In the clearest signal yet that the electricity crisis in South Africa is reaching crisis proportions, Eskom has called on Internet bloggers to cut down drastically on the amount of electricity they are using to blog about the electricity crisis in South Africa.
Citing new research that shows that up to 95 percent of all "hot" and "new" posts on South African blogs are about power outages, Government incompetence, and load-shedding, with the remaining five percent not being able to be posted because of power outages, Government incompetence, and load-shedding, Eskom has accused bloggers of draining the nation's energy reserves by using power that could be diverted for other strategic purposes, such as mining the coal needed to generate enough electricity to build a bunch of new power stations.
While acknowledging that computers use significantly less energy than, say, a dishwasher or flat-panel television screen, an Eskom spokesman claimed that the sheer scale of blogging in the last two to three weeks has pushed demand to unprecedented levels.
Even bloggers who use battery-operated laptops have been accused of contributing to the problem, since their laptop batteries could be better deployed by Eskom executives who need to go online to check their bank accounts and order themselves a new dishwasher or flat-panel television screen.
Warning that strict rationing of computer time may soon be on the cards, Eskom's spokesman appealed to bloggers to restrict their blogging to matters of national urgency, such as posting an English comment on Steve Hofmeyer's blog, obsessively checking their amatomu.com rankings, or uploading a cellphone photograph showing what they had for breakfast this morning.
