COMPACT FLUORESCENTS….Mickey Kaus goes green:
I recently bought a compact flourescent bulb, the GE brand recommended by Instapundit. I hate it. It flickers constantly. When it’s not flickering it fills the room with a depressive, dulling haze. Maybe this is what happened to Courtney Love! It gives me a headache to look at it.
This is not an excuse for some Mickey bashing. We’ll do that some other time. I just wanted to open a thread about compact fluorescents.
Here’s the thing: I’ve never minded fluorescent lights, which I think is a little unusual, but I have always been sensitive to flicker. And most CFs flicker like mad if you put them in a lamp connected to a dimmer. But the CFs in my living room and bedroom — which aren’t on a dimmer circuit — don’t seem to flicker at all and the light they put out is fine. (Though that’s obviously an esthetic judgment.) They’re Sylvanias. I also have some overhead lights, basically floodlamps, and they work fine too, though they take a couple of minutes to completely warm up. I think they’re the Lowe’s house brand.
Anyway, I’m just curious. Have you tried CFs? Which brands work and which ones suck? Have you found any that work well on a dimmer circuit? What do you think about the quality of the light? Etc. Let’s put the hive mind to work.
