You probably fancy yourself some sort of environmentalist. You watch Bill Maher! You watch Chris Hayes! Yes, and that is the problem.

Cable boxes, those precious little connections to pop culture, those tentative little strings connecting your humble life to a false sense of community, are big time power hogs. Big time! The LA Times says that cable boxes are probably the biggest power users in your home next to air conditioning (which should be unplugged). From the LAT:

A set-top cable box with a digital recorder can consume as much as 35 watts of power, costing about $8 a month for a typical Southern California consumer. The devices use nearly as much power turned off as they do when they are turned on.

Eight dollars!!!!!!!!! For one box???? What would Rachel Maddow have to say about that? "Keep it on so you can watch my show," she'd probably say, smugly. And that is the problem with the media today: selfishness.

There is never a bad time to throw your cable television box into an incinerator, for the good of the earth and all.

[Photo: Flickr]