www.itowler.com - Ian's Home on the web

For the first time in 6 years we have a Christmas tree, and it's a real one at that.  The last 2 years or so we have done a small fake tree that was only 3 feet high or so, and it usually got relegated to a corner in section of the house not really used.  This year we decided to actually get a real tree, and it is actually located in a prominent place, the living room. 

Since this is our first real tree that we have had to acquire a few things such as a tree stand and lights.  Instead of the normal lights we choose to purchase some LED lights.  I think that they look great, and they use less energy than the mini-lights, and even less energy than the standard bulbs of old.  LED stands for Light emitting diode. 

A standard light bulb produces light by passing a current through a filament, the filament gets excited and heats up and glows, producing heat and light.  LED's produce light in a different manner, electroluminescence. The process that LED's use to generate light uses far less energy, and they should last at least 5 times longer than a standard bulb.

We are using 4 strands of LED lights and all four strands should use less energy together than a single strand of mini-lights, which is cool.  I did some looking around on the internet, and it seems that the LED light strands are pretty expensive.  We found a great deal on the light strands at Sam's Club and Wal-mart.  

Earth Day is coming, in fact it is this Sunday, April 22nd. In honor of that fact, Home depot is GIVING AWAY 1 million Compact Fluorescent Light bulbs. This Sunday, all you have to do is show up at the Home Depot and the will give you a CFL bulb. While you are there you might as well pick up a few more. The free bulbs will be N:Vision soft whites, which were the best in a recent Popular Mechanic’s lab Test. In giving away 1 million bulbs Home Depot accomplishes the following :

Homogeneity: Why it is a bad thing.

First off what does it mean? It is derived from the word homogeneous. In Latin it breaks down to Homo = the same, and gen = kind/race etc. So basically it means everything is the same. Why is this a bad thing, first off its boring. Why would you want everything to be the same, variety is the spice of life. Secondly it is dangerous. The whole pet food scare is a prime example of how our (and our pets) food supply has become too homogeneous.

Is it getting hot in here, or is it just me? Yes, it is getting hotter, and it’s not just me. In fact its getting hotter, and we are to blame.
Last week the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (or IPCC) issued a report saying that humans are the most likley the cause of global warming. (really…it took a panel to figure that out?) The report stated that is 90% likely that humans are the major cause of global warming. The report indicated that if we do not change our ways we have the following to look forward to: