An interesting view on how 'green' CFLs really are:

On a sunny day (Mon, 28 Jul 2008 11:38:15 -0500) it happened Kris Krieger wrote in :

LEDs are still much more expensive, for the same light as for example normal fluorescents with magnetic ballast. The LED price will have to come down by a factor 100 or so before people will want to buy those. Thats is a problem.

Jan Panteltje wrote in news:g6ktas$bmo$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:

True, but I was buying CFLs before they became popular, so I figure that I helped a little to bring down the price of CFLs

What I like about LEDs is that they're so much cooler to the touch, plus, tehy use so littel elctricity. I tend to look at the long-term.

Also, a big plus is that, for places where I'd have to use a ladder to reach the light bulbs, I'd just as soon put in a bulb that will operate for as long as possible - the higher cost is well worth it to me to not have to try balancing on a ladder while screweing around with glass items ;)

On a sunny day (Mon, 28 Jul 2008 12:01:25 -0500) it happened Kris Krieger wrote in :

Yes, early adaptors always pay more, but bring around new technology too.

I would like LEDs, but then also some R,G,B, so you can make your own colour depending on the mood, circumstances. A LED light with build in microprocessor so you can, for example via ethernet, or RS232, or whatever, specify colour as 0x22, 0x77, 0x35 for RGB.

Less real productivity, more jobs for pencil-pushers.

Obviously you've never seen an episode of Dirty Jobs with Mike Rowe. On several occasions, he's had his gloved hand deep in the rear end of a bovine, checking out something or other.

And there's the joke: Q. What do you call an Amish man in the middle of a field with his hand up the backside of a mule? A. Mechanic.

Tim

Boy, in Santa Barbara, $108k puts you in the "poor" category.

-- Mark

Yep. But Obama knows how to appeal to the trash... $108K/year is the crossover point into "top 10%" incomes ;-)

...Jim Thompson

Jan Panteltje wrote in news:g6kulf$pss$ snipped-for-privacy@aioe.org:

Wow. Sounds complex (well, to me )

I'm far simpler: still working on that solar-LED-light bit. I know what I wnat to do, still trying to learn enough to figure out how to do it ;)

Meanwhile, I can easily see LEDs eventually becoming cost-effective and replacing CFLs - they aren't perfect, per se, but there is a lot to be said for them.

On Mon, 28 Jul 2008 10:59:36 -0700, in sci.electronics.design, Jim Thompson bloviated:

That fine non-elitist rhetoric from the rightwing trash. Best be brushing up on your Michael Savage, would not want you to get too far behind the non-elitist curve.

And those can drive you crazy, especially with monitors in the room. AFAIR older fluorescents have some kind of inner coating that forms a lowpass, just not a very good one.

I only saw very expensive ones. Because of an upcoming HV project I began looking into chips like this one, nice and cheap:

Sez "Driver for any kind of load in a half-bridge configuration" but I am wondering how that would jibe with the high voltage level shifter in there if I disabled the oscillator. Will write to NXP, which at the same time would be a good indicator how well their support functions these days.

I remember, had that happen as well and turned back to incandescents. Then I installed a whole slew of sub-99c CFLs here, Philips Marathon, on (subsidized) sale at CostCo. Not one of them blew in over a year. At least one of them burns all night, every night. But no dimming, meaning they won't work with X10 wall switch modules :-(

I am at a loss why industry lets that happen and didn't start a major media initiative. This way the common folk remain blissfully unaware. Until stuff like electricity rates rise, big time. Utilities may even benefit since they just tell the regulatory panel "Well, we need to increase rates by this much because of the CO2 tax". Then they claim a certain percentage of the grand total as profit entitlement, probably in hopes that the CO2 "cost" will add to the factor.

That's what we bought and none blew in two years or so. Philips Marathon, lots of them.

Those are all gone :-(

"You get what you pay for" doesn't always seem to apply to CFL.

Probably 70% of them here are also mounted upside down. Make sure there is enough ventilation and don't take hot showers for too long ;-)

There's got to be a reason for that ...

Joerg wrote in news:egojk.6791 $ snipped-for-privacy@flpi145.ffdc.sbc.com:

Because many of the people running industry are most interested in milking as much short-term profit as they can legally (or quasi-legally, or at least, not proveably illegally) can get away with. It's generally assumed that people running industry are interested in doing what's good for their respective businesses, but that assumption is all too often erroneous.

in

Yup.

The broad duties of the governemnt are mentioned in the Constitution's preamble: "We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defence, promote the general Welfare [[old definition BTW was: health, happiness, or prosperity; well-being]], and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Big business ("capitalism", as opposed to smal/personal business) all too often tries to act in ways that hinder the general welfare, so there is a continual balancing act regarding what constitutes "prosperity", and defining the extent, and boundaries, of "general welfare".

In a way, it strikes me as being similar to balancing

- "enlightened self interest" (which acknowledges that other people can help, or hinder, one's own situation, so it's better to make friends who'll help one, than enemies who'll hinder one)

- short-term profit (which tends to ignore others)

- charity/non-profit, this last becoming part of the definition of "welfare" only in recent decades.

So, someone running a business with "enlightened self interest" takes care of the business, so that the business will take care of him (or her), and has a personal stake in having the business *stay* in business. But that isn't always (or, necessarily, often) what's actually done.

Doesn't make sense though because CO2 taxes can and eventually will cause a serious disadvantage versus their competitors in other countries.

There's where government comes in, or at least should. But captalism happens on the smallest scale, it's not that small/personal business is not capitalistic. It's what our country lives on.

This is where Marx and Lenin were IMHO fundamentally wrong. They thought individuals could actually shed the capitalistic part of their daily thinking process. That didn't work at all. The only ones who can are very small family-type structures and religious groups. Neither was desirable according to their "principles".

