"When you ask Americans how they save energy at home, 'turn off the lights' has been at the top of the list since the 1980s."

"But when it comes to actual savings, it doesn’t even crack the top 10. Like most conventional wisdom about how to reduce household energy and emissions, much of what we believe about our homes and appliances is wrong."

Writes WaPo's climate advice columnist Michael J. Coren, in "We still use appliances like it’s 1970. There’s a better way."

I formed the habit, back in the 1970s, of turning off lights as I exited any room and only keeping lights on in rooms that were occupied. I grew up in the 50s and 60s, when it was the norm to have the lights on all over the house in the evening. We didn't think about the pros and cons of leaving them on, but I imagine that we'd have thought it would deprive us of a feeling of coziness and optimism if the house were not lit up at night. From the outside, our house and our neighbors' houses looked warm and happy and alive.

"We exit the movie theater to a bright realization: our films are exactly as overlit as our reality."

"As our environment has become blander, it has also become more legible — too legible. That’s a shame, because many products of the new ugliness could benefit from a little chiaroscuroed ambiguity: if the world has to fill itself up with smart teapots, app-operated vacuum cleaners, and creepily huge menswear, we’d prefer it all to be shrouded in darkness. For thousands of years, this was the principle of illumination that triumphed over all others. Louis XIV’s Versailles and Louis the Tavern Owner’s tavern had this in common: the recognition that some details are worth keeping hidden. But now blinding illumination is the default condition of every apartment, office, pharmacy, laundromat, print shop, sandwich shop, train station, airport, grocery store, UPS Store, tattoo parlor, bank, and this vape shop we’ve just walked into.... After New York replaced the sodium-vapor lights in the city’s 250,000 streetlamps with shiny new LEDs in 2017, the experience of walking through the city at night transformed, almost . . . overnight. Forgiving, romantic, shadowy orange gave way to cold, all-seeing bluish white.... [T]he city has been estranged from itself: the hyperprecise shadows of every leaf and every branch set against every brick wall deliver a Hollywood unreality. New York after hours now looks less like it did in Scorsese’s After Hours and more like an excessive set-bound ’60s production." 

From "Why Is Everything So Ugly? The mid in fake midcentury modern" (N+1 Magazine).

 

"Lighten up! What is this?"

"I thought the memo had gone out that the word 'luminous' had been banned from book reviews."

I wrote in December 2009, recalling a wonderful 2007 essay by Joe Queenan.

In "Astonish Me," Queenan wrote:

Several years ago, overwhelmed by the flood of material unleashed annually by the publishing industry, I decided to establish a screening program by purchasing only books that at least one reviewer had described as ''astonishing.'' 

Previously, I had limited my purchases to merchandise deemed ''luminous'' or ''incandescent,'' but this meant I ended up with an awful lot of novels about bees, Provence or Vermeer. The problem with incandescent or luminous books is that they veer toward the introspective, the arcane or the wise, while I prefer books that go off like a Roman candle. When I buy a book, I don't want to come away wiser or happier or even better informed. I want to get blown right out of the water by the author's breathtaking pyrotechnics. I want to come away astonished. 

He was making fun of the absurd overuse of the verb "astonish" in book promotions.

Narcissist or self-deprecator? Trump talks about light bulbs that give you "an orange look. I don’t want an orange look. Has anyone noticed that?"

Ha ha. I love the twisted way he reconfigured what is used against him — his supposed narcissisism and his very real orangeness. I love the comedy of "Has anyone noticed...?" about something that everyone is always noticing and talking about.

The quote is everywhere, but I'm reading "Trump jokes that energy-efficient light bulbs make him look orange" (NY Post). It was a small business roundtable:

“They got rid of the light bulb that people got used to. The new bulb is many times more expensive and I hate to say it, it doesn’t make you look as good,” he said at the White House event. “Of course, being a vain person that’s very important to me...It gives you an orange look. I don’t want an orange look. Has anyone noticed that? So we have to change those bulbs in at least a couple of rooms where I am in the White House”...

The NY Post article doesn't include the railing against low-flow faucets and toilets, but that's included in this clip:

"The province of Ontario swooped in and took them from their parents, declaring that they had to be protected from exploitation."

