The Day the Light Went Out

KMJ

Starting January 1, the most popular light bulbs sold in the United States — 60W and 40W incandescent bulbs — will no longer be manufactured in or imported into the country.  MSN

Now I'm no luddite, but I don't think government should be meddling in the light bulb market.  Light bulbs replaced candles without government intervention, why? Because they were better.  CFL's and LEDs require government intervention in the market because quite frankly, they suck as far as ambient lighting goes.  Without the strong arm of government the vast majority of us would be sticking to the lowly incandescent bulb.

As I said, I'm no luddite and I've made the switch to LEDs where I deem LEDs to be adequate and efficient.  Notice I said "I deem" not when some faceless government hack deems them to be adequate and efficient.  I will burn candles long before I switch to CFLs... having despised florescent lighting my entire life, since long before the environmental movement and "EnergyStar" compliance ratings. 

LEDs are marginally better than CFLs, I have no doubt that they will improve over time, but they're not there yet.  I have made the switch to LEDs in my kitchen and office where they provide adequate task lighting.  I do not however want them in my living room.  For those of you of similar opinion I offer you the following resources working through a loophole in the law - Rough Service Bulbs:

Newcandescent

Home Depot

As I said earlier, I'm no luddite... check out these interesting technological breakthroughs in lighting:

The Smartcharge lightbulb while LED, comes with its own built in rechargeable battery along with the computer sensing technology to determine if power has failed or the bulb was switched off.  During a detected power failure the bulb is capable of providing lighting for an additional four hours.

The AwoX Strimmlight is an LED bulb with an integrated Bluetooth® speaker. An easy path to an in home sound system without the bother of installing wiring... or additional speakers.

Phillips Hue allows you to control the lighting and the color of its systems bulbs all from the convenience of your home computer or from an app on your phone. The starter kit comes with 3 bulbs and a bridge for your wireless router at $199... additional bulbs, of which it can control up to fifty, come at the steep price of $58 dollars a piece.

I was originally going to post this on New Years Eve but as polling indicates that 40% of us are unaware that the bulbs are being phased out, I decided to post it early...

Let the run on lightbulbs begin!