Knowing this makes me feel only slightly less stupid than the guys I read about a few years ago who filled them with gasoline and lit them up so they could have a real lightsaber fight.

Hadn't finished the last few pages of print yet, thought it might be back there.

My retarded bad.

It also isn't possible to dim a flourescent bulb (so much for setting a mood).

But we still want to save electricity, right? LED's are the way!
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LED_lamp

can I ask of what use this anecdote is? halogen lights, under normal use, become hot enough to become a fire hazard. Incandescents can be a hazard with faulty wiring. blaming shitty electrical work on a fluorescent bulb isn't really damning evidence.

I guess the upshot is that if fluorescents don't give you a headache (a valid concern) and you can figure out how to throw them out (http://www.metrokc.gov/dnrp/swd/wdidw/material.asp)
go with fluorescent. most of the materials can be recycled or at least safely junked, and they help cut down on lighting energy use, what nearly 20% of US energy production goes into.

So saving power anywhere saves power everywhere, at least on the American grid.

Al Gore says buy the new energy saving bulbs. Should I trust him? Has he ever been right about anything before? What is Al Gore's track record on taking on a problem and figuring out what to do about it?

On the other hand, should I believe, Jonathan, uh, Golem? Galoom? Jason (or Jonathan) is a Stranger like writer or something right? And everyone says he's just an all around great guy with loads of talent and lots and lots of potential.

Gosh. I don't know. Help me out here. Who to believe?

It's not "saving" electricity. It's outsourcing it. And you're outsourcing it to a country that needs a new coal fired generator every week just to keep up with demand.

I'll stick with inefficient burning tungsten for now, thanks.

"Residents are encouraged to recycle these lights through a household hazardous waste facility."

There are two points: a) household products shouldn't require you to go online to figure out to dispose of them properly, and b) who the fuck is going to drive a fluorescent bulb to a household hazardous waste facility?

Eventually LED bulbs will offer better light quality without the hazardous waste problem. Right now they're too expensive, though.

Flicker - older style fluorescent lamps coupled with magnetic ballasts did indeed flicker.

Modern fluorescent lamps coupled with electronic ballasts - available for more than 20 years and now dominant - operate at 20,000-40,000 hz - well beyond either human perception or what we call phosphor decay - meaning that there is no flicker.

Color - again, older style fluorescent lamps made eveyone look like zombies. We use an indicator noted CRI - color rendering index to determine how well a particular lamp renders colors. Older style fluorescent lamps had a CRI in the 60s. Modern lamps have typical CRI ranges in the 80s to 90s - No more zombies.

Mercury - yes, there is a tiny amount of mercury in each lamp. Unfortunately, this is required to make the lamps work - sometimes physics is a bitch.

The reality is that the amount of mercury contained within each lamp is vanishingly small compared to the amount of additional atmospheric mercury released by power plants required to pump out enough energy to power incandescent lamps. While our power locally is dominated by hydro, that is not the case nationwide. Energy that is saved here can be used to minimize mercury pollution elsewhere as well.

Lamp recycling - yes, it's best to recycle fluorescent lamps. It would be great if the DIY stors had recycling bins available, and I'm reasonably sure that this is coming. In the meantime, there are several recycling sites in the metro seattle area.

To those whining about having to recycle I would ask - what do you do with waste oil, or paint, or pesticides, or any of the other myriad household toxics? Flush em and hope for the best?

Currently, commercially available LED technology is roughly as efficient as halogen incandescent; i.e. 20-30 lumens/watt. (Think of lumens as pounds of light) Currently, linear fluorescent offers 80-100 lumens / watt. Regular incandescent (screw in "A" lamp) is ~10 lumens / watt.

LEDs are great for limited applications currently, especially for colored light, but it will be a good while I suspect before they are truly ready for prime time.

To put things in some perspective, I've been hearing about new breakthroughs that'll deliver commercially available 100 lumen per watt leds for almost a decade now...