"Then it exhibited the children three times a day in a human zoo called Quintland, to be raised as a sort of science experiment. Three million visitors came in the 1930s.... Little is left of the playground where the 'Quints' were displayed to thousands of paying customers who peered through wire mesh from elevated walkways. Though they still resent the way the government exploited them, Annette and Cécile smile at the mention of Quintland. 'Paradise,' Annette said of the compound. 'Was it ever,' Cécile agreed. The mesh kept them from seeing the spectators, but both sisters said they could certainly hear them, and often played the crowd for laughs. 'It wasn’t good for the children to be like that, to be shown like that, playing naturally and knowing that other people were looking,' Cécile said. 'It was sort of theft from us.'"

From "2 Survivors of Canada’s First Quintuplet Clan Reluctantly Re-emerge." The re-emergence is on the occasion of a pending decision by the North Bay city council whether to move the log house where the Dionne quintuplets were born to a fairground 45 minutes away. Annette and Cécile didn't want the house moved, and the city council voted last night not to move it. From the second link:

Shortly after their birth, the province of Ontario took them away from their parents, making them “wards of the king,” saying it was necessary to prevent their exploitation. The province soon built a human zoo in which they were exhibited to about 6,000 sightseers a day until the age of 9.

Here's a picture of the premier of Ontario — whose idea it was to take the children away — posing with the babies:



Nice outfit, ghoul.

ADDED: That was the second time in the 13-year history of this blog that I have used the word "ghoul." The other time was in 2005, soon after John Roberts joined the Supreme Court and a lightbulb happened to burst over his head. Not a metaphorical lightbulb, and actual lightbulb. And it was Halloween....

The NYT, perhaps, found it "unfit to print" a transition that would have connected the trauma of William Rehnquist's death to the Halloween lightbulb burst and the new Chief Justice dressed as a zany comedian. Surely, it must have been tempting to write that it was the ghost of the old Chief that burst the bulb and that the new Chief's costume speaks of lighthearted happiness, while the dying old Chief, traumatizing everyone, by contrast seemed a ghoul.

The word "ghoul" has appeared 4 other times, and 3 of them are from the same source, a Scalia opinion that analogizes a doctrine called the Lemon test to a movie monster that won't die. ("[L]ike some ghoul in a late-night horror movie that repeatedly sits up in its grave and shuffles abroad after being repeatedly killed and buried....") The 4th one was just last week, a reference to an effort to name a baby Ghoul Nipple.

"Ghoul" comes from the Arabic word "ghoul," which means "to seize," and the OED defines it as "An evil spirit supposed (in Muslim countries) to rob graves and prey on human corpses." So Scalia kind of got the word wrong, didn't he? He should have written "zombie." Influenced by Scalia, I got it wrong too.

The disruption of people who won't accept disruption: Those terrible "legacy customers."

At WaPo, Larry Downes, co-author of "Big Bang Disruption," takes aim at people who "who simply refuse to migrate to disruptive innovations even after they’ve become both better and cheaper, and even after almost everyone else has made the shift."

[T]he real holdup is that non-adopters — mostly older, rural and less-educated — just aren’t interested in Internet access, at any price.... [T]he resisters are wrong....

[N]on-adopters ultimately cost more to serve. Printing information is increasingly a waste of scarce resources as digital alternatives continue to get better and cheaper. And all of us pay for the waste...

To overcome the inertia of legacy customers, it may be appropriate for governments to step in....

[S]ome technology dinosaurs need help being euthanized. Here, regulators can serve as a catalyst, providing the final nudge for legacy customers. Once it was clear that smart LEDs would become better and cheaper than inefficient incandescent lightbulbs, for example, governments around the world began passing laws banning production of the older technology.

And while things got a little messy at the end, in 2009 Congress succeeded in turning off analog TV, switching the few remaining holdouts over to digital. To ensure no one had to go without “Let’s Make a Deal,” lower-income families were given converter boxes for older tube TVs.

What about hipsters who insist on old-fashioned turntables and vinyl record albums? How come they're not in the article? I don't have to answer the question. To ask it is to have the answer jump off the page: older, rural, less-educated, Let’s Make a Deal....

And by the way, what's newer is not necessarily better. Consider: "The TV Is Hard to Hear... Flat-screen TVs, inconsistent streaming boxes and cinematic series have many asking, ‘What did they say?’"

IN THE COMMENTS: rehajm said: "Isn't the WaPoasaurus calling for its own death here?"

"I said to [my children], 'I hope you never have children,' which is an awful thing to say."

