Theodore's World

Confession. I liked Yusuf's last album Izitso, when he was still Cat Stevens/Steven Katz, but I was young(er) and had no taste or good sense.

These concerts aren't about the things they claim to be. They're about seeing and being seen, and hooking up for an hour or two.

Gore will there in front, wearing lizard sunglasses, with Tipper on his shoulders doing the Cabbage Patch churn.

Aw, isn't that nice? They want to buy us some light bulbs. I think I can afford my own light bulbs.
I remember growing up with Yusef and thinking how different his songs were, but now I know why.
He made millions off of us and then he bites the very hand that fed him.
I will NOT watch any of the Live Earth concerts.
One thing to remember about those energy efficient light bulbs--they have mercury in them. You drop one, you have to call HAZ-MAT to come clean it up.
Mercury--that's very dangerous for the Earth.
So handle those green light bulbs very carefully.

I am not going to watch any of the Live Earth events, so I guess I will miss out on "feeling good". Of course, I don't do drugs either and that may be another ingredient necessary to feel good watching these concerts.

So I will feed some birds, play with the cat, blog a bit and watch NASCAR this weekend. No jet setting, no power-efficient light bulbs, no Yusuf. I will turn the a/c down to 72, listen to some classical music, cook some meat and I guess just be unenlightened and miserable because I won't watch any Live Earth.

Darn, and it's on a day when I have other plans. To stay home and pick my nose.

The hell of it is, the new light bulbs are an improvement; they don't waste so much energy on heat and they last forever.

Darth, isn't that something Stevens is singing there. The global warming types won't even put the connection together or care probably.

Rhod, hahaha I liked Cat Stevens, his music was easy to sing along with. hahahaha moonshadows and other songs for instance. hahahhaha

Your right I had not thought of that, this is about being seen and hooking up for a few hours. Bet there are a lot of' ya man's', cool man and far out man's said.

Lynn, I won't be watching it either. I bet they do more coverage of this then they did with the wonderful and awesome Gathering of Eagles. sigh

Tom, LMAO oh how I agree!! I love how you put that. Your weekend sounds much better!!!!!!

OINK, hahahahahahha see you already have other plans. hahaha

The only song I remember by Stevens is 'cats in the cradle', it was ok, then I heard a wave on the internet. Using the tune to 'cats in the cradle'

and it went;

'did you ever think when you eat chinese it aint pork or chicken but a fat Siamese,
but the food taste good so you don't complain but that's not chicken in your chicken Chow Mein.'

We have worked against the Immigration Bill for fear of the SSP and the North American Union, this earth in the lurch is the same crap-o-la, it has to do with supporting all the third world countries on the Planet. Since we are the richest nation in the world it is our fault. So we the United States are taking the hit for the supposed 'Climate Change.'

Somebody mentioned the new light bulbs, they put out as much light as the old incandescents, however; they are terribly inefficient, You may get 28 watts of output from the bulb but you are paying for almost twice that to get the same 28 watts. In the long run I don't know if this is going to such a great 'boon' as they claim, Now you got to worry about the Murcury, and proper disposal of a flourescent bulb.

So where are we saving the money on these overpriced bulbs. If you broke and old Edison you merely got the broom and swept it up...today if you break a new flourescent ...do you need to call HAZ-MAT.

On the old Edison bulbs if you buy bulbs rated at 130 volts they will last longer than the ones rated at 120 volts almost twice as long.

Another thing with these overpriced bulbs, is lightning strikes. How do they stand up to a strike. Do the electronics in these bulbs become toast and you have to replace them, (OR an overvoltage from your Utility) This is not uncommon. Nobody has even looked into that part of it. Especially, in parts of Florida where they have the most days of electrical storms than any other part of the country, this could be a real problem.

But logic to the environmental whacko, has never been one of their strong suits, the 28 watts substitute for the 100 is what they are basing their whole argument on.

The envirowhacko's are paying to go to this event, which in turn will be paying Yusef,( Steven Demetre Georgiou), that is an indirect payment to a terrorist of your choice, way to go Goreons!!! I haven't bought, played or listened to a Cat Stevens tune since the rat converted in '77. I've used th CFL's for 4 years in some applications, have had no problems, they are hard to read by, take a bit of time to warm up, but work well for general lighting. I put them in my unheated workshop and my daughters unheated garage, they work more efficiently than the old ballasted flourescents. I still wouldn't toss the edisons yet, if you need instant on lighting or a tolerable reading lamp they are hard to beat. I must run now, need change the oil and spread it on the driveway. Bye.

