Pry it from my cold, dead hand

That's the only way that "they" will get my last incandescent light bulbs away from me. How can people even talk about outlawing them in favor of compact flourescent bulbs or any other kind of flourescent lighting? Angela Merkel isn't going along with the European Union line on this, either. Anyone who has poor vision or who creates anything made by hand or who cooks or who reads knows that there's no substitute for natural light. And knows that the very worst substitute for natural light among all the kinds of artificial light, including kerosene, is a flourescent bulb, tube or compact. I'm spoiled. When I haven't worked outdoors I've had big windows and been able to work by natural light until sundown. We do have more than one compact flourescent bulb in our house, in difficult-to-reach locations, because they do last a long time, but the light provided is dim and inferior in every way. This is an interesting discussion of the inferiority of most of the available compact flourescent bulbs. This is another good roundup. I was talking about this issue with someone who suggested that a better way would be to steeply increase per-kwh billing in stages. The Austin utility has a first break at 500 kwh. Our bill has exceeded this number twice, both times as a result of a meter misreading. We seldom go over 475 kwh in the summer or 375 in the winter. Why can't this be enough? Why must there be dictatorship of how a given quantity of electricity is used?