"It can bring me to tears easily," said 67-year-old Nancy Nolan, who had children before she learned found out about climate change.

Quoted in "Should We Be Having Kids In The Age Of Climate Change?" at NPR.

ADDED: I think Nancy Nolan is being a drama queen. If anybody really cares about carbon emissions, stop your crying and be hard-headed about what emits carbon. It's not the person per se, but what the person does. Back in 2010, I made a list of changes you could make to your behavior. No air conditioning isn't on the list, because that is already a given. If you haven't done that yet, Nancy and the Weepers, you are crying crocodile tears. So get up and switch that off. Forever. And now, read my list:

1. Your weight should be at the low end of normal, indicating that you are not overconsuming the products of agriculture.

2. You should not engage in vigorous physical exercise, as this will increase your caloric requirements. You may do simple weight-lifting or calisthenics to keep in shape. Check how many calories per hour are burned and choose a form of exercise that burns as few calories as possible.

3. Free time should be spent sitting or lying still without using electricity. Don't run the television or music playing device. Reading, done by sunlight is the best way to pass free time. After dark, why not have a pleasant conversation with friends or family? Word games or board games should replace sports or video games.

4. Get up at sunrise. Don't waste the natural light. Try never to turn on the electric lights in your house or workplace. Put compact fluorescent bulbs in all your light fixtures. The glow is so ugly that it will reduce the temptation to turn them on.

5. Restrict your use of transportation. Do not assume that walking or biking is less productive of carbon emissions than using a highly efficient small car. Do not go anywhere you don't have to go. When there is no food in the house to make dinner, instead of hopping in the car to go to the grocery store or a restaurant, take it as a cue to fast. As noted above, your weight should be at the low end of normal, and opportunities to reach or stay there should be greeted with a happy spirit.

6. If you have free time, such as a vacation from work, spend it in your home town. Read library books, redo old jigsaw puzzles, meditate, tell stories to your children — the list of activities is endless. Just thinking up more items to put on that list is an activity that could be on the list. Really embrace this new way of life. A deep satisfaction and mental peace can be achieved knowing that you are saving the earth.

"For a man who loathed being called a minimalist..."

"... Donald Judd surrounded himself with only the essentials—a mattress covered in plain white sheets on the floor, basic wooden tables and chairs, and bare lightbulbs in the ceilings."

From a Vogue slideshow "Monet, O’Keeffe, and More: Inside the Inspiring Homes of 10 Legendary Artists." Click the photos to enlarge them. The choices are all quite interesting. I love getting a look at workspaces that are very revealing of the person who worked there. (For example, I love the book "The Writer's Desk.")

Polar bears are eating dolphins.

But don't hate the polar bear. Hate yourself, because it's global warming — global warming trapping the dolphins in the fjords.

ADDED: If you care about dolphins trapped in fjords, murdered by polar bears, I offer my old advice, originally printed here in 2010:

The Mistrust List.

Interviewing Dan Pfeiffer (senior Obama adviser) on "Meet the Press" this morning, Chuck Todd put up what I'll call The Mistrust List:

I think one of your challenges though is a trust deficit that has been created over the last 18 months. I want to put up a graphic, whether you believe it's fair or not, it is a fact about all the different sort of government gaps over the last 18 months.

The heading on the graphic was "Trust in Government?" And it had the following bullet points, which I'm displaying here as Todd read them (with all the items, but some extra words):

• Edward Snowden stealing NSA files
• The VA fakes wait times
• IRS losing emails
• Healthcare.gov doesn't launch
• The president himself saying, "U.S. intelligence agencies underestimated ISIS."
• The DHS, the border failure with that surge over the summer, sort of failure, and of course...
• The Secret Service. 

Why should we trust that what you're saying about the CDC is able to handle [ebola]? You understand why there's more skepticism than normal.

On "Fox News Sunday," Chris Wallace teased his panel discussion in a similar (if less hard-hitting) way, premising a question about trust with a list of reasons for mistrust:

[W]ith growing concerns over Ebola, the Secret Service and the VA and IRS scandals, can we trust the federal government to do its job?

Unlike Dan Pfeiffer who could only lamely assert that when there's a problem "we deal with it," George Will was particularly good at leveraging himself off the Mistrust List. I mean, Will was so good that I suspect the teaser was designed to go with the material he had prepared. From the transcript (with emphasis and punctuation added based on the audio):

Nude descending a staircase.

