Having kids is already a significant expense, and the tax breaks for kids don't really amount to squat in comparison to the expense.
The childless families are rolling in money by comparison. Both can work...
No diapers, no day care expense, no extra mouth to feed and clothe, birthday presents to buy, constant school fundraising/fieldtrips/hotlunch days/bookfairs, haircuts, dental work, glasses...
Nobody has kids to save moeny.
And throwing a tax burden on them won't stop them from having more kids.
The trailer park squad is having them because they make bad decisions... and they aren't going to consider the tax ramifications of unprotected sex if they failed to consider the pregnancy ramifications of unprotected sex.
The no contraceptives for religious reasons group isn't going to stop having sex or having kids due to a tax burden either... they'll just be poorer thanks to you... perhaps driven to live in trailers with the first group.
Finally its not like large families can 'right size' in response to the burden either, even if they wanted to.
Meanwhile... the childless couples will putter around in their sports cars and vacations with their disposable income augmented by tax breaks until they get old and apparently have to be looked after by someone elses kids. ;)
That said.. you said tax breaks for small families... so maybe you mean families of 3 to 5, instead of childless couples. And that's less caustic... but tax breaks for childless couples is demented.
If you want small families though, taxes isn't the way to do it.Education and prosperity is the path to smaller families.
Economic power allows women to choose the size of their family, and experience shows that population growth levels out when a country achieves a certain level of prosperity. Condoms, birth control pills (synthetic hormones - bad for long-term health of the woman, but good for temporarily preventing conception or implantation), vasectomies (or wearing a testical-heater/nut-cup), etc - lots of ways to prevent babies. Even "Natural Family Planning" works pretty well, because there's only a few days a month that a woman is actually fertile.
Learn the rules so you know how to break them properly.
www.teslabox.com
Considering that mine regularly prevents me from turning on a desktop or laptop I would agree with you.
When I commute, I want to be able to glance at a gasoline usage meter and see how much I've used up to that point and how it compares to the same point on previous commutes. Then I can compete against myself, similar to the "ghost" in Mario Kart.
Any sufficiently unpopular but cohesive argument is indistinguishable from trolling.
I can't think of any time when saving money was considered 'cool'. Smart, sure, but then again 'smart' was rarely 'cool', either. Most societies idolize overblown displays of wealth and physical ability, not thrift and intelligence.
I'm sorry, but I can't help but feeling smug when one of my dumb neighbors complains about how he's spending hundreds of dollars a month on gas for his jacked-up V8 pickup truck, and I'm spending less than $50 for two 30mpg cars. I probably wouldn't feel smug but for the fact that idiots like that complain so much after making stupid choices, and then they refuse to make smarter choices that would alleviate the problems they're complaining about.
There's a lot of people where I live who just HAVE to have a giant, jacked-up pickup truck with huge wheels, so they can drive it down the freeway to the mall. No, they don't ever drive them off-road; these things are spotless. But they constantly complain about how much they spend in gas, as if the rest of us are supposed to feel sorry for them when they did it to themselves. They could even sell their stupid truck and buy a small car, but no, they don't want to do that, they just want to keep complaining.
People who view other people in terms of how much burden they put on society are generally themselves the ones putting the largest burden. They don't know much about much so they can only view individuals in the same terms that farmers view bovine stock. You want to reduce misery in the world? Make sure every sociology major is required to spend his life with indigenous population rather than just a few years of "research." Yes, I am generalizing. No, I won't take it back. I am ok with not having government subsidies for raising children if you are ok with not having government subsidies for high-risk individual behavior (esoteric college majors, unpopular arts, etc.)
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
Why not go for full necrophilia? Why just light bulbs? Snuffing life out of life is smexy. Let's get people excited about public hangings since it's people that cause all these emissions, right? At which point do we get to call ecofascism by its proper name?
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
"Highly respected profession" and "lawyers" doesn't fit together very well, I think. Or did I just miss some irony?
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.
Well, there are LEDs for that...
Hell, with the right LED setup, one can even do color changes to fit the mood.
comment first, facts later. http://chem.tufts.edu/AnswersInScience/RelativityofWrong.htm
I can't think of any time when saving money was considered 'cool'. Smart, sure, but then again 'smart' was rarely 'cool', either. Most societies idolize overblown displays of wealth and physical ability, not thrift and intelligence.
Well, maybe then we must make it that having energy conserving technology shows wealth. Make energy saving products expensive and look expensive. Then, gradually introduce less expensive models (but not too fast). Slowly the "if you have it, you must be rich" will turn into "if you don't have it, you must be poor". Which still is a great incentive to get it. And by the time that everyone (actually, everyone who could afford the non-energy saving equivalent) can afford it, it will be the normal thing, and nobody will even think about buying something else; the market for the environmentally unfriendly alternative will just have vanished.
The Tao of math: The numbers you can count are not the real numbers.