Geez! All I meant to say was "look at the pretty lights", and ask if anyone knew the specs.
But on the new subject of my post. I make my living on wasteful indulgences of electricity. Does a 5 piece band need 128 575watt lights so that an audience can see them, no. But it makes for a better show. Does the same show need 40 of the same lights to illuminate up walls in different color, 60 more of the same lights to illuminate tables and bars, 18 more lights to display custom gobos, 12 1025 watt moving lights to move even more gobos and colors around the room? Not to mention the ridiculous size of the sound system and video screens and the intense skytracker lights that surround the building. And this is a medium size show!!
On any given night there are a couple of these shows, but many nights in my city there are dozens like this and even more are bigger and more elaborate. None of it is necessary to our survival, but it is done simply because we can.
I like the idea of having a self sufficient memorial instead of a power draining one. But if the US passed a law that any memorial had to provide it's own power, then we would have a lot less memorials for public view at night. Right now anyway, people have to take the initiative on their own to utilize the resources that are productive to the future.
Will we use up all of our natural resources and have the human race fade away and die? I don't know. Looking at the earths past, there have been many "civilizations" that have come and gone so it's not unlikely. I would like to believe that there are many people out there who are figuring out ways of not using the earths resources to keep us alive in today's society. I read about them all the time, but they are not being publicized because it's not a "hot" new story of the moment.
In my opinion (UH OH) it mostly boils down to greed and convenience. There are companies/people that are greedy and use up whatever is convenient to save them money no matter what they destroy in the process. And we use those products/services because it's convenient to us and we don't have to hunt for food and fend for ourselves and light up the night with fires like we did in the recent past. (I know this is a simplified version.)
It is at the same time scary and awe-inspiring how far we have come in the past 100 years, a nanosecond in the grand time scheme of the earth. Without modern technology we would not be having this conversation for the whole world to see. But all this technology is using up the planets resources.
Are the Amish better off than the rest of American society? There are still entire countries in this world that live off the earth without any modern technology to help them. I'm sure there is a middle ground somewhere. I hope we figure it out because we realize it's better for us and not because there is no other choice.
I don't have all the answers, heck, I don't have any answers. I know there are a lot of incomplete thoughts but I was tired of typing, I just wanted to post some of my opinion within my own thread. Maybe if I got a voice controlled computer, or better yet install a chip in my head to transmit thoughts to the computer, Hmmm... necessity is the mother of invention. Here we go again.