If the other head causes your baby to have trouble with its balance, you should name that one “Tipper.”

I can’t stand those bulbs either. Besides the obvious toxicity problem, they’re hideous.

I would like a generator powered by powerful surges of indignation.  That would solve all of my heating bill woes indeed!

Well, look at it this way—-you can use the mercury to train the younger kids in the lost art of haberdashery…... and then they’ll all be charmingly random, like a character out of Carroll!

In other news—UGH.  I’m going to remove the CFL bulbs from any lamp my kids can reach!  (We had to replace the one in the dining room because the computer is there and the CFL’s humming and flickering was giving me headaches while I worked.  So we have a normal one, at least for now.  Also, what’s with the “last longer than incondescents?  All of mine die in under a year—-like incondescents.)

I feel your woeful pain! My son broke one in the living room and it was awful to clean up and feel like I’d done a good enough job!

Add to the fact that those CFL lights only last the 100000000000 years they claim if they’re not subjected to frequent on/off cycling.  So that renders them pretty much useless for bathrooms or closets or hallways or any room where you don’t keep the light on for an extended period of time.

Plus, they give off hideous light, no matter how “warm” the PR people claim it is.

I have a 5 yr old who thinks it is completely appropriate to play ball in the house, with a hard ball. I only use the CFL bulbs in closed fixtures.  And I am hoarding regular bulbs for the ones that are not closed.  I would like to slap Al Gore’s fat face, too, but for now I will just pray for his conversion.

Other recent favorite examples of mine of technology “advances” that make things worse:
-super-fancy HD screens (not a pixel lost!) that automatically distort TV-scaled images to 33% wider than they’re supposed to be, so all the actors look like fatheaded hobbits.
-super-fancy laptops with mega-processors and completely worthless keyboards that don’t register half your keystrokes.

I remember this conversation from when I was a kid:

Dad: These fluorescent light bulbs are great.  They use less energy and save us tons of money on our electric bill.
Mom: They don’t save any money.  They take so long to come on that you have to turn on every light in the house to see anything.

If you like a lot of Al Gore jokes:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3S3kkecy1Kw

Personally I refuse to believe that any lightbulbs are “good for the environment” if you have to open the windows and leave the room for 1-2 hours when it blows out, then throw the remains away in the “environmentally harmful” trash (which is what they recommend where I live). The bulbs might save energy, but they’re pollutants. Just what we need are more heavy metals and other crap in circulation and screwing up the groundwater!

Hate the light quality, too.

I loved this! I laughed until I started coughing! Now I have to go out and buy very large quantities of incandescent bulbs . . .

Yep, I’m stockpiling the incandescent bulbs.  Apparently South Carolina passed a law allowing incandescent bulbs to still be made in that state, despite that awful federal bill.  I may have to get dh to find a job in SC, just so I can have decent light bulbs in our house.

The CFLs are also no good for fan-and-light combo fixtures. Which is - oh yeah - every light fixture in my house. Turns out all that shaking from the fans completely cancels out that “lasts forever” business.

OMG!!! You did NOT just namecheck “Radar Rat Race”!!! I LOVED that game (Rally X clone that it was). With apologies to SDG, you are now the coolest columnist on NCR.

@Victor:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qwnzsIH_1Uk

.

So what do you think?  Were those clouds of stars really supposed to be farts, or what?  If not, what the heck was it?

My father-in-law has stockpiled multiple crates of incandescent bulbs of various styles and wattages, Y2K-style. Their 1970 dimmer chandelier will be good to go for decades. He’s going to need to learn how to use a shotgun to defend his stash if the neighbors ever find out what he’s up to.

I’m so glad I’ve found a place where I can freely admit I’m hoarding a few cases of good old incandescents.  I figure it’s only a matter of time before they re-allow them, in the mean time, I’ve got few Costco sized cases of assorted wattages.  After that, I’ll be crossing a few state lines until I’m in South Carolina to stock up every few years.

On the bright side, my dad had fond memories of playing with little balls of mercury in the 30’s.    As far as I can tell he never suffered any long term damage.

HA! LOL (for real). This is so hilarious. And so true.

And I am sure all is going to be fine with the bulb breaking, but yeah turn this post into a petition and heck, I’ll sign.

Those bulbs suck.

Oh, and while we’re on the subject of stupid things enviro-weenies have done to us, let’s discuss the simple dishwasher (machine, not husband).  Our old $250 Kenmore had some sort of built in grinder on it and it worked great without even scraping food off dishes.  Whatever I put in that thing came out clean, no prerinsing or even scraping necessary.

