The Right to be Wrong

 

Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances.  ( Amendment 1 – US Constitution)

All Hell is breaking loose in the press over Indiana’s recently passed Religious Freedom Restoration Act by folks who see it as an attack upon gays.  As I see it, the main thing wrong with the law, if there is one, is timing. 

The Indiana law is almost identical to laws in 19 other states, and a federal statute passed back in the Clinton administration.  So far, none of those laws has been used  to limit the rights of homosexuals. The law applies a "balancing test" in judicial proceedings, where states have to prove a compelling state interest before burdening the practice of a religious belief.  There's little historical evidence to suggest that Indiana's RFRA could be used in a general way to deny service to customers who are gay. RFRA statutes in other states have never successfully defended a proprietor from an anti-discrimination suit.

On the other side, it is rather easy to compile instances in which the RFRA produced outcomes even the most liberal would applaud. There's the example of Kawal Tagore, a Sikh who was fired from the IRS for carrying a small knife that is the religious duty of all Sikhs to carry. She won recompense for her unlawful firing, thanks to the RFRA. Then there's Abdul Muhammad, a prisoner in Arkansas who won the right to grow a beard while in prison, in accordance with his religious belief.

Should the owner of a bakery refuse to make a wedding cake for a lesbian couple’s wedding?  Of course not – it’s bad business!  Should he have the right to do so based upon his religion?  Absolutely!

Part of the greatness of America lies in its citizens having the right to exercise their freedom of conscience.  We have a  guaranteed right to our beliefs, however outrageous they might be. 

We have the right to be wrong!

That's part of American greatness, is discrimination. Yes, sir. Inequality, I think, breeds freedom and gives a man opportunity.  (Lester Maddox) 

History has determined that Lester Maddox was wrong to stand at the entrance of his Atlanta restaurant with an axe handle denying entrance to blacks.  The federal government took him to court, and in Willis v. Pickrick Restaurant, he was ordered desegregate within 20 days.  Rather than comply, he sold the place, and later went on to become the governor of Georgia.

Was he wrong?  Absolutely!  Did he have the right to exercise his misguided beliefs?  I’m not so sure that he did not. 

50 years later, he’s probably chuckling in his grave.

Attaboy, Canon

Back in January I reported on the problems I was having with my camera.  Once I got it back from the camera shop, my pictures looked better, but it had developed a weird symptom that I had never seen before.  Often, when I switched the camera to OFF, it would either stay on or turn itself back on when I set it down.  The battery, which used to last for months, was nearly dead every time I turned the camera on.

Pretty sure their technician had caused the problem, I called the camera shop.  They wanted another $28 just to look at the camera!

That was certainly not what I wanted to hear, but I had heard good things about Canon’s tech support, so I thought I would give them a try.

I went to the Canon USA website, scrolled through about a half-dozen screens to locate my model, then emailed their help desk a description of my problem.  I got an immediate (automatic) response saying that they had received my email and would try to get back to me in 24 hours.  About six hours later, I got an email from from Rodney, one of their help desk technicians, with step-by-step instructions on how to solve the problem.

FAST, FREE, and IT FIXED THE PROBLEM! 

You couldn’t ask for better service than that.

First Camper?

 A Danish website has just published this picture of what they claim is the first Recreational Vehicle – or, as the Europeans call them, the first Caravan.

Certainly not the first wagon ever built to travel and sleep in - it was modeled after Gypsy wagons of the time – it may have been the first built strictly for fun. 

Designed and built in 1885 by a Scotsman, Dr. William Stables, it was called the Wanderer.  It was a heavy rig, made of maple and mahogany, and employed a boy on a bicycle to warn other travelers off the road.

Last used in 1960, it is currently on display at the Cotswold Caravan Club in England.

Azaleas in Bloom

There’s Always One

We put up one of those sock type Finch feeders this winter.  It just sat there for the first few days – long enough for me to wonder if I had wasted my money – then it stayed extremely busy for a couple months.

We often had as many as 20 birds at a time, and I was refilling the sock at least once a day. 

Then, one day about two weeks ago, they were gone.  We didn’t see any finches, and the level of seed in the sock didn’t drop at all for over a week, so last Tuesday I replaced the sock with a Hummingbird feeder. 

Yesterday, I saw that we had one straggler.

Of course, I had the wrong lens on my camera (and no time to run back to the bedroom for the other one) so if you blow the picture up big enough to see him well, you lose a lot of definition.  Still, you should be  able to tell that he is turning bright yellow, beginning to sport the summer plumage that we almost never get to see this far south.

