Fat Charlie

I'm sorry for that, Paul, it's not what I was trying to do. I said it badly and no insult was intended. I'm learning a lot from you and don't want a badly phrased point to be taken that way.

I was questioning the not the goal of the test but the interpretation of the first result. You did a really useful job documenting a well known shortcoming of CFLs, but you present it as an exposé. Fluorescent lighting's dislike for short uses has never been a secret, and your test does put hard numbers to that. Still, you're documenting that one particular product isn't the best product for every application. If CFLs were really everything, then LEDs wouldn't be making such strides.

Yes, the CFL industry wants to have all the tests involve being turned on once and running until failure. That's okay, it's their job to want it that way. At the moment, though, they probably are the best default bulb for most Americans and the way they use lights. In a "leave the lights on all the time" culture, the light that comes in at the best price and uses the least power over the longest time is king. Even in applications where they aren't best, say a closet or hallway that's only on for 30 seconds at a time, they aren't all that bad. Your day 15 failure ran 288 minutes a day- that's 4,320 minutes. If I'm in that closet looking for something every morning and again putting it away every night, the bulb should last 4,320 days- 11 years and nine months! That's pretty respectable for a bulb getting abused like that. Sylvania just might cite your test in their next "Treat it badly and still don't buy another bulb for 12 years" ad. What looks like horrible performance from one perspective might be something to be proud of from another perspective.

Come on, Paul. So you've proven that hardware can be broken. How much 30 second light bulb usage do people actually have? I don't have much in my house. If I did, I wouldn't bother using a CFL in that socket because it takes a bit to come to full brightness and I'd also be destroying it. I'd get a halogen bulb, probably.

As it is, I've thrown out more CFLs because of my 2 year old son than because of natural causes. There's one lamp that he just loves to knock over. Once I figured out that they came in different "colors" and got the right ones, I've been happy with them.

I'm heating air for a short time. I get up at 5:30 and I'm out the door at 6:30. We're gone till 5:00 and then the kids, lights, TV and cooking add to the heating. After 8:00 the kids are under blankets and we're usually down by 11:00. Outside of those times I just don't want the pipes to freeze.

Now in my next house, the one with the solar radiant heating and a masonry stove, I'll worry about thermal mass.

Sunglasses and a hat. Even with my pale Irish complexion, that's all I use. It covers my bald spot and shades my eyes. Everything else gets protected by shade (long sleeves count) and by slowly building up a protective tan.

Last winter I put in programmable thermostats. I also put in some redneck insulation in the living room and put bubble wrap on my daughter's bedroom window. The thermostats are great- when I get up the house is warm and the heat is already back off. My (always cold) wife loved the insulation at her desk immediately. My daughter didn't like the bubble wrap because it made her room too hot.

This year I've already got the sliding door panels up and I've bubble wrapped the whole upstairs- if our room with the thermostat has matching extra insulation, her room won't get overheated. I'm still playing with ideas (and looking for time) for making a solar air heater to feed through a south facing window.

Now that I've finally started reading more here instead of just thinking "yeah, I really ought to get over to check out Permies," I read Paul's 87% article and watched the beginning of the video. Today the kids' Christmas presesnts for Mommy came in the mail: a pet bed warmer, swing arm lamp and IR bulb. Now maybe I can set the ground floor cooler in the evenings.

Written rules are nothing but lawyer fodder. DW and I married at 20 (18 years ago). We wrote our own vows and over the course of a rather turbulent life have lost every written and recorded copy of them. The result? We're stuck with each other and there are no loopholes. The 10 commandments have wiggle room. Vows have wiggle room. Ethics don't, unless they're written down.

Dale Hodgins wrote:I make a point of coming up with newer and better ways of sabotaging the efforts of the idle class. I've heard more than enough from these folks, both online and on the streets of Victoria. Recently, I've hatched a plan to bribe some of them into taking a one-way trip, well beyond the borders of my city. This will save productive people in Victoria, British Columbia, about $30,000 per head per year. So I'm going so far as to adjust the demographics in my own community to better fit my idea of how we should live. I know that preaching at them will do no good whatsoever.

In discussing this plan with a like-minded member of local government, he said---. "We need to really be careful of the optics on a plan like this. What would we call it?"---- I'm calling the program "homeward bound." It has a nice ring to it, and sounds much better than, "get out of here and stop being a lazy ass beggar."

Just as I'm not open to changing my ways, most of these people are unwilling to change their's. So I'm facilitating a parting of ways, thus avoiding future conflict. Very permaculturey.

How do you define "the idle class?" My sister's husband is in insurance. His dad (in insurance) had a friend who wanted to retire and "sold" his store to my brother in law. The deal meant that my brother in law took ownership of what is basically a printing press for money and in return gave the retiree a cut of the proceeds for several years. He doesn't do anything but drink scotch and play golf, so I'd call him idle even though he calls himself a job creator. My boss is the owner's son. He's a great guy and I like him a lot, but he counts as idle too. He has a good job in management and makes a boatload of money, but he spends his time bowling, playing darts and giving money to his bookie. He's idle as hell. His biggest economic impact is in his bookie's town. I know bunches of idlers that we'd be better off without.

Jonathan Byron wrote:We have a legally defined standard called organic. If farmers want to move kinda sorta towards that vision, great, some good will usually come out of that. But if they don't meet all the definition of the standard, it simply isn't organic, and to call it that is wrong.

As long as letting the government truck frozen pizzas to elementary schools and count them as servings of vegetables isn't wrong, then calling actual vegetables organic even they don't exactly meet the legal definition isn't wrong either. I'd rather behave ethically than legally.