According to PricewaterhouseCoopers partner and renewables specialist Michael Timar:
“If someone saves money from having cavity wall insulation put into their house, but then spends it on something which produces carbon emissions in its manufacturing, or takes an extra journey, then the environmental benefit is lost.
“You have to think about what the effect is all the way down the chain — that if you use less, you might actually end up consuming more.”
Mr Timar warned that people who had saved £100 by cutting their energy bills could use the cash to fund extra leisure activities, such as drinking imported alcoholic beverages in bars — or electronic gadgets, which are often shipped from overseas.
This is beautiful:
It has been calculated by environmental experts that one single bottle of imported beer uses 900g of CO2 — wiping out two-thirds of the annual carbon savings made by replacing all light bulbs in an average home with energy-saving models.
Drink two and you’re in credit.
Tim Blair, “Tim Blair Blog: DON’T DO ANYTHING”, Daily Telegraph, 2011-02-18
February 18, 2011
QotD: Drink an imported beer and make Mother Gaia cry
How to view PDF documents natively in Chrome
Royce McDaniels provides step-by-step instructions for installing the PDF reader plug-in for the Chrome browser:
Hello, everyone, and welcome to today’s How To segment here at The Walrus Says! Today we’re examining another useful feature of the Chrome web browser from Google, namely the ability to display Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) files directly in the browser rather than via an external application like Google Docs which has been necessary before. The instructions below not only show you how to activate this feature of Chrome, but show you an interesting way to access Chrome functionality not part of the standard configuration menus! (Chrome itself is an Open Source project sponsored by Google; you can get complete information about the browser’s development at The Chromium Project. Enjoy!
I’m still (barely) sticking with Firefox as my primary browser, although it’s becoming a pain to use these days: for example, as I’m typing this line, the letters I type are appearing several seconds after I type ’em. It’s a bit like using an old 300 baud line with a small buffer. If the next major release of Firefox doesn’t fix this problem, then I’ll be switching to Chrome as my primary browser.
Ron Hickman, inventor of the ubiquitous Workmate
Many people have bought and used the Workmate collapsible workbench . . . 30 million or so. The inventor, Ron Hickman, Ron Hickman, died recently:
Hickman, who lived in Jersey, was 78. His design for the wood-and-steel foldable workbench and vice was rejected by several tool companies that believed the bench wouldn’t sell.
Tool company Stanley told him the device would sell in the dozens rather than hundreds, while other companies told him the design would not sell at the necessary price. It has since sold about 30 million units around the world, and 60,000 were sold in the UK last year alone.
Hickman sold the benches himself when he couldn’t find a backer through trade shows direct to professional builders. Black & Decker saw the light in 1973 and began producing them. By 1981 it had sold 10 million benches.
He came up with the design when he accidentally sawed through an expensive chair while making a wardrobe. He had been using the chair as a workbench.
His designing skill wasn’t limited to tools: he also is credited with the design of the Lotus Elan.
Red light cameras
Some frightening footage of traffic accidents from a few years ago, posted to one of the mailing lists I’m moderately active on.
Note that most of these accidents would not be prevented by red light cameras: you can’t stop inattentive idiots from being idiots just by taking photos of the license plate on the vehicle. However, several of the accidents could have been avoided if the non-infringing drivers were a bit more attentive. Dennis Lippert responded to this video and the pro-red light camera fans thusly:
As usual, the majority of the crashes on the video probably would have been avoided if the “innocent” driver had been paying attention to his surroundings. Proving, again, that driving is not to be taken lightly… not to be done while texting… or talking… or doing anything else, really…
I’m all for this sort of camera… just a video overview of the intersection… which can be used to let law enforcement see what happened after a crash.
I’m staunchly against red-light-cameras as they’ve been implemented as revenue devices…. from which some 75% of the revenue comes from folks who innocently slipped thru a red-light a second or so after it changed… and before the cross traffic started into the intersection.
It has been proven that lengthening the yellow light by a second
decreases the incidence of red-light-running by something like 50%
per second of extra time…Red-light-cameras will not stop the folks who simply aren’t paying attention at all… or who are wantonly disobeying. All they do is generate revenue from harmless slight-offenders.
Since they generally sent most of the profits to the company that
installs the system, rather than to the municipality, this makes
perfect sense. More tickets = more money. So the systems are designed for maximum revenue… not optimal safety.
As Dennis points out, red light cameras are like speed traps in that they’re revenue generators first and only public safety enforcement a distant second.