That’s No 4-leaf Clover

If you are actively searching for a four-leaf clover, and see what you think might be one, it almost never is.  Far more often, a lobe from another leaf has gotten tangled with a three-leaf clover, giving the appearance of four leaves.

That’s what I thought had happened here.  I first saw this clover leaf almost a week ago.  I thought it might be a four-leaf, but the lobes did not make a symmetrical cross, so I ignored it.

Finally, yesterday evening, I actually leaned down and picked it, only to discover that it had not four, but five lobes.

According to the 4-leaf Clover Website, 5-leaf clovers are much less common than 4-leaf clovers, and are supposed to bring even more good luck.  Now, that would be nice.

For the Birds

Took down the finch feed sock yesterday and put up two of our hummingbird feeders. 

It may be a few days early, but maybe not.  We saw one hummer feeding yesterday, and this morning there were two on one feeder.

2nd Monday Redux

Losing Our Spring

Spring is finally here – it began at 5:45 Friday afternoon – and although you may not notice, this spring will be about a half minute shorter than it was last year. For thousands of years, spring has been losing time in the Northern Hemisphere. This year, summer is the longest season, with 93.65 days, followed by spring with 92.76 days, autumn with 89.84 days and winter with 88.99 days. 

The reason for the change has to do with the earth’s wobble on its axis, its 23.5° tilt, and the difference in the earth’s orbital speed at perilhelion vs. aphelion.  You can get a detailed explanation HERE.

Or, you could just enjoy Frank Loesser’s explanation as offered by Ella Fitzgerald:

All Wet

The old Boggy Thicket continues to buck the tide, making the whole Global Warming thing hard to believe.  It spite of panic-level drought in California, and predictions of another Dust Bowl for the Central US, we’re staying cool and wet. 

Copeland Elementary School in Huffman, the nearest WeatherBug reporting station, has already recorded almost a foot (11.74 inches) of rain this year, with over five inches of that falling this month.

That means that, although weeds are knee high, most of my yard has remained too wet to mow.  It’s really starting to look terrible.

The flip side of that is that the Azaleas are beginning to bloom, and with all that rain, it looks like they’re going to have a banner year.

It’s The LAW

My sister sent me this in an email, and I had to share:

 

1 . Law of Mechanical Repair - After your hands become coated with grease, your nose will begin to itch and you'll have to pee.

2. Law of Gravity - Any tool, nut, bolt, screw, when dropped, will roll to the least accessible place in the universe.

3. Law of Probability - The probability of being watched is directly proportional to the stupidity of your act.

4. Law of Random Numbers - If you dial a wrong number, you never get a busy signal; someone always answers.

5. Variation Law - If you change lines (or traffic lanes), the one you were in will always move faster than the one you are in now.

6. Law of the Bath  - When the body is fully immersed in water, the telephone will ring.

7. Law of Close Encounters - The probability of meeting someone you know INCREASES dramatically when you are with someone you don't want to be seen with.

8. Law of the Result - When you try to prove to someone that a machine won't work, IT WILL!!!

9. Law of Biomechanics - The severity of the itch is inversely proportional to the reach.

10 . Law of the Theater & Hockey Arena - At any event, the people whose seats are furthest from the aisle, always arrive last. They are the ones who will leave their seats several times to go for food, beer, or the toilet and who leave early before the end of the performance or the game is over. The folks in the aisle seats come early, never move once, have long gangly legs or big bellies and stay to the bitter end of the performance. The aisle people also are very surly folk.

11. The Coffee Law - As soon as you sit down to a cup of hot coffee, your boss will ask you to do something which will last until the coffee is cold.

12. Murphy's Law of Lockers - If there are only 2 people in a locker room, they will have adjacent lockers.

13. Law of Physical Surfaces -The chances of an open-faced jelly sandwich landing face down on a floor are directly correlated to the newness and cost of the carpet or rug.

14. Law of Logical Argument - Anything is possible IF you don't know what you are talking about.

15. Law of Physical Appearance - If the clothes fit, they're ugly.

16. Law of Public Speaking -- A CLOSED MOUTH GATHERS NO FEET!

17. Law of Commercial Marketing Strategy - As soon as you find a product that you really like, they will stop making it OR the store will stop selling it!