When the dishracks finally rusted out on that one two years ago, it was going to be like $400 to replace them.  In a much better situation financially than we were 15 years ago, we decided to replace our trusty old Kenmore with an $800 top rated Consumer Reports Whirlpool.  We knew the environmentalists had ruined the sweet gig of throwing unscraped dishes in there but we also found we had to prerinse the dishes.  However, it still left a white film on all the dishes.  When we thought we were operating the Whirlpool incorrectly, we cracked open the manual only to find that it tells us we need to run the faucet until the water gets hot before turning on the dishwasher.    So, in addition to scraping and now prerinsing the dishes on our fancy $800 dishwasher, we had to run the faucet for about 2 minutes until the water ran hot.  Our water bill actually went up 10 bucks a month.

When greenies recently took out the phosphate from the dish detergent, it renderered the fancy Whirlpool completely useless.  At that point, we upgraded to a really expensive Miele.  We still have to scrape the dishes, but we we’re back to mostly not prerinsing and we never have to the faucet hot.  Oh yeah - and that stupid blasted Whirpool?  That’s in a landfill.  Take that Al Gore.

Apologies in advance to anyone who washes dishes by hand and wishes they had my problems - I assure you this is not our biggest problem, just a pet peeve of mine.

Thanks for the giggles!

Supposedly, if you put lemon juice in the dishwasher, it corrects the problem that the stupid non-phosphate soap makes.

Not to mention the “water-saving” toilets that you have to flush two or three times.

@Simcha in re: to RRR:

I always assumed that the mouse was a spy (or a member of the mouse resistance, stealing cheese from the cat collaborator mice) and that the stars were some sort of clever smokescreen (a la Spy Hunter), but now you’ve got me wondering exactly what their delivery system was for it.

Anyway, I eagerly await your upcoming column on Cosmi’s Forbidden Forest.

While I understand Simcha’s bafflement at why the new seems to pointlessly replace the old, I wouldn’t place all of the blame on his-Goreness. Much of it is based on our own cupidity. We have vastly cheaper manufactured goods than we have ever had. Now, the artificially low prices make it cheaper to replace than to repair. Cars were considered ‘built like a tank’ when they went 100k miles. Now we gripe about how we ‘only’ got 200k out of a car that we only did repairs on, but never any maintenance. (If you think the two are the same, that illustrates the problem better than I ever could.)

We have met the enemy, and they are us.

I use CFLs selectively. Even in ceiling fans. (If your fan vibrates so much that you’re killing CFLs, get off your dead duff and balance the fan! Preventive maintenance.) CFLs were always a miserable stopgap between Incandescent (which are genuine 19th Century technology: cheap to produce and outlandishly bad at doing their job) and LED lamps. When LEDs mainstream, I’ll be the first one replacing my CFLs. I think the Federal mandates against Incandescent’s production or sale is merely meddlesome. When LEDs hit, the problem will take care of itself.

So everything is trade-off. My father’s 15yo refrigerator draws 12.5Amps, enough to merit its own circuit. The Kenmore fridge I bought a decade ago drew 6.5A, and it keeled over from a failure *on my part* to maintain it. So I got clipped for $800 for a new fridge…which draws 3.5Amps, or about $55 to run *per year.* Maybe if I take care of this one…it will last more than 10 years. But I’m not betting on it. The disposable culture has won, and we have helped. The influence of Al Gore barely rates a footnote in whole story.

J H - we’ve tried it all.  Lemon juice, vinegar, a little bleach,  eye of newt, toe of frog, you name it.  NOthing works (other than rinsing the dishes in CLR) when you’ve got hard water, a crappy dishwasher, and no phosphate in the detergent.

I agree. I understand that they use next to no energy, but it doesn’t make sense to get rid of all those nasty mercury thermomemters then happily (idiotically?) haul in plenty of mercury in much more breakable, reachable-to-kids objects. And they give me terrible headaches as well.  It’s not just you.

Oh, any did you know that there is some evidence that these light bulbs also give off mercury vapor? Fantastic.
I just don’t get how some environmentalists are so illogical. 

*sigh* Have you ever read the actual government instructions on how to take care of a broken mercury bulb? I’d be pis, er ticked too.

Marshall - I’m curious, what kind of maintenance are you supposed to do on a fridge?  We vacuum underneath it and occasionally behind it, but we thought (perhaps incorrectly?) we were doing that because we have asthma in our house, not because we had to maintain the fridge.  We do have to repair the icemaker in the (once again, blasted Whirlpool) fridge about once a year because something goes wrong with it.  We fix our own appliances in our home as we are not usally part of the culture of throwaway stuff.

I can’t speak for everyone, but my main problem with the CFL’s is the mercury within them.  I’ve got a housefull of boys (and one more sedate daughter) and lightbulbs do break from time to time.  I happen to prefer the type of light that the incadescents give off but that may just be my natural resistance to change.   

We did try a couple of the much pricier CFL’s in some recessed lighting (which is somewhat immune to balls and kicks and tackles) in our family room but when they didn’t seem to last any longer than regular bulbs, I began hoarding the incandescents.  Perhaps I just got a few bad batches?

@Eileen - we don’t have a dishwasher, so I haven’t tried this, but I’ve heard in similar discussions that you can get phosphate at the hardware store to add back into your detergent so that your dishwasher will work again.

The cloudiness on glasses is called “etching”. Another culprit is too much detergent. It should be about a tablespoon, which is a lot less than it seems.

I love your wit, and I hate the CFL bulbs!

@Eileen, CFLs do poorly in recessed lights, as per this website:
The principle reason for reduced lifespan of CFLs is heat. CFLs exhibit shorter lifespans in light fixtures and sockets where there is low air-flow and heat build-up such as recessed lighting. For these types of sockets it is recommended to ues specially designed CFLs for recessed lighting or LEDs.
http://eartheasy.com/live_energyeff_lighting.htm

And just wanted to say that I feel for your first trimester pity party.  Seroiusly, I’m only on #2 and would have ripped Jimmy John’s a new one when they told me I was one block too far from their delivery route (which happens to only be a 1 mile radius).  I was nauseaus, had yet to grocery shop, and had a sleeping toddler- it was the only thing that sounded palatable.  So I hope your morning sickness goes away- or that at least someone shows up at your door stop with a fantastic sandwich.

Last comment- promise!  I am soo bummed. I thought this was hilarous and made the mistake of posting to facebook.  Nobody (ok 2 people) get it.  I tried to tell them it was satire.  I tried to say it’s not /really/ about Al Gore. Seriously, I found this so funny (especially the conversation of the kids and the lamp and the 2nd to last paragrapth that I’m really having a problem not being validaded in that estimation. lol

And simcha, I’m pretty sure there are some people now who truly think that you’ll go post partum polar bear hunting just to obtain that blubber. *sigh* I think I am understanding how you feel in your comboxes sometimes!

Incidentally, because I forgot to mention it earlier, this is the funniest thing I’ve ever read on NCR.

Poor, poor Al Gore.  He and his investor friends are
cringing and cowering all the way to the BANK!!!

Thanks for the tips - our problem is not too much detergent - we typically use the Cascade Action packs which are already premeasured for bozos like me.  Believe it or not though, we had tried less detergent, more detergent, no detergent, if someone on the internet named it, we tried it.  After researching the problem, we came to the conclusion that all the new eco-friendly dishwashers are pretty much dogs.</P>

We actually did know that the phosphate was available and had already scouted out the best price for it on the internet when we decided we were going to treat ourselves to our most frivolous, ridiculously pricey anniversary present ever - a brand new water heating, energy sucking, insanely expensive Miele dishwasher.

@Cari - thanks for the info on the CFL’s for recessed lights.  I’ll probably stick with my hoard of incandescents for a while, but if my supply starts running low and the government pinheads haven’t figured it out yet, I may give those special CFL’s a try before I run off to South Carolina.  The recessed lights are pretty much the only lights where I’m not afraid of the boys somehow causing mercury to be spewed around the room.

Eileen and others with dishwasher film problems:  We went to restockit.com, where they have cascade dishwasher detergent with the phosphates back in.  Works great!  We use less detergent than before and the dishes are sparkly.  (Lemon juice, white vinegar sort of worked, but took the color off some of our glasses & dishes).
Regards, Mike

I have several friends who have had recessed lighting installed and were at a loss as to why their lights kept flickering. I’ll have to let them know it’s Al Gore’s fault.

hmm…I must be a weirdo, cause I use pretty much exclusively CFL bulbs.  I don’t really have any lamps (My mom has lamps everywhere, I just have good old overhead lighting everywhere!) and I don’t worry so much about breaking a bulb and having to deal with the mercury. My mom’s a retired science teacher, and they used to play with mercury in class - she’s a little weird, but honestly at least part of that has to be genetic.  Hubby broke our mecury thermometer for NFP early in our marriage (we bought a digital one on the way home from class #1, because I foresaw the demise of the glass thermometer you have to shake down once a day!)  I called my mom for instructions, and cleaned it up myself using disposable gloves, paper towels and putting everything into a zip top bag.  Called the fire department who sent over a hazmat crew, who seemed very dissapointed that I had done such a good job cleaning up (they didn’t get to open their kit, even)and took away our little baggie of hazardous waste.  Just the other day my dear worrywart daughter asked me what would happen if the lightbulb broke, and I explained the whole mercury thing to her, and she was fine once she knew that I knew what to do.

