Arfa's problem is more to do with "green" government ramming CFL's down peoples throats than actual performance. LCD monitors were trashed by computer critics when they first came out (rightly so) but now it would be a fool who buys a CRT monitor, no need for gov't intervention, the "people" made their own decision. As for CFL reliability, the QC has got worse, last pack of 6 from Costco , 2 were dead, one failed spectacularly after 20 minutes, the others are fine but I doubt will last the quoted lifetime. Also it would be useful if there was an easy way to dispose of the blasted things.
-- Geoffrey S. Mendelson N3OWJ/4X1GM To help restaurants, as part of the "stimulus package", everyone must order dessert. As part of the socialized health plan, you are forbidden to eat it. :-)
That depends on the base used -- as well as other ingredients. And, of course, how long you let it ripen. E.g., fruits tend to bring too much water to the mix; sugar substitutes result in insufficient volume (I suspect sugar also lowers the freezing point of the mix?)
My butter pecan Rx can tolerate extended ripening before becoming "hard as a rock" (N.B. ripening seems to be a self-contradictory term wrt ice cream!)
You can still-freeze some Rx's while others seem to need a dasher-on-steroids. :<
It's always fun to watch the expression on someone's face when they taste *real* "iceD cream"!
That is, high-butterfat ice cream with low overrun. The University of Maryland dairy store sold such ice cream, and it was a wonderful. Even the "premium" brands don't match that quality.
Law banning use of lead shot in duck hunts ignored
Lead pellets still used as ammunition to shoot ducks, says Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust
James Meikle * guardian.co.uk, Wednesday 10 November 2010 17.20 GMT Duck hunters are flouting the law on the use of lead ammunition. The law banning the shooting of ducks and other wildfowl with lead shot is being widely flouted across England, according to a government-funded study.
Seven in 10 of the ducks checked at game-dealers, butchers and supermarkets were killed with lead ammunition, while surveys of shooters and shoot organisers revealed that many admitted they did not always comply with the regulations introduced in 1999.
The measures were meant to stop the death of waterbirds from lead poisoning caused by them mistakenly eating spent shot which they mistook for food or grit needed to aid their digestion. This was thought to account for one-in-eight bird deaths. But no one is known to have been prosecuted for breaking the law which could result in a £1,000 fine. The regulations also ban lead shot being used to kill any birds below the coastal spring-tide high-water mark or in specified wetlands.
The Wildfowl and Wetlands Trust (WWT), which wrote the report with the help of surveys by the British Association for Shooting and Conservation (BASC), said there had been no improvement since the trust conducted a smaller study with the RSPB in 2002. Non-compliance remained "high and widespread". Businesses selling duck killed by lead pellets are not breaking the law.
The checks indicated how the law was particularly poorly observed on inland game and duck shoots. Wildfowlers shooting birds in coastal areas were less likely to supply game outlets, the report noted.
The BASC surveys found up to 45% of those responding admitted not always complying with the law. Some did not believe lead poisoning of wildlife was a sufficient problem to justify the regulations and others believed lead shot was more effective and less expensive than alternative ammunition, including steel, tungsten and bismuth.
The WWT is calling on the government to do more to ensure the law is obeyed. It recommends that offences are reported, and said shoot organisers should make compliance with the law a condition of taking part, and that game-dealers should demand that all their suppliers had behaved legally.
The BASC agrees all regulations applying to the use of lead shot should be observed. A spokesman said: "We need to address the problems this is showing up."
The Lead Ammunition Group, a panel established by environment department Defra and the Food Standards Agency, is to report on the health impacts of lead shot on both wildlife and humans next summer.
They don't last as long when run base-up, as you have found.
My thought too. What about the mercury in the tubes?
They have their place, but are not the universal panacea the greenies profess them to be. They're ok in outside lights, for example, or in the garage or shed.
Me too. The pound shops and TJ Hughes are still stocking them, 60 and
100w, clear and pearl, for 99p for four.
I snarfed for free a big bag (about 50) of incandescent R60 spot bulbs from some guy who had replaced the lot in his new house with CFLs. Excuse me? Try turning them off occasionally...
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Shit! I thought no one knew, goddammit!
http://preview.tinyurl.com/29p4ody
Me, jacking off! http://preview.tinyurl.com/3xpntge Available For
Lessons!
What was the rationale behind phasing out the 60's before the 100's? Frosted before clear?
Ah, OK.
*Felt* as if it was shifted towards the blue (violet) end of the spectrum.
It is interesting to evaluate "light" in A/B tests instead of "from memory". You can look at two light sources independantly (separated by a bit of time) and consider them to be a lot more similar than when you see them "next to each other" (in time).
Also matters what other light sources are contaminating the area.
IIRC, they have special drive requirements. And, suffer from a slower warm-up time.