18. Doctors' Law - If you don't feel well, make an appointment to go to the doctor, by the time you get there, you'll feel better. But don't make an appointment and you'll stay sick.

Too Far South

Today marks the climax of a week full of remarkable celestial events.  It started out with an amazing display of the Aurora Borealis earlier this week, and today there will be both a “Super Moon” and a Total Eclipse of the Sun. 

That would be a pretty big deal except that here at the Boggy Thicket we are not in a position to see the Northern Lights or the Eclipse.  In fact, the Eclipse will only appear to be Total for a few dozen  Laplanders, or whoever lives in the Arctic north of Europe.

Here at home – as has proven true for most recent cosmic events – we couldn’t see it anyway.  We have overcast skies and a 30% probability of rain.

Spring does actually begin this afternoon.  The Vernal Equinox will occur at 5:45 p.m. whether it’s raining or not.  I guess we should be grateful for that.

                                   ``````````````````````````

Updating yesterday’s post -  Spring did arrive on schedule, with partly cloudy skies and 80 degrees.  Meanwhile, a Czech tourist, who was camping on an island north of Norway to see the eclipse, was attacked in his pup tent by a Polar  Bear!

Messages

Today’s post is a blatant commercial - something I almost never do.

Magenta Wise is one of my all-time favorite contributors in the Addicted to Limericks group on Facebook.  We share a friendship based upon mutual respect, although we disagree on almost everything politically.

I love her limericks, but she’s recently proven her writing ability encompasses so much more. 

Pinkie has just published her first book, and it is now available on Amazon.  Dancing has already received five reader reviews, and they all gave it five stars.

Buy it, borrow it, steal it, but read it.  You’ll be glad that you did.

Subject To Change

If and when we go to the Chiropractor, we almost always go on Wednesdays, and today was going to be one of those days. 

Now it looks like we are going to change our plans.

There are several reasons:

• Most of the yard is finally dry enough to mow, weeds are knee high and there’s more rain in the forecast.
• I need to do some stuff in the 5th wheel so I can close it up before the rains start again.
• I bought a new gas grill yesterday, and need to finish getting it assembled.

The grill offers the best of both worlds – charcoal on the left and a propane grill and side burner on the right.  I can do the grill whether it’s raining or not, but I’ve already got about five hours invested in putting it together and I’d like to get it finished.

While I was writing this it started sprinkling, so plans may change again.

A Little Irish – Very American

Here’s something a little different for St. Patrick’s day – GARRYOWEN.

Garryowen got its start as an Irish drinking song (Is there any other kind?) in the 1700s in Limerick.  It gained immediate popularity in the British Army through the 5th (Royal Irish) Lancers. 

Sometimes written as two words, or with only one R, Garryowen is played at almost any ceremony that involves American armor, cavalry or air-cav units.  Over the years, Garryowen has been associated with quite a few British military units, and it is the regimental march of the Irish Regiment of Canada. 

Garryowen became the marching tune for the 69th Infantry Regiment, New York Militia, (the famed "Fighting 69th" ) in the mid-1800s. The "Fighting 69th" adopted Garry Owen before the Civil War and recently brought it back to combat in Operation Iraqi Freedom.

It later became the marching tune for the US 7th Cavalry Regiment during the late 1800s. The tune was a favorite of General George Armstrong Custer and became the official air of the Regiment in 1867. According to legend it was the last tune played before the Battle of the Little Bighorn.

The name of the tune has become a part of the regiment, the words Garry Owen are part of the 7th Cavalry regimental crest.

Spring

 

After what seemed like an endless run of miserable weather, several weeks of overcast skies, temps in the 30s and 40s, rain and drizzle, it looks as though Spring has finally arrived. 

Redbud trees and Pears are blooming, and the first blooms are opening on the Azaleas.  Even better, this past weekend we actually had sunshine and temperatures in the 70s.

One morning last week, after about an inch of overnight rain, the standing water in the back yard was catching reflections of the tree limbs and the overcast sky.  It made for some interesting effects – Honey saw it first, and thought I should try to get a picture.

Here’s what the camera saw:

Rest In (Facebook) Peace

It’s been said that you can never have too many friends, but I just got rid of several. 

I just “Unfriended” five of my 250 or so friends on Facebook.  I don’t think they will mind – they have all been dead for quite some time, anywhere from a few months to about five years.

Unfriending them wasn’t easy.  There is a finality to it that almost makes it feel like you are the one who is ending their existence, but seeing posts on their timelines show up on your Facebook page can be painful – and sometimes downright creepy.

