In 1879, Thomas Edison managed to do something that man had yearned for since the dawn of age. Submitting a patent for a light device known as the incandescent bulb, he managed provide for the first time reliable and safe illumination of the dark. There is probably no single idea that has done as more for man’s progress than the light bulb, providing an expansion in commerce, safety, transportation, education, and productive activity to dark rooms and night hours. The idea of carbonizing a bamboo strand, later replaced with tungsten, passing an electric current across it in a vacuum environment created luminescent magnificence that initially lasted for scores of hours, and later, thousands of hours. The invention has provided cheap, reliable, indispensable illumination to the farthest reaches of earth and has changed everybody’s lives for the better.
    

     So in true modern societal fashion, do we venerate such a magnificent outpouring of the best civilization has to offer universally to mankind? Of course not. We get rid of it for a pathetic shadow of an alternative, the CFL, or Compact Florescence Lamp. In 2007, in his one of many moments of catering to irrationality, President George W. Bush signed the Energy Independence and Security Act, effectively outlawing the incandescent light bulb in 2012. This act of Congress, like most oxymoronic acts coming out of Congress these days, determined that the energy expenditures of the incandescent bulb were excessive when compared to the swirly CFL bulb. The fact that the CFL took longer to reach illumination, painted everything an eye straining dull white yellow, and contained a disposal problem of toxic mercury when broken or thrown away entered into none of our elite leader’s consciousness. The point, excepting the fine one on the top of their heads, was single minded. The incandescent bulb illumination was provided by a greater per bulb draw of energy by that satanic force of nature known as the the evil carbon molecule, and therefore could no longer be tolerated.

      Here’s a bright idea. How about simply encouraging the use of more efficient incandescent bulbs and TURN THEM OFF when you’re not needing them? The world reels at the clarity of the logic.

     We have one year to horde our light bulbs or face a more dangerous, more poorly illuminated future. The other alternative is to get hold of your congressman or congresswoman and shake them until they wake up, and repeal this heinous act. Come on people; lets not let stupid rule and make the prohibition of Edison’s genius go the way of other brilliant prohibitions enacted by other Congresses stimulated by their desire to enforce the unenforceable.

     Defenders of the Ramparts, all hail the Bulb!