"Get rid of your lightswitches and replace them with dimmers..."

Please DON'T.

With incandescents, the efficiency (how much light you get out for each watt that goes in) is directly related to filament temperature. The hotter the filament, the more efficiency (more light per watt). The tradeoff is bulb life. The extreme is a flashbulb; very efficient but very shortlived. The reverse is a long-life bulb; they run the filament cooler, which sacrifices efficiency for life.

"Running your lights at 90% will double the life of the bulb and the difference is nearly imperceptible to the naked eye."

That depends on whether 70% is imperceptible to you.

Running an incandescent at 90% voltage will give you 70% of the light of 100% voltage because the efficiency drops faster than the energy consumption. If you can live with 70% of the light, use a lower-wattage bulb.

"Run your lights lower and the savings continue to increase almost exponentially."

No, they don't. The bulb life increases, but the bulb efficiency drops even faster. For example, at half voltage, the bulb gives only 10% of the light as at full voltage, but uses 40% of the energy, compared to 100%. So you're using four times as much energy per unit of light.

What *does* work is to use the right size bulbs for the application. And an off switch.

"German scientists exposed rats to constant fluorescent light for 4 weeks.

After 4 weeks, the rats were blind."

Details, please?

Otherwise I say it's an urban legend.

"they are filled with toxic vapor and a few toxic heavy metals."

CFLs have a few milligrams of mercury in them - about as much as the period at the end of this sentence. Conventional flourescents have more.

"Disposal is no fun -- and if they break, we are told we must evacuate the home, open the windows, and allow fresh air to circulate for a day or so so that the toxic stuff will dissipate."

Urban Legend. See:

http://www.snopes.com/medical/toxins/cfl.asp

15 minutes, not a day. Evacuate the room, not the home.

"The presence of old CF bulbs in the environment, particularly in large numbers, has very likely NOT been considered sufficiently."

We've been using conventional flourescents for decades. Similar problems and precautions apply. Recycling is the answer.

The additional mercury released by coal-burning power plants to make the additional electricity to light an incandescent is greater than the mercury in the equivalent flourescent or CFL.

"the adverse "unintended consequences" of their use to the environment seem to be very serious, indeed."

No more adverse than the conventional flourescents we've been using. Except CFLs flicker at a much higher rate.

Do you have any conventional flourescents where you live, work, shop, go to school? CFLs are no more environmentally bad than they are.

Look around you - almost all commercial and industrial lighting is flourescents or special halide, mercury-vapor, sodium or other high-efficiency lights.

It's been studied.

For uses where the lamp is only used for short periods or goes off and on a lot, CFLs or conventional flourescents are not a good choice. Example: A hall closet where the light is on only when you open the door to get something, refrigerators, ovens, microwaves, etc.

"Appliance" incandescent bulbs are and will be available for those applications.

ONLY 52% of men say they are required to live by women's rules? That's proof of a flawed survey.

Picking up after oneself and cleaning up one's own messes aren't "women's" rules, they're just common sense and fairness.

It's who gets to make the other rules that's the issue.

It all depends on what you mean by "electric heat".

If you're using electricity to heat a resistor, where 1 unit of electricity produces 1 unit of heat, that's wasteful except in very special circumstances. Such as keeping just one small room in a big house warm. Maybe.

But if you're using electricity to run an earth-source heat pump, where 1 unit of electricity equals many units of heat, the answer may be very different.

The best way to know is to look at the cost. Compare how much heat you can get from a dollar's worth of electricity vs. a dollar's worth of natural gas, heating oil, etc.

You have stated the reality. If a guy is smart and lucky, he gets a corner of the basement or garage, or a shed.

Garrison Keillor explained it all back in 2005:

http://dir.salon.com/story/opinion/feature/2005/11/09/keillor/index.html?source=search&aim=/opinion/feature

It's not about "whining", that's just how it is.

What happens in many cases is that the woman is simply better at "negotiating" than the man. Not only that, but a guy with any sense soon learns that he can win the battle and lose the war, and that a lot of things simply aren't worth fighting over. So the pattern is set: Give in early on most things, because the alternative is far worse.

It may sound easy to leave a relationship and find a more compatible partner, but when there are kids involved it's not. What percentage of men wind up with the house and kids?