Month: April 2025

Let there be light (bulbs)

The new LED lightbulbs are amazing—a switch on the stem of the bulb lets you adjust them to select a visual “temperature” from icy cool (4000 Kelvin) to sunshine warm (2400 Kelvin). Choose from PAR LED (highly concentrated, narrow spotlight), R LED (older floodlight) to BR LED (newer, better floodlight) to control the way the room is lit. There’s also an ER LED bulb, which has a long neck to fit into deep fixtures. And an MR, with an extremely narrow beam.

diagram showing BR, PAR, and MR beam angles and bulb shapes. Credit: viribright.com

I was surprised to discover that some people (mostly interior designers) prefer PAR LEDs to the BR bulbs because they create dramatic beams of light focused on artwork and decor. Me, I’d prefer to get the whole room—especially a work area like a kitchen or a laundry room—well illuminated.

So what’s not to like about these new adjustable LEDs? Well, the fact that big box home improvement stores don’t have most of them in stock—certainly not the adjustable ones! These stores don’t even stock many fixtures these days—just samples, and then they tell you to go online to their websites to get the actual fixture. So much for weekend home repair projects!

Anyway, here’s your Viribright.com guide to LEDs so you’ll have a better experience than I did this past weekend. While Viribright seems to sell in bulk to designers, 1000bulbs has great selection and great prices for the retail customer.

MISCosity—it will stick with you

Book Review

Early on in journalist Clark Humphrey’s refreshing new book, The MISCosity Manifesto: A Guide to Flowing Smoothly Through an Ultra-Complex World, he quotes F. Scott Fitzgerald:

“The test of a first-rate intelligence is the ability to hold two opposed ideas in the mind at the same time, and still retain the ability to function. One should, for example, be able to see that things are hopeless and yet be determined to make them otherwise.”

The second half of that quotation is pretty clearly the underlying premise of Humphrey’s book. It’s a non-linear, richly illustrated and footnoted presentation of the author’s extensive knowledge of philosophy, history, politics, and pop culture. Each two-page spread (a “mini-essay”) takes on a topic. My favorites include “More Dada, Less Data,” “The Futile Wish for Order,” “Turn Off the Dark,” and “Dance Me to the End of Love”). And Humphrey doesn’t just take on a topic, he opens the topic and lets ideas pour into the reader’s mind. “Make Your Own Utopia” starts with Sir Thomas More, covers Callenbach’s Ecotopia, and ends with the ongoing journeys of the Star Trek shows.

You’ll come away with something fresh to think about, talk about, or act on (and, if you’re a writer, think of each spread as a juicy prompt to inspire your own work). You might be even able to understand opinions from “the other side” of a topic a bit better.

I’m reading a lot of articles and books about political dystopias and resistance these days (as well as getting ready to publish my own book of resistance short stories). The MISCosity Manifesto is the book doing the most for my spirit.