A couple of interesting things popped up in the mail this week.

Stuffed in along with the gas bill was a flyer titled “Five Ways to Heat Your Home for Less.”  None of them will work of course, because if people actually did use less gas to heat their homes the gas company would raise the rates because in the utility world less is more.  More is more too, and they like that better, but they have to at least pretend they are being good citizens by encouraging savings and conservation.

Anyway, the number one tip for how to heat your home for less is this:  Set your furnace thermostat to 68 degrees or lower when you’re at home. You can save 5% for every two degrees you turn the thermostat down.

In other words, the best way to heat your home for less is to heat your home less.

This same advice can be followed in other endeavors.  To save on doctor bills, stay well. To save money at a restaurant, don’t order food.  To save money driving, park.

I knew there was a reason I never look at the junk attached to the gas bill.

The other thing I found intriguing was an e-mail from the Pew Research Center.  The Pew Internet and American Life Project did a study titled Why Most Facebook Users Get More Than They Give.

Here’s what they found:

• 40% of Facebook users in our sample made a friend request, but 63% received at least one request
• Users in our sample pressed the like button next to friends’ content an average of 14 times, but had their content “liked” an average of 20 times
• Users sent 9 personal messages, but received 12
• 12% of users tagged a friend in a photo, but 35% were themselves tagged in a photo

Yet more evidence the average person is sub-normal.