I Vant To Bite Your Neck

Mark was telling me recently that I should really unplug my cell phone charger when it's not charging because it was using energy even when it is not plugged into my phone. I nodded but inside I was thinking skeptically "Oh, right. How is that EVEN possible. The electricity has no place to go, how could it possibly be, like, just draining out of there?" And, after all, he is my son. My child. Even though he is, technically, an adult, and even though, technically, he did work for a phone company for quite a while. Really, how could he know?


Then I found this quote: "Even when your cell phone isn't charging, that big plug it uses is warm - because it's using energy even when it's doing nothing. Physically unplug chargers from the wall to keep them from silently sucking down wattage while you're not using them." (from http://lifehacker.com/photogallery/Top-10-Energy-Savers/2174744).



Huh. Maybe he does know what he is talking about. Then I linked from that site because, really, who wouldn't like to know about energy vampires? And found that lots of our electronic gizmos are sucking up the energy even when they are NOT EVEN TURNED ON.



Who knew?



http://awesome.goodmagazine.com/transparency/008/trans008vampireenergy.html