If you don’t want to subject folks to that after your passing, there is a box you can check under Security on your Facebook page that will delete your account

I don’t know how Facebook decides that you’re dead.  It doesn’t say.

Pi Day

Today is Π  day, celebrating the number used to calculate dimensions of circles and spheres.  Since this is 2015, today, 3/14/15, represents Π  to the first four places!

The first 10 digits of pi are 3.141592653, and less than an hour from now, at 9:26:53 a.m. the clock and calendar will combine for the most perfect Π  in a century.

Breaking Up The Cookies

If you buy Girl Scout Cookies this time of year (and who can resist a 9-year old cutie in uniform?)  you may have noticed that they look and taste different.  If they do, you may have to drive a ways to find the cookies you remember.

That’s because the Girl Scouts use two different bakeries, and the bakeries use different recipes.  Cookies bought in Houston are the same as those from Ft. Worth, but they are different from those sold in Dallas or Austin.  The Houston Girl Scouts sell cookies from the ABC Bakery; Austin and Dallas use Little Brownie Bakers. 

Have A Seat

In my post last Friday I showed this picture of the chairs we ordered to replace the ones in our 5th wheel.  Later,  I went out to the garage and there to my surprise. I found two large boxes.  The chairs had already been delivered. 

Ladies always accuse men of not reading the instructions - In this case, I didn’t think there were any. I had the first chair almost completely assembled before I found instructions taped to the bottom of the ottoman.  Even without instructions, they went together easily and we’re very happy with the result.

Here’s what they’re replacing:

I listed the old chair(s) on Craigslist, and almost immediately got a serious response.  I’ve had very good luck  selling on Craigslist in the past, and I’ve also had such a frustrating experience that I swore I would never try it again. Hopefully, this time is more like the former than the latter.

Quake Forecast

A couple of years ago, I became convinced that a major earthquake in California was not only inevitable, it was imminent. 

I wrote about it so often that Honey warned me that my posts were getting boring.

Was I wrong?  Well, it hasn’t happened yet, but imminent in geological terms is not the same as immediate – it can, in fact, mean a very long time.

I mention all this because, scientists have just revised their estimates of when the “Big One” might occur.  Their latest prognostications raise the likelihood of an 8.0 or larger quake by about 20%.  They now say the chance of an 8.0 quake occurring within the next 30 years is 7%, up from 4.7% in their 2008 report.

Tom Jordan, director of the Southern California Earthquake Center and a co-author of the study, said in a statement that while seismic activity in California has been relatively low over the past century, "We know that tectonic forces are continually tightening the springs of the San Andreas fault system, making big quakes inevitable."

Parklet

Houston, Texas, is a big city – fourth in the US in population, and third in cities of over 1/2 million in geographical area – so why would we need to think so small?

What you see above is Houston’s latest park, or “parklet” as it’s being called.  It is on 19th Street  in the Heights, a couple blocks from where I attended Jr. High, and just a few blocks from Marmion Park on Heights Boulevard.  Merchants gave up one parking space – there’s diagonal parking along 19th – so the city could put in this minipark.  It does have a nice bench and some shade, but so do the Metro bus stops.

As you can see in the picture, there is even a welcome sign, but even that sign is kind of embarrassing.  It calls it the 19th Street National Parklett – It’s not national, it’s local, and the sign spells parklett with two t’s when all the publicity notices, etc. spell it with just one.

Official State Flower(s)

Here’s a picture taken last week of the Bluebonnets blooming in the Big Bend area of Texas.  These aren’t the same species we see around here - those won’t be in full bloom for a few more weeks - but they are still the “official” State Flower.

March 7, 1901, the Texas Legislature named the Lupinus subcarnosus as the state flower. 

The problem was that many people felt that they picked the wrong flower.  The subcarnosis is not as common as the Lupinus texensis, the blooms are smaller and more delicate, and where it does grow, the patches aren’t as thick.  That led to a 70-year fight that was finally resolved on March 8, 1971, when the legislation was amended to include L. texensis and "any other variety of bluebonnet not heretofore recorded."

As a result of that legislation, Texas became the only state to have six “official” State Flowers.

DST

Today marks the beginning of Daylight Saving Time for 2015.  It’s almost 8:00 a.m., just beginning to get light outside, and I’m already missing my lost hour of sleep.

