Where is balance Academic priorities 268

What amuses me is that most of the people debating this topic are probably using a Pentium-IV which consumes nearly 100 watts of electrical power, most of which is wasted on Microsoft Windows.

The majority of office work could legitimately be done with something

My only excuse for the two aging P-III Xeons in this box is that it was purchased largely to do biomedical image processing.

BTW, fluorescent lights are great energy savers, and they are starting to make them in styles which don't resemble extraterrestrial alien torture devices. (Sorry, thinking of visiting a NASA engineer's home in Houston which had one of those four light ceiling fans with the corkscrew bulbs installed. Looked like some ultimate rest weapon out of Star Wars, or the first ruby laser.)

One significant issue, however, is the stuff they're made of, mercury and various exotic rare earth metals, etc. which are quite toxic.

Reminds me of the time about 30 years ago when I walked into the lab I shared with the resident "Professor of Swiveology." We had those generic black laboratory furniture counters that were popular at the time, made of some unknown composite material. Fortunately, I did not put my elbows down, nor my coffee mug, before discovering a fresh sprinkling of white powder covering nearly every visible surface.

Upon interrogating the nursing graduate student hired largely to wash the dishes, I discovered that this material was mercuric chloride. Her response was: "I didn't realize it was toxic."

The ramifications of this are left to the reader...