But crappy modern dishwashers and phosphate free dish detergent…that is what makes me want to smack Al Gore!

Bless you, Mike from CA!  Every member of my extended family has been complaining mightily about detergent and they are all thrilled with the link to restockit.com

Whenever I turn on our one (1) fixture w/those bulbs I swear I must have woken up in Communist Russia. Jesus said I had to accept poverty; he said nothing about loving stupidity.

Hilarious post. Sharing on fb, hoping I don’t have the same feedback from my friends as “E” up there.

Such a funny and true post!

Shameless self promotion:http://demuredimwit.blogspot.com/

i thought everyone knew that it’s george bush’s fault!

This was so timely.  I’m swimming through the sea of hoarded childrens’ clothing that I call home, trying to get rid of stuff, organize stuff, pull weird toys and old train tickets from Italy out of stuff, and it’s everywhere.  Your excellent story reminded me that whenever I’m at this point something horrible happens to several bags of clothes.  My cousin with eight kids recently had some story about a cat bleeding or going to the bathroom on or blowing up over clothes.  Or something.  Horrible. 

So, I’d best get moving and finish the hateful task before something dangerous/disgusting/criminal happens to all those clothes, because if they’re gone, whatever shall we kick all about the floor come the winter?  Thank you again for writing.  You are like a ray of sunshine in my life.

I can’t believe that I actually survived childhood picking at the asbestos padding surrounding the heat run next to my seat in fifth grade, only to bring home little pellets of liquid mercury from Chemistry class in High School. My family lived in a fruit growing part of the world, and all the farmers scoffed at the dangers of DDT that some goofy dame wrote about; they all knew that it was MUCH safer than the arsenic which THEIR fathers had used!  If we fell and hurt ourselves at school, we got a bandaid from the nurse and a lecture. When boy named Chevene on our basketball team fell and slammed into the bleachers head first, he lay there a good five minutes, then got up and finished the game! No One considered ANY of these things to be dangerous!!  My water at home came from a well, but if I went to the woods and wanted a drink, there was a creek that ran through it…The first time in my life I got diarrhea was when I went to college and had chlorinated water. I’d never had it before. When I went away for the weekend, I was fine! How times have changed from the 1950’s and 1960’s.

I forgot to say MY part of the world was Western NY

The repub congress recently proposed legislation to repeal the incadescent ban, so we can use whatever light bulbs we want, regardless of what Al gore says.  The dems opposed the repeal as a waste of time, and an issue not worrying about.  But considering the huge number of blogs on this issue I have seen from very ordinary people, there are quite a lot of people who think this crazy ban is indeed worth worrying about.

I am very glad the repub party, and the Tea Party is moving on this issue.  This ban is crazy, and most average people easily recognize that.  And the people still supporting the ban, environmentalist global warming fanatics (who seem to care more about banning carbon dioxide, something we breath out every day, than highly poisonous mercury), crony capitalists (paid off by the CFL manufacturers), and nanny state types who can’t wait to tell us what to do in our homes, are groups that badly need a smackdown.

How the nanny state ruined your top-loading clothes washer:

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704662604576202212717670514.html

“It makes me feel like filling up my 15-passenger van with overpriced gas and barreling nonstop to Al Gore’s house and smacking his silly, fat face around until he admits that his main goal is and always has been to make each and every day for the entire human race a little less bearable.”

ROFL!!!  Slap him for me as well.

The CFL “spotlights” in my girlfriend’s kitchen are a constant source of grim hilarity. You go down with the understanding that what light there is will be yellow and dim, at least for 20 minutes. So generally we don’t turn ‘em off. Hey, they don’t burn much coal, do they?

“Now, I understand that these bulbs are better for the environment, because they save energy. “

This is factually untrue.  While CFLs will draw less energy than incandescent bulbs while in use they consume vastly more energy when you include manufacture and cleanup.  And that’s not even considering if they break - as the 27 step procedure for cleaning them up is frighteningly expensive and energy consumptive. 

The real reason they are favored boils down to two letters: GE.  It’s no coincidence that a company whose president sits on White House boards and has spent huge sums of money lobbying for the incandescent ban would also happen to be the primary manufacturer of the CFLs.  As the movies taught us, follow the money.