Germany first tried Daylight Saving Time in World War I as a way of conserving electricity.  Other countries thought it was a great idea and soon followed suit. The US (except for a few places like Arizona) went to summer-only DST after WWII, and extended it by four weeks in 2007.

The idea behind daylight savings time is to cut back on residential electricity use, which is heaviest at night. By moving the clocks forward in the spring, human activity would start and end earlier, and when people return to their still-sunny houses after work, they wouldn’t need to turn on the lights until an hour later than normal. Great in theory, but numerous studies over the years have proved that it doesn’t work. Sometimes, it actually results in more electricity consumed.

My wife, and probably a lot of other people, think they got it backward – we need the extra hour of daylight in the winter when the days are already too short, not in summer when the sun doesn’t set until late in the evening.  Me, I just want my hour back.

Sex Party

Honey and I were honored to be invited to a Sex Party last night, and we had a great time!

No – not that kind of sex party. 

Our next-door-neighbor’s son and daughter-in-law are expecting, and the Graffs hosted a party to reveal whether it’s going to be a boy or a girl. 

After the ultrasound, the doctor’s office gave Ernest and Rani a sealed envelope that told about the next little Graff.  They took it to the bakery where the result was cooked into a cake – blue for a boy or pink for a girl.  The cake was cut at the party last night in front of family and friends.

I don’t think I could have waited a week with only our doctor and the baker knowing the truth, but from the looks on their faces when they cut the cake, I’m sure that Ernest and Rani did.

So, now the cake has been cut and the results are in.  I can’t tell you, though.  Rani has a similar party scheduled in Shreveport on Monday, and she asked everybody there last night to keep things quiet until then.

Mousetrap Update

Way back in September, I had a post titled A Better Mousetrap, and said that I would get back to you with results.  For one reason or another, I never did until today. 

You can click on the link for the full story, but the gist of the thing was that mice had attacked one of the recliners in our 5th wheel camper, and I had set out two types of mouse traps to deal with them.

The old mechanical Victor mousetraps never caught anything, but the sticky traps did - they just didn’t catch any mice!  What they did catch was a lot of big ugly cockroaches, those big brown wood roaches that folks in Florida call palmetto bugs. I set off a couple of Raid Bug Bombs in the trailer, and a few days later, I vacuumed up over a hundred of the darn things. 

Problem solved – I set out some Combat discs just to be sure, but after several months we have seen no more signs of any infestation.

That brings us to this week.

The damage they had done was limited to the leather on one ottoman and the arms of one chair,  For some reason, the other chair and ottoman were untouched.  On Wednesday, I removed the arm pads from both chairs, and took them and both of the ottomans to a local upholstery shop.  I hoped that they could match the cream colored leather, but in case they couldn’t, I planned to have them recover both ottomans and all four arm pads with a compatible color - maybe a medium brown.

I didn’t think it would be very expensive, but  Boy, was I ever wrong!  The price they quoted would have gone well over $500 after taxes.  We said “No thanks” and left.

In all our travels, we have only used one of the recliners (you can’t see the TV from the other one) so on the way home from the upholstery shop, we had decided to just dump the damaged one.  Then, later that afternoon, I saw this on line:

It’s from the website of an Atlanta company called Recliner City that sells every sort of recliner imaginable.  They were on sale, and I was able to get two brand new leather recliners (the same size and shape as the old ones) for just over $250 – about half the cost of fixing the old one. 

By Any Other Name

Call that big fellow a Buffalo, and everyone will know what you mean.  Park rangers and a few pedantic jerks eager to display their superior knowledge may try to explain that it is an American Bison and that Buffalo are native to Southeast Asia, but who cares? 

It is a Buffalo, and calling it one is valid because that’s what they have been called for the last two centuries, and because everyone recognizes and understands the term. 

Word definitions become valid through general use and acceptance.  If everyone had called the Buffalo a Periwinkle or a Proctologist (and everyone understood what you were talking about) the name would be just as legitimate.

A true purist might call the Buffalo by their Sioux name, Tatanka.  The Sioux, after all, were the greatest Buffalo hunters before the arrival of gun powder, and they had hunted the Takanta long before Europeans arrived. 

Even Sioux is a misnomer – it is the French bastardization of an Algonquin term that means “little snakes” – they called themselves the Lakota.

I suppose you could claim that I am arguing that if you say something wrong often enough, and long enough, it becomes right.  You might have a point, but my main contention is that definitions are validated through usage. 

