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LED lights and lighting.  The next big thing.

A PhD to buy a light bulb now?

Have you been to buy a light bulb lately?

Holy cow.

I went the other day to a Lowe's and then to a Home Depot.

First, you have to know the regular bulbs are going away. There are darn few of those.

After that, it's a whole new ballgame.

You need to know there are two options.

The first option is all the new fluorescent bulbs.

Sure, they save money and electricity and energy, more than anything.

You have to see how many Kelvins and lumens so you have the right coloring of the bulb in your room(s).

If you also need a 3-way bulb, fugghedaboudit. There are very few of those. And some of them are just bloody huge. They could be as big as a grown man's fist.

Then there's pricing.

If they're cheap, they only cost a little over $8.00.

Each.

They're supposed to last far longer but some friends have one that blew after less than a year.

Apparently we're supposed to start files at home, keeping track of how long ago we've bought these things and where.

The second option--you'll love this--are the LED bulbs.

Don't get me wrong, I love the idea of LED bulbs since they last far longer than all the other bulbs--supposedly--but also, they aren't nearly as hot as halogens. (I'm not even going into those here. Suffice to say, they're bloody hot).

Then there's your second option. LED bulbs.

They're a whole 'nother issue. And education.

Same deal, too, where you have to look at how many lumens they put out but also different shapes and sizes.

And now, here again, the issue of price.

Holy cow. These things can cost you $40 for one bulb.

So if you haven't been out lately, to one of the big stores, be ready for a real education.

Book a lot of time.

You'll be there for a while.

After all, a doctorate in lighting takes some time.

I wish you good luck. And a lot of time.

And then I want an LED bicycle like this

And how much more safe on a night bike ride could you be, right? Yep. I want one of these, too. (Have a great weekend, y'all).

I suddenly want to do this

I can't snowboard but I'd try. And heck, why couldn't I just ski down the mountain in an LED suit like this? Oh, yeah. I want to do this.

Simple, elegant solutions to 4 of the world's biggest problems

Yes, that's what I said.

There are, in fact, simple and elegant solutions to 4 of our world's largest problems and the list isn't long. The problems I'm speaking of are:

1) Dependency on fossil fuels
2) Global climate change
3) War in the Middle East
4) Pollution

The 2 solutions to these "Big 4" problems are to invest in solar technologies--as I've said here before--and LED lighting. These 2 changes alone would do the following:

1) Reduce--and eventually, possibly quickly, eliminate--our use of oil for transportation, a huge help to mankind around the world;
2) Reduce--and, again, eventially eliminate--our use of hydro-electric power--and power companies--around the world. This would have the added benefit of returning our world's waterways to their natural states, in short order, so the plants and animals that grow from them could and would thrive again. Like salmon? Like fish? The world need them. This would help them return to healthier states;
3) Reduce pollution. 'Nuff said;
4) Reduce carbon that is put into our environment,thus reducing our "carbon footprint", globally, and therefore, decrease our forced changes in the environment;
5) Take the United States and, indeed, the world, out of the Middle East and it's archaic, millenia-old religious wars.

Solar power, both through passive solar collectors and photovoltaic cells are truly, completely non-polluting and so, absolutely green and non-polluting. Once you've gotten over the price of purchasing the cells, there is almost no other cost for them or for electric generation from then on, unless and until they should need to be replaced. Unlike nuclear power--which drives me crazy--we don't have to concern oursleves or worry about where we're going to store the radioactive waste for thousands of years, at huge cost, financially, and the additonal cost--which we ignore--of the possible threat to our ecology, should the radiation in some way effect underground waterways or other aspects of nature.

LED lights, alone, use tiny amounts of power and have, already, if you saw the CBS Sunday Morning show today, shown to be used with solar collectors so there is NO EXPENSE at creating light. The technology already exists. It's available now. The only prohibition, so far, is cost, and this is reported to be going down at a rate of 20% per year now. If we throw financial, tax incentives at the problem, it could go lower than that.

Solar power could, in fact, power our transportation. The big obstacle here is our battery technology. It is too cumbersome and expensive. It works already, though, so this is not a "pie in the sky" offer at a solution. With tax incentives and a push for better technologies, perhaps this revolution could come about quicker than it would otherwise. I feel sure that history, technology and need shows that it would.

If we could make this happen sooner, can you imagine how much improved our lives would be? So much less pollution. The emphasis of the Middle East, with all it's thousands of year old tensions and animosities could be left in the desert, to be ignored.

There are so many technologies, like these, that make the way we've always assumed the way the world works, obsolete.

We should stop printig newspapers on paper. Yes, let's read them, online.

We should stop paying power companies to create electricity--we'd be making our own, on our rooftops, with photovoltaic cells.

We should abandon the internal combustion engine. It's killing us.

We can do this. As a people. As a world.

We can do it. We have to. We already have the capabilities. We already have the solutions and they are simple, elegant and, frankly, obvious. We just have to make these changes.

And the sooner the better.

It's enough to give a person hope.



And ending, side note: Did you see today where the President is loosening Clean Air Act rules again? It's your government, folks.