Earth Hour

The City Council is also on Monday going to take up the issue of designating 8:30-9:30 p.m. on March 28 (a Saturday) as Earth Hour.

All citizens, businesses, non-commercial establishments and government agencies will be asked to turn off non-essential lighting for the hour.

This is "in order to conserve energy and raise awareness about global climate change."

Does "lighting" include TV sets?

Because I know last year, I turned out all my lights and my TV and unplugged stuff that winks and blinks at me all day and all night ... I've got a Comcast router that has a dozen or so blinking green lights, a digital cable box with a red light and a digital time display, a red light on the cordless phone, orange lights on two surge protectors, blue lights on my laptop that stay on, even when it's turned off ...

There's so much light in here when I turn off the lights that I sometimes wonder why I bother with incandescent lighting at all.

I think it would have been a whole lot more amusing if they were to designate 12:30-1:30 p.m. as the time (although it would be broad daylight) because that's when Congressman John Tierney will be at City Hall to ... talk to us, I guess.

(Actually, he's scheduled to be here until 2 p.m., but that would make it Earth Hour-and-a-Half.)