Besides, Houston’s Buffalo Bayou just wouldn’t sound as appealing if it were called Bison Creek, and Home On The Range doesn’t ring true if the singer longs for a home where the Bison roam.  It just doesn’t work.

So, please don’t try to correct me if I call it a Buffalo.  That’s what it is – deal with it.

Better Late Than Never

March 2nd is celebrated as Texas Independence Day – the day in 1836 that delegates at the town of Washington (now Washington on the Brazos) declared independence from Mexico.

If it seems I’m a bit late with this post, don’t worry. 

The document was read and approved on the 2nd, then several copies were written out by hand, and nobody signed it until the 3rd.  The final delegates to sign the declaration didn’t even arrive in Washington until the 4th, 179 years ago today.

Color

I spent years in the color copy/color printer business - first as a service technician, then as an instructor. 

Early in my career, I attended a Ricoh-sponsored seminar conducted by Dan Collins, a color theory guru and head of the department at Arizona State University.  Like most in attendance, I got most of the basics of what he said, but when he answered questions, even things I thought I understood became mired in technical jargon that flew right over my head.  That seminar left me fascinated and determined to learn more. I won’t claim that I became an expert, but I did learn enough to be able to talk to graphic artists and web designers without appearing to be clueless.

Since retiring, I haven’t given the subject of color theory much thought, but the recent hubbub on line about the black and blue (or gold and white) dress – and my recent experience replacing incandescent lights with LEDs – piqued my interest again.  That’s when I came across this LINKEDIN article by Diana Derval, head of Derval Research and professor at Fudan University, Shanghai, China:

“The color nuances we see depend on the number and distribution of cones (=color receptors) in our eye. You can check this rainbow: how many color nuances do you count?

You see less than 20 color nuances: you are a dichromats, like dogs, which means you have 2 types of cones only. You are likely to wear black, beige, and blue. 25% of the population is dichromat.

You see between 20 and 32 color nuances: you are a trichromat, you have 3 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green and red area). You enjoy different colors as you can appreciate them. 50% of the population is trichromat.

You see between 33 and 39 colors: you are a tetrachromat, like bees, and have 4 types of cones (in the purple/blue, green, red plus yellow area). You are irritated by yellow, so this color will be nowhere to be found in your wardrobe. 25% of the population is tetrachromat.

You see more than 39 color nuances: come on, you are making up things! there are only 39 different colors in the test and probably only 35 are properly translated by your computer screen anyway :)”

Other experts say that there is no reliable online test for tetrachromacy since even the best computer monitor is incapable of a high enough degree of color purity.  They suggest that if you really want to test your color vision, you should try the test linked HERE.

Monday Mouse

Not much going on here at the old Boggy Thicket, the weather remains too cold and dreary to encourage any outside activities, so I’m sharing the picture of a mouse that a friend posted on Facebook last week -

I’ll admit that I didn’t see the mouse right away, but it’s been years since I’ve had a donut.

LTBL – Part Two

I linked yesterday’s blog report on Facebook, and got comments like

Magenta Wise The tension is electrifying! Looking forward to the next installment

Robert Lieder I'm on the edge of my seat !! Biting my nails !! Hoping my friend will See The Light !!

Elyse Smith I trust Part II will be illuminating......

That’s a lot of pressure, and I’m afraid this post won’t live up to such lofty expectations, but I shouldn’t keep you in the dark any longer.

Yesterday’s upgrade of the lights in our 5th wheel trailer is complete, and while I’m very pleased with the result, I’m afraid today's post may prove anticlimactic.

I took some comparison pictures, but they don’t really show what was obvious to the eye.  I’m not sure whether that’s a limitation of the camera, or my skills as a photographer, but…..

 

Here’s a shot of a double fixture with the original incandescent bulb on the right and one of the LED “bulbs” on the left.  While the color difference is obvious, the LED is actually measurably brighter than the  incandescent.  Somehow, the photo almost makes it seem like the opposite is true.

This shows the difference between the LED “bulb” and the new p-c board type:

 As I said, the pictures don’t really tell the true story. 

Even though it isn’t obvious, the new p-c type LEDs are a LOT brighter, and Honey finds the “warm white” of these LEDs much more pleasant, so the upgrade was definitely worth the time, money and effort.

By the way, speaking of “warm white” - the color of light is measured in degrees Kelvin, and “warm white” is actually cooler than “cool white”  You can see that on this factoid sheet from EFI.  Oh well, that could be the topic for another day.