I remember having a thread on these maybe a year or so ago and I thought someone had posted a link to a product that was brighter than the GE "150W equivalent" one, but now I can't find it (either the post or the CFLs) does anyone know of any? I found one that maxed out at 40W online that's slightly brighter than the 32W GE ones I'm using now (2450 vs.
2150 lumens) but that's less efficient, it's a no-name bulb (which I've grown to fear in CFL-land,) and also it's not brighter enough to be worth $12 plus shipping.
Is that really all there is out there?
Life was so much simpler when you could just walk into the store and buy pretty much any brand 200W (or even 250 or 300W - yes *those* are still available) 3-way bulb and just know it would work, and that it would be as bright as you wanted it to be... *sigh* (of course, you'd be drawing
200W just to light that one floor lamp, but still.)
Your best option would probably be to rework the lamp to use more than one CFL, like many old fashioned floor lamps which had two or three bulbs before the 3 way ones came about. Certainly lamp parts are readily available to make such a modification.
Well, I could just shove a "300W" CFL in it and not use the 3-way function; just wondering if there was a more elegant solution availalable. Primary use would be for a floor lamp plugged into a recep controlled by a wall switch (no ceiling light fixture in the room of concern) that would probably spend 90% of its time on the brightest setting, as it's used for general room illumination, and the walls are dark wood. It just bothers me when things don't work like they're supposed to :)
As an aside, has anyone else noticed that a lot of new cheap lamps have sockets rated for only 100W now? Guess if you want to use them for general illumination - and I've noticed this even w/ large floor lamps - you pretty much HAVE to use CFLs now.
I never noticed max lamp power on most sockets on fixtures, just a stick-on label on the entire fixture limiting max wattage. OR, is that what you meant?
Maybe folks are just getting more cautious due to all the frivolous lawsiuts that are now in vogue. ===================================================== Not as many as you might think. Lawyers work on contingency and unless they are milking their clients for "expenses" they are not as quick to take on totally BS lawsuits as people might think. I'll think differently when I see a list of frivolous lawsuits where the plaintiff actually prevailed.
I, for one, appreciate caution and safety features that keep idjits from becoming vegetables and wards of the state where you and I end up paying for their upkeep. Of course, there's no guarding against stupidity as in the number of cases where idjit fry cooks leaned over a pot of boiling oil with a Bic lighter in their top pockets. The result (I recall at least 3 cases) is predictable. A giant ball of fire and a burned-off face. IIRC, Bic neither lost nor settled any of those suits because they were confident most juries would easily see who was to blame for the conflagration. And like McDonalds, they fear setting bad precedents by settling. Of course, McDonald's guessed wrong on their scalding coffee case.
If that's true it's because they can do a lot of damage when they fall out of the sky. IIRC general aviation has an alarmingly high rate of alcoholism which could also be a contributing factor in overall GA litigation (which I know next to nothing about).
Damn you Smitty, now I am going to have to do homework and research this thing. (-:
Not a very good idea. The Concorde had a nose that drooped for take-off and landing. A good lawyer would argue that was "state of the art" in airplane manufacture and it was the technology needed to avoid having to look out the side window. They would point to designs where what you describe is not the case. The would argue the plane needed a stilt wheel on the back to raise the tail. I've seen plenty of auto liability cases, and that's how they go.
I can see a Gerry Spence-type lawyer making that case to a jury and winning, especially going against the kind of buttwipe lawyer that's often on retainer to a small company. There's a time to big out the big hired guns. Even Michael Jackson knew that. You'd be surprised at how many companies laugh at lawsuits like that without realizing they could get outlawyered good. Many don't realize that once *one* person wins, the floodgates can open and a barrage of similar suits will appear soon after the losing verdict is in.
The incident you describe is something that can be sold to the jury simply. The aircraft maker knew there was a problem. Others had worked around it. This planemaker didn't. Someone died. A lot of these small companies didn't carry enough insurance to have their insurers care enough to hire the best, which they will do when they are under threat of enough loss. Shit does happen, Smitty, and to people who don't really deserve it. Not being able to see in front of you when taking off? Bad idea. Anyone 5' or shorter on the jury who's ever had to put a phone book on a car seat would vote against the plane maker. That's how they work. Could this happen to me? Would *I* want to be paid for harm? Ubetcha they would.
You're more familiar, obviously, with small planes. Are they still making planes like that? What happened there is the old "deep pocket" trick. Smart lawyers look for the wealthiest defendants because you can't get blood from a stone - and probably not very much from a stupid airport official who
*should* have been solely liable for that accident.
I suspect when the Concorde was designed that many of the cheap, tiny cameras on the market didn't exist yet. HF cameras probably wouldn't stand up to crossing the sound barrier (or maybe even crossing the street!), etc.
But a cheap, modern cam like the one I have in my van, which has a terrible blind spot in back, would solve some of the taildragger problems. IIRC, the latest airliners have a very thorough CCTV system inspired, in part, by a fire in the luggage compartment that downed an Air Florida jet. Now the pilots can use the cameras to see what's happening in areas where there's no flight crew. I believe the cameras are not only in the luggage area, but in the space above the pilot's cabin where electrical fires tend to break out since a alot of the plane's wiring terminates there.
