From the BBC:

National consumption fell by over 1% during the switch-off

The lights of Paris dimmed for five minutes on Thursday in a nationwide "lights out" campaign, aimed at raising public awareness over global warming.

The Eiffel Tower, lit by 20,000 bulbs, also went dark at 1955 (1855 GMT).

During the switch-off, the power grid operator RTE observed a fall of 800 megawatts, representing just over 1% of France's total consumption.

It comes a day before the release in Paris of a major report warning of humanity's role in climate change. ...

Environmental campaigner Anne Briangault told the BBC that people would like to be involved in tackling climate change but needed advice on what they could do.

"... we are explaining they can do things, they can switch off some lights but it's not enough. Politicians have to make actions too," she said from the base of the Eiffel Tower.

Jim Elve of BlogsCanada gets into moderately high dudgeon over a book about lonely bloggers.

Dean Baquet stood up to the Tribune Co. beancounters who wanted big cuts at the Los Angeles Times, where Baquet was the editor.

Predictably, Baquet got fired last November for his troubles (publisher Jeffrey M. Johnson preceded him by about a month).

Luckily, his old paper, the New York Times, has taken him back as Washington bureau chief and assistant managing editor.

Note this graf from the NYT story:

In the Washington bureau of The Los Angeles Times, which will now be competing directly with Mr. Baquet, Doyle McManus, the bureau chief, said in a memorandum that competition was good for journalism. But, Mr. McManus added, “it will still be the N.Y. Times, still encumbered by that paper’s institutional weaknesses and still, even with Dean on the premises, an often unpleasant place to work.”

Democrat Al Franken has reportedly decided to run for a U.S. Senate seat in Minneapolis, the state where he grew up.

In doing so, he will try to defeat Republican incumbent Norm Coleman.

Franken is currently hosting on Air America, but will be leaving that gig on Valentine's Day.

He gained some fame performing on Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s. One of his favourite sketches of mine was his mobile satellite uplink, particularly the one where he collapsed in the desert while covering Operation Desert Storm. A buzzard landed and started picking flesh off his face. :)

I couldn't find that clip on YouTube, but you might enjoy Franken's appearance on the Colbert Report.

Molly Ivins, the acerbic and irreverent Texas writer who came up with the nickname of "shrub" for Dubya, has died.

Admittedly, Iran has a hard government to love, given the torture and beating death of Zahra Kazemi and the calls by President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad for Israel to be wiped off the map -- to name just two.

However, it really does seem like the the U.S. would love to duke it out with their Persian adversaries at some point.

Environmental concerns rank just 23rd of 26 factors when people choose a car, claims a new survey.

However, fuel economy is one of the top three; is that not an indirect environmental factor?

I ran out of bandwidth. Because it was near the end of the month, I said screw it, I'm not buying any more for now (this blog is hardly a money-spinner for me).

However, I did make some posts here: http://bdoskoch.blogspot.com

When I can figure out how to import them into Blogware, I'll do so. The problem seems to be at Blogger's end; when I try to generate a template using the code Blogware provided, I got a "Your template could not be parsed because it is not well formed" message.

Anyways, I'm back up now, but be advised I'll use the above blog as a backup if I run into similar issues in the future. So if you're among the millions of people who literally cannot get through a day without seeing what I've posted, bookmark the above link for insurance.