Manga recommend

Just wanted to mention a new series of manga volumes: Death Note. Never heard of the author or artist before, but then I'm not as much into manga as I used to be.
Picked this one up because the premise sounded interesting.

Basically it's about this straight A's college student who find this "Death Note" book belonging to a Shinigami (God of death) in which if you write the name of someone while thinking of their face, within 40 seconds they will die of a heart attack. You can also write more details of their death within 6 minutes and that will come true too. In a poor writers hands it would have degenerated into a by-the-numbers "who shall I kill this episode" book but it kept surprising me every page. Very intelligently written, muchly recommended and I'll be grabbing the rest (7 volumes out in total so far) as quick as I can.

£4.98 a volume on Amazon!

We need energy shortages to change attitudes

There could be hosepipe bans this summer as we have so little water in our reservoirs and we will probably have to start relying on Russian-supplied gas as we run out of our own. I have no doubt there will be shortages of both in the coming years and I'm glad of it too as people have become too complacent about their use of energy and water.

When we started out as communities, both were freely abundant in nature. As communities grew larger and cities developed systems had to be created to provide clean running water. Initially there were only for those who could afford it, but over time everyone had access. Everyone knew how precious a resource it was (small numbers of reservoirs, disease from poor quality water) and made sure they only used as much as they needed.
Then electricity came along and the same process happened. There was no extravagant use as supply was limited and it was costly.

Today however people treat water and energy as unlimited resources, that they have as much as they can pay for. They run washing machines and dishwashers on full cycles with half loads, they leave electrical equipment in "standby mode" draining power all night long, boil full kettles for one cup of tea etc. They've become a throwaway resource like most other things.

If there is a squeeze on water and gas/electric then perhaps people will start to look at how they use and indeed waste it and might start to change their behaviour. Or are they more likely to just get angry at the providers for not giving them what they "need"?