On the morning of September 8, 1923, at the end of Fleet Week in San Francisco, Squadron 11, fourteen destroyers under the command of Capt Edward Watson, left the Golden Gate for the ocean, the intent to set a speed record back to their home base in San Diego. The honor of navigating this historic event was claimed by Lt Cmdr Donald Hunter, a supremely confident navigator and captain of the flagship Delphy.

It was cold, windy and foggy. At 2100, confident of their position, plotted by dead reckoning and confirmed by what turned out to be a reciprocal RDF bearing, the fleet turned East to enter the Santa Barbara channel. At 2105 the flagship struck, at 20 knots, onto the rocks at La Honda, the Devil's Jaw. Eight other destroyers followed the flagship onto the rocks. That part of the coast was nearly desolate in those days, and the aftermath of the crash was ghastly.

My wife is going to a Saturday conference in Santa Barbara. We'll spend the weekend, and while she's doing her thing I think I'll drive down to the scene of the wreck and see if I can recognise the rocks that each ship died on.

John

Thanks! I'm going to start collecting images and maps and stuff, so I can recognize the scene when I get there. I don't know if there is a memorial or anything like that.

I made one run down the coast in a freighter, from SF Bay to San Pedro, on a fairly stormy day and night. The throttle control system would occasionally run wild (I had designed it myself about a decade previous) and the crew didn't like that. I found the problem, a loose screw on a barrier strip, which occasionally opened up the signal from the feedback tach. It cost them a few grand, my time door-door plus the flight back, to find that loose screw. I told the Chief to have somebody tighten up all the screws in the console every year or two.

John

This link ought to get you going then:

Wouldn't that have been a good application for sealed spade lug connections? A sailor once told me that any kind of screw connection on a sea-going ship will fail within the year, no matter whether stainless or not.

It seems consultants shall not have a tendency to become sea-sick. My test was on an oil rig, semi-submersible, in the middle of the North sea in fall when the huge storms blow through there. Several rigs tore loose and came into distress, our radio had to be shut down because the antenna was flapping about, my parents were worried sick when they saw the news (wasn't married yet back then). The helicopter rides were the best. "Do we really need these survival suits?" ... "Oh yeah! Take a look at that huge scar on William's head over there and ask him about how he got that."

The rig swayed slowly with the ground swell and it seems we all "auto-compensated" in our gait. Everytime we returned to land I was wondering why the guys walking in front of me were swerving like drunks. The I looked down at a yellow line on the side and saw that I did it myself as well.

Joerg wrote in news:lwpjk.17512$ snipped-for-privacy@nlpi069.nbdc.sbc.com:

Ah, but "can/will" are in the unspecified future. But the dividends promised to stockholders (including, of course, perqs given tho upper management) are due *today*, as are the payments on the managers' houses, cars, and so on. It's pretty much human nature to over-reach, and get oneself into a quandary. At the same time, there are also events and situations that just kind of crash into businesses, as well as individuals. Problems occur sometimes that simply do need immediate action, and have to be considered first.

That's one reason Common Action is difficult, as is legislation - people have imediate problems, which take precedence over future problems that are *perceived* as a possibility rather than as an inevitability. When it comes to making decisions regarding actions, it's difficult to forgo "we can gain this benefit immediately", to instead choose "this will probably happen - but it *might* not..."

Did you read Jared Diamond's "Collapse"? It's IMO the best summary (and it's also well-written) of much informatio regarding the reasons why societies sometimes make decisions that end up being disasterous.

Technically, yes, that's true - I'm trying to separate out "rapacious monopolisting mega-corporation" from "small business"/"micro-business". Shall business has to pay close attention to its balance sheets, becasue there aren't the huge assets that can be put towards fosetting large ro continual losses; small business also has to be more responsive to things like consumer complaints, consumer safety, adn product quality, because it has a narrower base. OTOH, MEga-Corporations are, because of their very size (in terms of employees, market share, facilities, materiel useage, and so on), so large that tehy can most often ride out consumer dissatisfation long enough for consumers to go from an attitude of "these products used to be better and we want them to be better again", and become habituated and eventually develop an attitude of "this is how things are and probably how they've always been".

Where Marx and Lenin scrwed up was in the notion tht people will be willing to work like dogs so as to give their earnings away to people who don't. "Communism" is technically precisely that - communal living on such a huge scale that it requires a centralized government to handle the paperwork. Socialism, according to them, is the stage during which the system of personal property and personal wages used for personal gain/profit/comfort/education/etc. is massaged/shaped until it can finally evolve into a state-sdimnistered commune of "share and share alike".

That sounds OK on the very surface, but it competely and totally ignores aspects of basic human psychology that go beyone mere social imprinting/training.

SO, yes, I'm habituated to paying taxes, mostly becasue I know what happens if one doesn't, and OK, I don't mind it when poeple who really need assitance, such as wounded vets, who need specialized health care; but I still deeply resent people who get my money simply because they don't *feel* like working, or refuse to in any way amend their stupid behaviors so that they can get and keep a job, and tehn turn around and claim that this household is somehow "not doing enough, not doing its part". That is human nature. When you work like a dog, scrimip, save, and so on, there is a basic animal instinct that grpowls and snaps when someone else simply tries to grab (in essence, steal), one's quarry so to speak.

So, technically, as above, you're correct in that capitalism is often defined as "working for profit", but it's come to often mean a system which beenfits huge monopolistic businesses which, by heir very size, skew the market, and make if no longer free, to the great detriment of smaller businesses and "common" individuals.

SO that's why I try to avoid the word "capitalism" - it's come to be far too slippery for my liking, so I try to find differnt ways to word things.

- Kris