Is this helping anyone?



This stairwell is gloomy and deserted, and a nude that's more studiously analytical might enliven the minds of the enlibraried souls, but this is so literal and depressing for everyone. It's a flappy slap in the face as you hit the landing:



In the same stairwell — stare well — you get this:



Closer, with alienating reflections from fluorescent lights:

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/All hail to our old gold and black!"

"Hail, Hail to Old Purdue!/Our friendship may she never lack/Ever grateful, ever true...."

On a beautiful fall Saturday morning, here in Madison, Wisconsin, the UW marching band can be heard practicing, which includes practicing the opposing team's fight song, and Meade — who grew up in West Lafayette — provides the lyrics, about gold and black and friendship and gratefulness.

I ask Meade if it's okay for me to blog that and he says, "I think you've already done it," which makes me think I'm being accused of posting first and asking permission later, but he really means I've already blogged — in some past year — about his singing along with the UW marching band playing the Purdue song. I go looking into the archives, and find, first, a post from April 2008, which can't be right, because I didn't meet Meade until January 2009, and the post in question shows New York City, where I was living at the time. The post, called "Morning fog update," shows what was my view of Manhattan. Meade arrives in the comments:

Simon said: "How much are you going to miss this view when your year's up?"

Meade said: "Yes, and how much we will miss these morning fog... updates!"

Ann Althouse said: "Great trees in NYC right now, and I'm about to get a new lens, so look out. Also remember that dead rat on the sidewalk in NY?"

There's a gap in the conversation where a commenter expunged her own comments, but apparently she said something that referred (possibly disparagingly) to things that could be photographed in Madison. And Meade says:

Yes! A marching band playing "Hail Purdue!"

And a dead rodent.

With fantasy fog...

...Where the Wabash spreads its valley,
Filled with joy our voices raise...

I find the old dead rat post — "Things that exploded in Brooklyn Heights recently" — where there's a discussion of how to buy a light bulb in NYC and a couple of commenters who never comment here anymore are advising me about shops in town, and there's Meade:

I hate to risk spoiling a New York hardware store bonding moment for you good folks but back where I come from we have universities, seats of great learning -- where women (and a few unnecessary men) go to become great thinkers. And when they come out, they think deep thoughts -- and with no more brains than you have.... But! They have one thing you might not have! A Google!

I resist my future husband:

Thanks, Meade, but I actually have this other really odd halogen bulb to replace. I don't want to mail order it. I want to show it to some hardware store guy who will give me the right bulb.

Meanwhile, Meade responds to a commenter who said "Yes but do you have swarthy olive skinned counterm[e]n to flirt with attractive visiting professors. Telling her how she would light up when the proper bulb is inserted in her socket. So to speak." With the metaphor in play now, Meade writes:

"Yes but do you have..."

Even better. We have links. Lots of links. Links pointing to pages and pages of swarthy olive-skinned counter[people], if that's what you're into.

Disease-free links. Unambiguously gendered links.

("Unambiguously gendered links" refers to another commenter's wisecrack that some NY hardware store employee is "AC/DC.")

Organic free-range links. Links that would never even THINK of stalking fair-haired Professoras and trying to put their bulbs into sockets in which they don't belong. And links that, frankly, just don't have the nerve to ask, "'ey, YOU! Are you clickin' on me?"

Shy unassuming links just busy doing their jobs and quiet[l]y living their linky lives.

The other commenter says: "Yeah, but [can] you get a link drunk and walk her home and talk your way into her main frame?" And Meade says:

No, but if you give a link a nice slow neck rub, draw the link a sudsy warm bath, and serve up some browned baby-back ribs with a glass of Merlot, she just might let you take a look at what's on her laptop.

So to speak.

And here's a post from August 2009, the month we got married, noticing Meade's comments in a July 2008 thread:

Gee, I'm single now, happily single, and thought I'd just remain that way.

But considering all the benefits, I guess I'd really be a fool not to take a close look if Althouse were to, just out of niceness, propose to pity-marry me.

What could I offer in return? Let's see - I could prune those redbuds, take out the garbage, trap squirrels....

