The case of the smoking bulb...

The case of the smoking bulb...  That's an LED bulb, a “candelabra” bulb enclosed in a glass envelope.  When I installed this particular bulb and turned it on for the first time, the glass envelope instantly filled with black smoke.  Interestingly, the LEDs were still working, though not much light escaped through the smoke.  I let it set for a few days to see if smoke would dissipate, but it did not.  So I took the bulb outside, broke the glass envelope (which allowed the smoke to dissipate), then brought it back in to take a peek under the microscope (photo at right) – where I see the proverbial smoking gun.  The yellow brick-shaped thingy is a single LED, magnified 60x.  There are dozens of these LEDs arrayed cylindrically to make up the entire bulb.  They're soldered to a cylindrically-shaped printed circuit board of some type, presumably made of a material that can take fairly high temperatures (these bulbs get quite hot in normal operation).  Those tiny little balls you see scattered about the surface are made of solder – highly conductive metal.  Normally on a soldered surface you wouldn't see very many of these; I think something must have gone awry in the soldering machine for this bulb.  I'd bet the problem was caused by some of these solder balls causing a short circuit.  When I plugged the lamp into a socket without the glass envelope on (dangerous, as high voltages are exposed), all but two of the LEDs worked fine.  The two dead ones were adjacent to each other, and the surface between them slightly blackened – that's probably where the short circuit happened.

Into the trash you go, dead bulb!  The vendor has already shipped me a replacement – when I emailed them about the black smoke, they offered to replace it immediately...

There once was...

There once was ... a playground for “special needs” kids in Seattle.  It was a really nice place for these kids; the only one in the entire Seattle area.  It was safe, too – in ten years of operation, not a single kid had ever been injured.

So naturally the Seattle Parks Department ordered it destroyed, citing it as “extremely dangerous”.

We elect governments with the brains of a demented flea, and then we do things like entrust them with our healthcare.  That self-extermination gene theory of mine is starting to look better by the minute...

Quote of the day...

Quote of the day...  From P. J. O'Rourke:

“There is only one basic human right, the right to do as you damn well please.  And with it comes the only basic human duty, the duty to take the consequences.”

That may be the best condensation of libertarianism I've ever seen...

A clarifying example...

A clarifying example ... of how politicians think.  The FCC has been signaling for months that it's considering some level of Internet regulation (especially for ISPs).  Just this week Obama announced his support for regulating the Internet like a utility (a la cable TV).  Nobody knows what's actually going to happen; right now it's all just blather.  Now imagine that you're the CEO of an ISP planning to invest $18 billion into rolling out broadband nationwide.  The uncertainty about how ISPs will (or will not) be regulated means that you no longer know whether you can recover your $18 billion investment and make a profit, so naturally you halt the investment until the regulatory uncertain gets cleared up.

In a sane world, that CEO (Randall Stephenson of AT&T) would be lauded for his careful management of shareholder's money.  In the real world of Washington, D.C. he's being called everything from an extortionist to evil incarnate.  I listened to a few minutes of a C-SPAN house hearings broadcast this morning that was nothing but one insult after another being hurled at Stephenson. 

There are times when I think our species has some sort of genetic coding for self-extermination...

The science of ... snow rollers!

The science of ... snow rollers!  There are a lot more snow roller photos, along with an explanation of how they form...