On the lightbulb ban
Yes, we’re still lightbulb blogging.
And idea to protest: Send congress a bill for replacement.
While I do like the idea, I also, in my former capacity as a consultant for Very Big Government Agency, know how this would work. The boneheads would actually pay it because they have inadequate controls. Five years later, OIG would discover they paid it and issue a report poo-pooing them. Then the agency would have you charged with fraud.
January 5th, 2011 at 11:39 am
I went to Lowe’s specifically yesterday to purchase a pair of 100w traditional light bulbs in protest. Will not be my last visit.
January 5th, 2011 at 11:48 am
I guess you really can’t win, can you? Or maybe I should replace it with a 2 million dollar fixture and disappear to an Island in the South Pacific somewhere.
January 5th, 2011 at 1:55 pm
There a HUGE downside to the use of CFL bulbs: radio noise. We are polluting the radio spectrum with all this generated RF noise.
http://cflsafety.blogspot.com/
This isn’t a minor thing. When my daughter sailed off on her 3.5 year odyssey, she had a Marine SSB short-wave radio put in the sailboat (regular marine vhf radios are not good for over 30 miles). She had to change out all the light fixtures, shield the fridge and do some extra work shielding the engine, just to be able to make the radio work to it’s advertized range. One CFL light-bulb negates 3/4 of the range of that radio, according to the tech who put it in.
January 5th, 2011 at 4:10 pm
Don’t forget the cleanup if one breaks! This EPA site details what you’re supposed to do to clean up a broken CFL.
Is it just me, or does anyone else wonder how many people are going to leave their windows open and the heat off for “several hours” in the middle of winter just because of a broken light bulb?
January 5th, 2011 at 8:27 pm
This is also mean to auties. Most of the autistic folks with whom I communicate on the Web just hate, hate, hate the fluorescent lamps, which though annoying to normal folks, can cause actual physical pain in those who are autistic enough to see each individual flicker. Also, auties are famously clumsy, and more likely to break one of the really quite fragile compact fluorescents.
Hey, I think I’m mostly normal, and I broke one while trying to unscrew it. I just swept up what I could and threw it in the regular trash. Come and get me, EPA coppers!