We had (some kind of) lamps to illuminate the walkways at school which could be *shaken* (rather difficult for a 4" metal post sunk in concrete) "off" -- only to restart some time later. Mindless game to play when you had nothing more pressing on your plate. :>
Here, we have ordinances re: "light polution" so fixtures and bulb technology tend to be driven by things other than cost, reliability, etc.
Actually, the fat is just one issue that "surprises" the innocent's taste buds. More commonly, it is the intensity of flavor and the "texture" that gets their attention.
Adding eggs to the base has a subtle taste/feel to it (though makes it dangerous from a health perspective!). You end up with something between a "Philly-style" cream and a "Gelato" (custard based). (I've yet to try marrying the two "technologies")
Flavor intensity can, at first, startle the consumer. But, I've found that folks quickly get used to the extra "taste" and invariably want more -- regardless of how much they've eaten (and been reminded of how *bad* the stuff is for them!).
I, for example, prefer an almond flavored cream with semi-sweet chocolate chips (sometimes dark chocolate, instead) and almond slivers. To the uninitiated, it seems like too many tastes and textures but it grows on you *real* fast! :>
Butter Pecan works for everyone. But, there it really *is* the high fat content that you taste (1/4 pound of butter in each quart :> )
Yes, we had a few dairies in my home town that bottled their own milk (I still recall how heavy those 1G glass bottles were -- with their "cardboard stopper") and made fresh ice cream. You never knew what flavor they'd have on hand...
It is amusing because people equate the overrun with "premium taste". "Softer". Sure, there's less ICE CREAM in there! :>
"Just let it sit out for a few minutes and it will be plenty soft... AND good tasting!"
Not exactly true, though. The uptake of CO2 by oceans and reef- building carbonate fixation was a hot science topic for many years. It was late eighties that the data got good enough to quantify the problem, and early nineties when the scientific agreement came together. Hardly anyone outside the UK knows (or cares, really) about the Thatcher contribution.
Remember the old story about the boy who cried "wolf"? The villagers heard the warning from their watcher in the field, and did nothing. They lost their child. They lost their flock. They had an excuse. 'Maggie Thatcher made me do it' isn't a good enough excuse, either.
AS far as I have been able to ascertain, the reasoning behind earlier phase-out of 60s, was that it was felt that CFLs had reached the point where they could substitute for them in terms of equivalence of light output, whereas they still had some way to go to be able to make that claim for
100s. As to why pearl before clear, I have not been able to find a definitive answer to that one. I have seen it suggested that the pearl envelope is more inefficient than the clear one, in that it blocks more of the light output of the filament, causing it to be lost as heat. I'm not at all sure that I believe that as a valid reason, and subjectively, I've always thought that a pearl bulb in fact *appears* brighter than a clear one. Certainly, the fact that the light is diffuse, seems to make it less prone to generating sharp shadows, and from a purely aesthetic point of view, pearl bulbs look much more attractive in fittings where they are visible. Clear bulbs always seem to conjour up that 'seedy' feel that you get from old thirties gangster and private eye movies.
Clear bulbs USED to be 'rugged service' in the US, and made to withstand shock & vibration better that the frosted bulbs. They were sold for work lights and hard to replace locations. They are not as easy to find as they used to be.
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Politicians should only get paid if the budget is balanced, and there is
enough left over to pay them.
It could, perhaps, be related to the fact that clear bulbs tend to be "exposed" as part of the "artistry" of the light fixture whereas frosted bulbs are typically behind a shade? I.e., if the clear ones were replaced early, people would gripe more about "how ugly" the CFL replacements are (??)
(who the hell knows... maybe they flipped a coin in some back room?)
Ah, here we see clear bulbs "exposed" in fixtures more than frosted equivalents (unless you are talking about "*functional* lighting fixtures")
From my view, governments /should/ be forcing (yes, forcing) people to do what's necessary to save energy. Market forces are highly effective in making short-term changes; they are much less effective in effecting proper long-term changes. (Things usually get worse until they abruptly collapse.) The problem, of course, is making sure the forced changes are rational and occur in the correct order.
What people find aesthetically pleasing varies widely. In Jack Finney's classic novel "Time and Again" (it's the literary equivalent of a box of chocolate-covered cherries and I recommend it highly, just for fun), when Simon Morley returns to the 20th century from the 19th with his girlfriend Julia Charbonneau, she loves the brightness and clarity of incandescent lamps, but he says he prefers gas light.
Both are pretty continuous spectrum light sources. The problem with both CFL and LED is they ain't - they have troughs and spikes. Which is what makes them unpleasant to many, IMHO.
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*It's not hard to meet expenses... they're everywhere.
Dave Plowman dave@davenoise.co.uk London SW
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