Shine on, you crazy light bulb

Thomas Edison had a really good run; for 134 years we lived under the golden glow of his incandescent bulb. The problem is that his bulbs are not energy-efficient, hence the birth of new technologies with new nomenclature. A comparison of light given off by three 60 watt-equivalent bulbs, from left: a Living Solutions compact fluorescent, a Cree LED filament and a GE incandescent. I might as well have been shopping for a carburetor. There were too many options with too many symbols and verbiage that I couldn’t decipher (LED, CFL, halogen, lumens, Kelvin, CRI), not to mention all of the various brands (GE, Philips, Cree, EcoSmart — each with its own packaging lingo).