Jack

I am not arguing the point of the CFLs being better than the old Edisons, my point is, with the Edisons you used 100 watts and that is what you paid for. The CFLs, are only 60% efficeint. Meaning you are getting 28 watts for lighting but are paying almost twice as much for the total power to get the 28 watts. You are paying for 46.6 Volt-Amps but using only 28 watts real power. What this comes down to is you are paying for the 28 watts of power for the light and 37.25 to run the transformer inside the bulb. (If you look on the side of one of those CFLs, for the 28 watt model,light equal to 100 watts, in Lumens, it says, .39amps x 120 volts is not 28 watts, what you are paying for is the sum of that product which is 46.8 Volt-Amps just like an Industry does.)

On a small scale this is no big deal for the power companies, however when this is multiplied on a huge scale say an entire state starts using these bulbs, by mandate, and California is headed that way, now you have a problem. Because, Industry also uses huge amounts of Reactive power, which is that 37.25 Volt-Amps-Reactive of these bulbs, which is a real hidden cost, now the power company needs to supply another large amount of this Imaginary Power, imaginary because it does no work, as Real Power does.

Large amounts of Reactive Power overloads transmission lines significantly and can at the very least cause sags in the lines and outages. If Californians think they have power problems now, wait until this new bill goes through for the CFLs. The state refuses to build new plants or authorize renewing old one's they will have problems they never knew existed before.

If you remember back a few years ago there was a huge outage in the North-east. This was due in part because of de-regulation, but also because of people buying power plants and seeing that they make no money off generating 'Imaginary Power' so they reduced the amount generated which in turn was part of the cause for the outage.

I don't think the the capacity we have at this point can handle this type of increase.

All I am saying is I think we are creating more problems than we have right now.

Then there will be the disposal issue. Today if you relamp in the commercial market, and you have a huge amount of old flourescents you can not just throw them in the dumpster, they have to be properly handled and RECYCLED... more government regulation...

Mark, dear,
"Cats in the cradle" wasn't a Cat Stevens song. It was done by Harry Chapin.

I admit that I got a lot of pleasure out of the man's songs when he was Cat Stevens. I took my cousin, who is now deceased, to her first concert, which was a Cat Stevens show, so there are a lot of personal memories tied up with that. I'm not going to let what he is now ruin that for me.

Wild Thing, you've got the wrong thing bolded there. They're buying the light bulbs to offset THEIR OWN emissions. Net value to us: zero. They'd get the same result not playing at all.
Hey, now there's an idea. . .

Trish

You are right, ... shows how much I know about music. I know who Toby Keith is though.

I don't know why I got those two confused.

And I like you idea of them not playing at all.

Mark--
Yeah, let's go listen to Toby Keith instead.

Can't disagree with you Mark, let the marketplace decide not the government. You are right about reactive load imbalances, the trade off is thermal losses for reactive losses, I fought the phenomenon for many years on a grid without an earth ground (2000 ft. of permafrost), we had to install synchronous motors in an attempt to correct the power factor because the heavy loads were inductive. You probably remember the old SCR's before the advent of solid state SCR's for motor speed controls. They were Saturable Core Reactors where a low level DC voltage controlled the transformers inductance and energy transfer by saturating the core and blocking the transfer.

If there are radio buffs out ther it's similar to the Standing Wave Ratio in the transmission system only on a grander scale.

There is a heck of a lot more inductive reactance out there than there is capacitive reactance, folks don't understand it until the motors stall and burn out on washers, dryers and refrigerators when their voltage instantly drops during a motor start when they need it the most.

To prove the phenomena all they need to do is place an inductor, capacitor and resistive load in series across an alternating voltage source and measure the voltage across each component then add them up. The result is graphically surprising, unless they understand the vectors involved.

The same midget mentality that has us hamstrung in the oil refining, domestic oil development and the mandates for unique gasoline blends for each city have us hostage in the electrical power development side too. We need both refineries and power plants to meet the demands of an exploding population, not meaningless mandates that outlaw a technology that has worked perfectly for years. We need Coal, Hydro and Nuclear energy sources, like last year, not the megalomaniac ranting of Al Gore and Michael Moore.

This scam to replace incandescent lamps is like the DDT scam and the global warming scam. Based on junk science and like the deception evidenced by the DDT ban, millions die every day because of it, a baby every 90 seconds world wide from Malaria. U.S. citizens will sit on their duffs and wag their heads in agreement with the enviro's until it adversely impacts them, by then it's too late, they've been mandated.

Darth--
Me, too.
And here's a little something from the People's Republic of Illinois:
I checked out a Gordon Lightfoot CD at the local library. When I returned it, the librarian said brightly, "Oh, I have a friend who does a great takeoff of Jimi Hendrix's version of the national anthem, sung to the tune of 'The Wreck of the Edmond Fitzgerald.'" I just stared at her in disbelief, so she said, "But it works. It sounds strange, but it really works."
I didn't ask her as what, because I need to have access to that library for a while, but REALLY!