I could fetch her newspaper, scrape snow and ice off her car, shovel the front walk. Draw her bath. Pick her up at the airport. Rinse and dry her wine glasses. Form a circle-of-safety to protect her from Hillary Clinton-type madwomen who randomly come up to innocent people on urban sidewalks and punch them in the back. I make excellent salads, grill superb steaks and vegetables. Play a piano sonata. Pick up dry cleaning. Wait patiently while she shops for shoes....

Fry up some bacon... provide the vocal track when the UW marching band plays the Purdue fight song....

ADDED: Meade reads this post and admires his selection — back in April 2008 — of the Purdue song lyric "Where the Wabash spreads its valley/Filled with joy our voices raise." Subtly erotic, he observes now. Less than a year later, I would meet him in that Wabash valley....

"Can you start a post and thread on the adverse economic and environmental impact of pets?"

Asked Phaedrus in the comments to "If you really care about global warming, stop all unnecessary travel."

The same tree huggers that yammer on and on about the environment allow their pets to use everyone else property, public and private as a restroom for their animal. Human waste has to be treated under all kinds of regulatory requirements. Pets are allowed to deposit equivalent waste at will wherever as if they are wild animals which they aren't. And don't get me started on what it takes to feed them, the grain, meat etc. You could feed a lot of starving people using the grain that goes into pet food.

Consider this that post. And let me also call attention to my 2010 post "If you really believed in global warming, you would turn off your air conditioning," which had an addendum with a list of 6 more things people should do to demonstrate actual belief in the coming calamity:

"House blocks enforcement of light bulb standards."

Yay!

"I have to say that Target in particular engenders in me an instant version of what some hyper-lefty Germans called Konsumterrorismus..."

".... a total panic caused by the option of limitless shopping.... In my case, this phobia is compounded by the lighting – especially in Target. Aaron took me there once and I could not really get past the doorway. It was just horrifying. If I go to Hell, I will not have my ankles licked by fire. And I will not be lit from below. I will be subjected to giant, constant, overhead fluorescent lighting – what Michael Cunningham once called less lighting than the 'banishment of all darkness.'... All darkness must be banished to promote and encourage the purchase of things. This is what a huge amount of our culture now rests upon: the purchase of things. I guess you have to banish the literal darkness to disguise the shallow yet impenetrable darkness our shopping civilization represents."

The fear of shopping. Do you have it? If so, is it about the extreme excess of free choice? Or is it about the strong lighting? Or is it the fear of encountering strange people who are intimidated by choice and overhead lighting?

Me, I just want to have the choice to buy incandescent bulbs because I hate fluorescent lighting at home, but I don't mind strong overhead lighting in stores. Drug stores, grocery stores, hardware stores — these places would seem dingy and dilapidated if the conventional bright lighting were missing.

But I do understand the feelings of dissociation that can envelope you in a store, especially a large store with long aisles full of colorfully packaged products and lots of slow-moving customers pushing their carts. It can make you think of what Hell might be like, perhaps because of a nagging sense that acquiring material goods is sinful, perhaps because you're vaguely conscious that the minutes remaining in your life are ever fewer and yet here you are expending them shambling around in a windowless box.

Shallow commercial message: You can remain seated in aesthetically dimmed light and shop very quickly at Amazon, leaving you more time to do things you love, such as, perhaps, reading this blog, which you can feel good about having made a contribution to, at no cost to yourself, unless it's somehow deemed sinful when we reach the final reckoning.

"Hulsey conducted the interview amiably in his half-darkened office, lighted by only a dim energy-saving bulb favored by the environmentalist Hulsey."

The best sentence in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel article "State Rep. Brett Hulsey investigated for bringing box cutter to Capitol."

ADDED: More here:

An aide to state Rep. Brett Hulsey told police last month she feared for her safety because of the Madison Democrat's behavior, which included considering bringing a gun to the Capitol even though he doesn't have a concealed-weapons permit, taking a box cutter to the statehouse on another day and urging the aide to train for self-defense with him....

In an interview with the State Journal on Tuesday night, Hulsey, 53, said he brought the cutting tool for use in self-defense training, which he said was necessary because Capitol Police told lawmakers and staffers to punch protesters if they felt threatened. He said he planned to use the box cutter without the blade extended.

"I called up Chief (David) Erwin and said, ‘You’re telling our staff to start hitting people,’" Hulsey said. "I told him, ‘You should be giving them effective self-defense training.’"...

The aide told police that on Feb. 1, Hulsey asked her to call Erwin to reserve a training room with mats because he and Assembly Chief Clerk Patrick Fuller were going to train her in self-defense. She said she told him she did not want to be trained.

