Lights to Go Off in Paris

Paris, the world famous City of Lights, will be lit no more by neon signs between 1:00 and 6:00 AM as the city attempts to save a little on electric costs. The move to cut the lights has already sparked widespread controversy and is being viewed as thoughtless and more damaging to the city's economy than helpful.

The last time an absolute monarch turned out the lights in Paris, “the darkness was so complete that the city guards could report 15 unsolvable killings on a nightly basis,” says French historian Andrew Hussey.

Now, nearly 700 years after the bankrupt King Philippe the Handsome and his plodding Grand Chamberlain Engurran de Marigny banned illumination after dark in hope of squirreling money to pay off debt, Socialist French President Francois Hollande and his Baldrick Energy Minister Delphine Batho have resurrected the medieval strategy that contributed to France becoming one of  the first recorded states to devalue its currency.