Hilarious! Thanks for the laugh,
a morning sickness compatriot.

Baby seal blubber is a far better alternative than polar bears.  It burns brighter, cleaner (no smoke, can’t speak for the carbon footprint) and the little sonabiches are easier chase to *their* exhaustion and take down (polars bears are the opposite across the board).  And their pelts are much softer and better for coats.

Wonderful essay, thank you!

Here’s a brief, operatic response in the style of Elmer Fudd:

http://youtu.be/92YEIDJRt3E

-bd

I’ve experimented with a lot of different lights in my house. I have indirect valance lighting and that is old tube fluorescent - GE Reveal. Out of kid reach unless they can deploy a 6 foot step ladder. But my kids are well beyond those hijinks. A couple of reading lights are metal halide, but that is for serious reading as they are slow to come on. Great light and about 4x more efficient than incandescent. I will not give up incandescent or halogen spots and floods - tried the fluorescent versions which turn weird colors as they age. Xenon low voltage minis for stair lighting. I do have CFLs, but the ones I get are made in Holland by Phillips, not in some lao gai prison factory in China. Would you believe that the build quality is much better, as is light and lifespan? Available thru the internet, but not my local big box.

What a way to start off the day! roflmao. What a writer! Funny.

As a side note, with incandescent lights you actually can have your cake and eat it too.

If you put in a dimmer switch, and then run a higher wattage light at a low setting your wattage consumption declines roughly as the square of the reduced setting: so if you run a 100W bulb at the half setting, you’re only using 25W, but getting about the same lux as though you’re running it at 50W.

In addition, doing so extends the bulb life to infinity and beyond: I have 2 100W bulbs outside as security lighting that I’ve been running at 25% power continuously now for 8 years without having to replace either one.

Power savings, extended bulb life, and the nice warm glow - what’s not to like?

My kids broke one of those CFL bulbs, too. Not fun. I do like LED lights, so there is hope to save electricity and get decent light as the price on those comes down.

May I add the “let’s only sell poisonous bulbs that make my Autistic son blink a lot and go bonkers at random intervals” to the list of reasons why we Martins shall be toasty warm this winter?

Who doesn’t love an “Al Gore” joke?

How about a “George Bush” joke?  You know, the president who invaded a foreign country under false pretenses?

Remember how “George Bush” told us he knew where the weapons of mass destruction were?  And then later, he couldn’t find any of them? 

Ha, ha, how hysterical.  Better than any “Al Gore” joke, right?

In the meantime, we killed civilians in a foreign country.  Lots of them.

Laugh that off, folks.

I haven’t worked up the nerve to try an LED bulb yet, but I’m hoping those will be our salvation.
   
Watch them be made of babies or something. :(

While it may be true that CFL are better for the environment, sometimes it’s legitimate not to choose what’s better in one way when it’s worse in another way (not referring to the mercury issue here). 

Bicycles are better than cars in several ways:  you get exercise, they don’t pollute, they reduce traffic.  But they’re worse because when you get to work you and your clothes are all sweaty. 

It’s outrageous, in my opinion, for the government to force the people to use CFLs because they’re better environmentally, and rob us of the freedom to use incandescents for the reason that they give more pleasant light.  Let us decide if the benefits are worth the costs.

Doesn’t anybody realize that Red China is still our enemy (along with Obama and his fiends) and they control the manufacturing of these dangerous and not so friendly light bulb?  What choice do we have, as the LEDs seem to have some very serious side effects such as brain damage (which might explain the “Democratic” party and their inability to do anything right) along with the very high cost to start with.  We need to pray and to repent as a nation, now, or we won’t have a nation anymore!  +JMJ+

Oops! I forgot: Al Gore is a joke, a very sick and useless joke.  +JMJ+

Wait, when have light emitting diodes (LEDs) ever been linked to brain damage? Are you sure you don’t mean the mercury-filled CFLs?

Simcha
    Just your title for this thread has had me intermittently laughing for 15 minutes…even while I am getting hurt in today’s market in silver and in trading volatility ( yes…you can actually buy and sell fear now on Wall St.).  Thanks for a great laugh.

The “D” in LEDs is diode, and these are a type of semiconductor, which in absolutely no way possible can be made of anything human.

Also, JMJ I believe you got your story reversed; LEDs have been linked to helping people with brain injuries recover. Here is one link to a summary of the story:
http://www.rapidonline.com/latestnews.aspx?id=800468342&tier1=Industry&title=LEDS+may+assist+recovery+from+brain+injury

Keep calm and carry on.