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#135897 12/11/04 01:07 PM
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A bulb with two closed ends in an automobile.

Whence comes this name?

http://www.vintagecarparts.co.uk/en/2178~auto+bulb-details/


#135898 12/11/04 03:16 PM
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I know! I know! Wordwind, purdy please, pick me!

I think.

LED Festoon Bulbs are housed in lens that uses sun's UV rays to produce glow, even when lamps are not powered up. Lambertian lighting pattern provides even distribution of light. With lamps lasting up to 100,000 hours, bulbs can replace incandescent bulbs in indoor and outdoor applications. - Online Auto Dictionary

Ah ha! An excellent application of this form of lighting would be a string of colored lights to decorate a Christmas Tree.

(Now don't you think well of me?)

http://www.oldchristmaslights.com/interesting_facts.htm

#135899 12/12/04 01:33 AM
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Where did you find any mention of Christmas tree lights being festoon lights?

And, from what you posted above, I'm more confused about festoon lights. If the sun's UV rays cause the light to glow, how so inside the vehicle? And, to clear up more confusion, where inside a car would one find these festoon lights?


#135900 12/12/04 11:35 AM
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I've got one in my overhead light, the one that turns on when you open the door.


#135901 12/12/04 11:38 AM
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Thanks, Faldage!


#135902 12/12/04 05:28 PM
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All right, you caught me. I didn't do my research well, and was hoping that I could bluff my way through your quiz.
I can't much help it. I am a slow learner. So before I answer your additional questions, please allow me to explain.

When I was in the Jr. Fifth Grade I had a pretty teacher. His name was Fred. No it wasn't, I'm just kidding, I don't remember her name and the only reason I knew that she was pretty is because my dear Mama told me so. Anyway, one day she was configuring a math problem on the blackboard and I spotted a mistake in her division. I raised my hand and smiled sweetly and pointed out her error, expecting that she would be pleased and maybe even give me back the big red apple that my mother had made me give her that morning.
She didn't. And even worse she didn't understand her error and insisted that her math was correct, and that I was wrong.

Then things turned nasty. Other kids spoke up, "But Miss Perry, Milo is right" (Hey! I remembered her name) then someone giggled and Miss Perry's pretty face turned as red as her two lovely rosy red cheeks. Then she squented her eyes and looked at me with a look that would have froze a snake and said...
"Stick in that bottom lip!" she said as she shouted.

Oh no, I thought, this was terrible, the love of my life, the woman I had planned to marry the minute I turned twelve, had gone stark raving mad. In her delirum she had thought that my lip was sticking out.
What? Now she was standing over my desk shrieking...
"I...said...stick...in...that...lip!"

Oh how I tried. At that moment I would have sold my little brother to a passing band of Gypsies if I could have stuck in my lower lip. My heart sank. How, I wondered, could a little boy like me stick in a lip that wasn't out?
An eon passed. Finally her anger cooled and in a cold voice reminiscent of Lon Chaney in the Bride of Dracula, she said ...
"Go stand in the hall until recess".

The aftermath of this little episode was painful but short. Two weeks later I was promoted to the Senior Fifth Grade...but that's another story.

And here's another story.
In the early seventies I attended a lecture at UAB entitled "Death Trip in Wisconsin". My friend Jet, who was my date for the lecture, had found himself a girl who thought nerds cute and cancelled, so I was left to take the death trip, so to speak, all alone.

I was late and underdressed and had to sit in the front row. The crew in attendance was not so motley. I had expected a sprinkling of hippies to move the mean towards casual but the elevated lecture hall was peopled by sixty or so over-the-mountain "brookies" and UAB social science professors, each wearing their respective and readily distinctive uniforms. The lecture, I came to learn, was based upon research following the discovery of a cache of photographs taken in a remote part of Wisconsin just after the War Between the States.

The photographs are gruesome. Hundreds of pictures of the carefully poised corpses of the bodies of people lying about in caskets, and a few such bodies simply proped up in chairs.

