[The Garbone]

I think the failure was due to the ballast.   The kitchen light gets turned on and off many times every day and last year we took a surge that nuked the TV.   Too many moving parts for a light bulb.. 

[Desi Bike]

When those CFL (compact flourescent lamps) came on the market, the City of Ottawa (Canada, where I was living at the time) decided it would be very 'green' of them to mail one to each household. Included in the package was a listing of how much energy it would save etc etc...   What they failed to put on that insert was the fact that the City of Ottawa suceeded in polluting the city with more mercury than industry had as each of these bulbs has a small amount of mercury in them. There was no recycling facility available at the time to safely recycle these curly bulbs that dont last much longer than regular inky bulbs.