C'mon, you're disappointing me. Here I write an article agreeing with the GOP point of view, and slamming Democrats... and... nothing from you? Tsk tsk.

Heh.

-CW

They only run, like, four watts through the thing now, but hey, it's still pretty cool! The bulb was apparently not a carbon-based filament but something else (tungsten?) which was a LOT more hefty, but probably cost a bit more. But still, a century-old bulb still giving off light is pretty impressive!

:-)

-CW

I don't think there's anything all that extraordinary about the very long-burning bulbs. You can make a bulb last indefinitely, just by making it very inefficient (even for an incandescent), with a filament too thick for its wattage.

http://www.centennialbulb.org/

A light bulb that has been burning in a Livermore, CA fire station for over 100 years. When this bulb was made, the Wright Brothers had yet to make their flight. And it's still burning...

-CW

Good point on "epiphany." I'd further add that "Eureka" is self-defined as well, being Greek for "I have found (it)!"

California has several towns named "Eureka" (various spellings)...

-CW

Thanks!

Where's Michale? I thought he'd love this article...

Heh.

-CW

This was very interesting and your advice to the Democrats really does, if I may say, make so much sense. Not surprisingly.

I saw this in the fine print in a newspaper article. Seems like there could be a couple reasons for this:

1) As you mentioned, they want it to fail so they can keep the issue alive and blame it on Democrats

2) They actually want it to pass but don't want any responsibility for it passing and don't want to take the heat from the fringeys and, from the light-bulb industry lobbyists

Remember who's going to benefit from this bill at the end of the day: 1) the public from lower energy consumption, but 2) the light bulb industry (because they're able to sell higher margin product)

As you most excellently said ... food for thought

-David

Most of this verbiage is unnecessary: there's a word for the "aha" moment.

3. a sudden, intuitive perception of or insight into the reality or essential meaning of something, usually initiated by some simple, homely, or commonplace occurrence or experience
http://dictionary.reference.com/browse/epiphany

eventually every standard bulb 40 watts and above will disappear

Key word: "standard". The law has exceptions for practically every version of incandescent except the most basic plain-vanilla bulbs.

The bizarre thing is that the low-wattage bulbs are going to be kept longest, indefinitely for 40-watt bulbs. The lumens per watt are best (or not quite as abysmal, anyway) on the highest-wattage incandescents, so if you're going to use incandescent you're better off with just one hundred-watt bulb than the four 40-watt bulbs it would take to provide as much light. Actually it's about three and a half, but you can't have half a bulb. You can put the light on a dimmer switch, but that makes the bulb run cooler, further decreasing the efficiency.

A lot of folks don't like the light they shed for one reason or another.

Just one reason: people are used to the dull yellow of incandescent bulbs. It doesn't actually look like sunlight, but we're used to it.