The plaintiff doesn't need to win to cause liability insurance rates to beccome totally astronomical and force potential defendents to find other ways to invest their money than to continue in a litigation-prone area.
I had an uncle w/ longterm management experience w/ Cessna/Wichita and was there when they made the corporate decision to leave the single-engine market. That decision (along w/ that of Beech, etc.), was entirely driven by the fact that the liability was seen as too great for the potential return in the environment at the time.
One of the stories was the one of the guy who had bought a used 150 of
30-some years' age; failed to have an updated air certification done, had only a few hours of flight time after getting his ticket.
His first landing he nosed it into ground, caught prop on runway and flipped it. Widow sued Cessna for manufacturing and selling the aircraft as it was inherently a flaw that the prop could do that.
The cost of defending even nonsense litigation got to be so expensive just was not financially viable business any longer at the time.
There has been a shifting of courts not taking _quite_ so many truly frivolous lawsuits to trial any longer and the manufacturers have restructured their handling of the expenses associated since but it still is a significant cost of the airplane just as liability drives medical costs to be far higher than otherwise would be if were only covering the actual service cost plus reasonable fee structure.
But you can sure burn its face off. The Bic "fry cook" injuries were on a par with some of the worst facial injuries I've seen coming from AfRaq, especially if the lighter is full when it explodes. You can see for yourself by throwing one in a fire. Whoosh! In most "fry cook" cases people were too slow to react and be much use because they were so stunned (and because they were burger joint workers!) Was it a frivolous law suit? Yes, because there was no way a Bic could be made "boiling fry oil proof" lighter. But someone was injured badly and the courts always give them the courtesy of hearing them out.
There's a class of lawsuits that did cause great grief to Bic (and victims) when (IIRC!!) a series of newly designed lighters had a valve that did not thoroughly close under all circumstances. Women would slip the lighter into their purse and the butane would all leak out into the purse. When they went to flick their Bic again, they were engulfed in a huge fireball. Most were able to simply drop the purse but not all.
While the injuries didn't match those of the fry cooks - those lighters exploded like tiny napalm bombs on contact with the oil, flashing upward and spewing boiling oil everywhere - they were very, very serious and some women had to have multiple cosmetic surgeries to look human again. Although it was clearly a defective design, Bic avoided changing it for 15 years by making secret settlements with those who had been burned until one plaintiff refused their lowball offer and won near $4M at trial. That changed the whole ball game.
Bic, like almost all defendants, had no reservation about trying to blame the end user. For the first few suits, anyway. Then they learned that tactic "inflamed" juries who said, after trial, that it caused them to want to through the book at Bic.
Once that single plaintiff prevailed in open court, the floodgates opened and Bic had to redesign the lighters or else the suits would never stop. Verdicts were in the multi-million dollar range which really isn't much for Bic, but it still troubled them mightily.
Here's a page about it from the NYT archives:
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LAWSUITS, AND WORRY, MOUNT OVER BIC LIGHTER By TAMAR LEWIN Published: April 10, 1987
The Bic Corporation is facing mounting lawsuits on behalf of people who have been burned - and in some cases killed - by fires they say were caused by defects in the company's disposable butane lighters. Although claims began to trickle in soon after Bic introduced its throwaway lighters in 1972, the company has until recently been able to keep the cases quiet by settling them out of court, usually making secrecy one of the terms of the settlement.
But last fall, in what was apparently the first lighter case to go to trial, Bic settled for $3.25 million after the jury found the company liable for the extensive burns suffered by Cynthia Littlejohn, a Philadelphia woman who was on a camping trip when the Bic lighter in her front pocket ignited, engulfing her in flames. Lawyers say others have fared worse: Ethel Smith of Tower City, Pa., caught fire on July 13, 1985, when the Bic lighter she was using to light her cigarette exploded, according to a lawsuit filed by her husband, Francis H. Smith.
Hadn't thought of this in years...more/better recollection after the initial posting--actually, he hit the ground so hard he collapsed the landing gear and that was what caused/allowed the prop to contact the ground and cause the flipover. The claim was that the gear were inadequate or similar nonsense...
I'd take a plexiglas bubble skylight, cut a hole in the cockpit floor and mount foot stirrups so the pilot could hang upside while taking off or landing. Sort of like the domes used for ball turret gunners. It would be an extra encouragement to keep the plane from landing so hard it collapses the landing gear.
I gotta admit when I saw that drooping nose I thought - I'll bet there are a few more "failure points" in the Concorde than in normal-nosed airplanes. Oddly enough, in its mostly fatal crash, the pilot ran over something on the runaway. Something they probably couldn't see.
In the case of the NatWest Three, steam-rollered into it by the US "Justice" system. Extradited from the UK, first thing you discover is that if you resist extradition, you are counted as a fugitive under the US "Justice" system, so no bail.
Second thing is that, because the alleged offence took place in the UK (and the UK authorities had declined to prosecute), all the documentation and potential witnesses were in the UK. And guess what. You're then in jail, awaiting trial, and unable to mount a defence because you can't subpoena anyone.
Third, because in the US judges are elected (daftest thing I ever heard of), it means some of them have hobby-horses. And their trial judge let it be known that if found guilty (see above about ability to mount a defence), they'd be likely to get 40 years.
So they copped a plea and got three years. What would you have done?
You don't get justice in the US, you get law. And plenty of it.
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