These awful pictures constituted the main body of the program - slide after slide of the pictures of men and women, boys and girls, and babies, after their death.
Based upon these photographs a book had been written by a Wisconsin social scientist investigating the death cult that was presumed to exist in a poor and remote region of Wisconsin during the 1880's. Ninety-eight per cent of the photos left by this early local photographer were scenes of death. The question under-study by the social anthropologists was... Why had these isolated backward people become so infatuated with death? And after two hours of look at death slides I found out that they didn’t know.

It would have been rude to leave the hall during the question and answer period so I waited with resigned patience through the mostly inane remarks. But after a long while I grew tired of all the mealy-mouthed pomp and gush and raised my hand. Here is what I said, in effect...

Uh...I...uh...these people were poor people and uh, photography was new and costly and isolated societies back then had no template to indoctrinate them into how it was to be used. They had no tradition of happy birthday faces but when someone you love in the family dies it is a universal trait to want to keep them extant. A photograph seems like...(my voice trailed off in resignation).

As I left the hall the lady from Mountain Brook who had donated six thousand dollars to bring this program to UAB gave me a dirty look. After my remarks the program fell apart. Several people in the audience spoke up and told stories of their families having pictures of dead relatives on their walls and mantles and what the heck was wrong with that? I felt bad for a week.

And so Wordwind, sweet Wordwind, here is my answer to your questions...

(A) LED bulbs are made for all bulbs in automobiles except headlights and fog lights. The higher amperage required by these brighter lights would make the festoon lighting too costly.

(B) The term "festoon" was probably assigned to the bulb by somebody in advertizing at GE who saw string lighting as the future of the LED bulb.

(c) Yes I knew that the URL on Christmas lights that I posted had no reference to Festoon bulbs. I posted it in lieu of a glass of Christmas cheer.

(d) Festoon lights for Christmas strings are a wave of the present and of the future but don't ask me to prove it by URL.

You can go and look up your own dern URL!
________________________________________________


#135903 12/12/04 06:06 PM
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Miss Perry and the lady from Mountain Brook

As always, I look for a moral in your stories, themilum, and it seems to be this:

There is no reward for being right in the wrong circles.

This is a lesson you have yet to master, themilum.

But how can I fault you? I have never learned that lesson myself.

All the role models kids study in the classroom speak their minds honestly and openly, and oftimes courageously when their positions are not agreeable to the establishment or people in positions of authority.

That's what kids read in their history books, themilum. But their authority figures sometimes set an example of what the heroes of history were struggling against.

I suspect that your fearless honesty has cost you some career opportunities, themilum. Such integrity is held in high esteem by few nowadays [if it ever was].

If university professors weren't protected by tenure, they would surely perish for publishing some of their best opinions.


#135904 12/12/04 06:31 PM
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Milo - Nice stories! I still remember my 2nd grade teacher like she was on a TV commercial.

plutarch - This ain't "getyourreward.org"... and we's all far from *right here.

WW - I think I've also seen them over licence plates. Only a UK site would use the term "coachfittings"... and what the heck is "autojumble"? It *sounds like an 'accessories' category, but they already have one.


#135905 12/12/04 07:39 PM
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what the heck is "autojumble"?

In the Mother Country, "jumble" is used to mean what we mean in the American Colonies by "rummage sale."

An "autojumble" is a specialized sort of rummage sale where people who care about cars, trucks, tractors and the like, assemble and offer for sale all manner of spare parts and tools and books and memorabilia and Lord knows what all else. I have a friend in Lincolnshire who attends such events for the primary purpose of obtaining tools made by Rolls Royce. Imagine that.



#135906 12/12/04 08:19 PM
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Thank you, Father. (that's just so fun to say almost as fun as refering to ourselves as "- colonies"

It's not so hard to imagine. Ford sold a set of tools with the early Model T which aside from engine rebuilding was all the owner/operator ever needed... quite collectable.


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