(Click on the Brett Hulsey tag for past stories on this blog about Hulsey. You may remember an incident at the beach involving horseplay with children and his presence in many of our old scenes from the protests.

Purchases of the day.

From the February 18, 2013 Amazon Associates Earnings Report:

Cottonelle Fresh Care Flushable Moist Wipes - 294 ct. (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $1.51)

(2) GE 12983-6 25 Watt Globe G25 Light Bulb, Crystal Clear, 6-Pack (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $3.12)

ch ching:

Leonard Bernstein - Young People's Concerts / New York Philharmonic (1961) Bernstein (Actor), New York Philharmonic (Actor) | Rated: NR | Format: DVD (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $26.84)

aden + anais Cozy 4-Layer Sleeping Bag-Star Light (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $3.60)

Hamilton Beach Stovetop Slow Cooker - Black/silver (6 Quart) (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $4.21)

Fitbit One Wireless Activity Plus Sleep Tracker (Earnings to the Althouse blog = $7.99)

... and 80 other items purchased — at no additional cost to the buyers — all of which convey the unmistakably soft cozy slow dreamy flushably warm harmonic message: Blog on, Wisconsin blogger. Blog on.

Thank you.

"Want to reduce the effects of global warming? Stop working so hard."

"Working fewer hours might help slow global warming, according to a new study released Monday by the Center for Economic Policy and Research."

A worldwide switch to a "more European" work schedule, which includes working fewer hours and more vacation time, could prevent as much as half of the expected global temperature rise by 2100, according to the analysis, which used a 2012 study that found shorter work hours could be associated with lower carbon emissions.

How about good old unemployment? Can we get some credit for that? Offsets of some kind? Or is everyone supposed to back off?

But I love this suggestion! I made my own list of similar suggestions back in 2010, following on an article that said people ought to give up air-conditioning. I had 6 ideas:

1. Your weight should be at the low end of normal, indicating that you are not overconsuming the products of agriculture.

2. You should not engage in vigorous physical exercise, as this will increase your caloric requirements. You may do simple weight-lifting or calisthenics to keep in shape. Check how many calories per hour are burned and choose a form of exercise that burns as few calories as possible.

3. Free time should be spent sitting or lying still without using electricity. Don't run the television or music playing device. Reading, done by sunlight is the best way to pass free time. After dark, why not have a pleasant conversation with friends or family? Word games or board games should replace sports or video games.

4. Get up at sunrise. Don't waste the natural light. Try never to turn on the electric lights in your house or workplace. Put compact fluorescent bulbs in all your light fixtures. The glow is so ugly that it will reduce the temptation to turn them on.

5. Restrict your use of transportation. Do not assume that walking or biking is less productive of carbon emissions than using a highly efficient small car. Do not go anywhere you don't have to go. When there is no food in the house to make dinner, instead of hopping in the car to go to the grocery store or a restaurant, take it as a cue to fast. As noted above, your weight should be at the low end of normal, and opportunities to reach or stay there should be greeted with a happy spirit.

6. If you have free time, such as a vacation from work, spend it in your home town. Read library books, redo old jigsaw puzzles, meditate, tell stories to your children — the list of activities is endless. Just thinking up more items to put on that list is an activity that could be on the list. Really embrace this new way of life. A deep satisfaction and mental peace can be achieved knowing that you are saving the earth.

Harsh, but if people really believed in global warming, they'd have gone in this direction long ago.

New light.

Invented by David Carroll, professor of physics at Wake Forest University:

He says the new plastic lighting source can be made into any shape, and it produces a better quality of light than compact fluorescent bulbs which have become very popular in recent years.

"They have a bluish, harsh tint to them," he told BBC News, "it is not really accommodating to the human eye; people complain of headaches and the reason is the spectral content of that light doesn't match the Sun - our device can match the solar spectrum perfectly. I'm saying we are brighter than one of these curly cube bulbs and I can give you any tint to that white light that you want."

Curly cube? I'm guessing the BBC didn't hear that right and they don't say curlicue in Britain.

A neighborly dispute about a light "shining through our bedroom window like a small but intense sun."

"In my country, terawatt globes are reserved for police helicopter chases and warning sailors of hazardous shoals. This is despite the fact that practically every living creature there can kill you in under three minutes."