Summit Up 7-1-11: Home of the $50 yak-dung-fueled LED bulb

The amazing $50 LED light bulb from GE

Good morning and welcome to Summit Up, the world's only daily column that would like to continue our discussion about fruit. Specifically cantaloupes, which we believe, as melons, are part of the fruit family since they're certainly not veggies even if they're quite a bit bigger than your average apple, peach or cherry.

Anyway, we've been wondering lately how to tell when a cantaloupe is good to go or, in traditional parlance, when it's ripe. They look pretty much the same all the time, unless they get way too ripe, in which case they start to form these little dents and by that time they're over the edge. 

We googled this recently and read that you should test the opposite end of the melon from where the stem was, and if that's kinda soft, it's ready. Also, you should be able to discern a musky smell emanating from the melon, but since we're phobic about smelling things that might be musky, we opted for the soft test.And it worked OK. Then, we received information via email telling us that cantaloupe is the featured fruit of the month for July, according to an organization called the Produce for Better Health Foundation (which is, oddly enough, right across the hall from a think tank called the Funyons, Bacon and Cigars Aren't Nearly as Bad for You as You've Been Led to Believe Foundation).

Anyway, sez here cantaloupes are named for the papal gardens of Cantalupo, Italy, where some historians say this species of melon was first grown.Who knew! And heck yeah we think that's how it got the funny name. It sure as hell didn't come from Rome or Catanzaro or Verbano-Cusio-Ossola or Vibo Valentia or any other Italian places picked at random from a list we just found online and cherry-picked for color and uniqueness (just like a melon!).Where were we? Oh, right, cantaloupes and how to tell when they're ripe. 

So this foundation also sent us a link to a video (http://bit.ly/jy9Gmn) about picking cantaloupe, so let's have a look ...(sound of someone watching an online video about cantaloupe selection)OK, so this dude is all about smelling for the musk, which, as we indicated previously, we're not comfortable doing. He also said you shouldn't see jagged edges around the stem/belly-button kinda area, as that would indicate it was picked before its time.Anyway, none of that's nearly as interesting as the $50 lightbulb we just got in the mail from GE. It's called the solid state GE energy smart LED lightbulb, and in addition to having the cool “petals” to keep the bulb cool, it also has some impressive stats: uses 77 percent less electricity than a 40 watt incandescent and lasts 22.8 years. Says here if everyone household in the U.S. replaced just one incandescent bulb with one of these beauties, it'd save $428 million a year in energy costs.Too bad it came FedEx in a box so fancy as to have all but wiped out any reduction in our carbon footprint. But who knows — with a lifespan of 22.8 years (!), maybe it'll work out in the end.So far, we have to admit, we haven't really gone for the compact fluorescent bulbs because they give off a funny kinda light that doesn't work for us. 

Maybe they've gotten better since we first tried them a few years back, but in the meantime we've taken to lighting our homes and cooking all our food in the old-school Mongolian fashion using dried yak dung patties (which also double as disc golf equipment in a pinch). Then someone told us we were just making things worse, so maybe we'll just take out a small loan and replace all our bulbs with these fancy, be-petal'd LED bulbs. Maybe it's the way to go.***Folks, there's more stuff going on in the county this weekend than you can shake a piece of yak dung at, so get out there and enjoy it for all it's worth!We out.