Some of you will know that i finally moved out of the shoe box i lived in for 6 years and moved into a house (about 3 months ago) Since then i have replaced 3 different light bulbs at different places in the house.. Now this made me start thinking.. Surely when the house was new, they fitted in all the bulbs as brand new.. Now some sections of the house light a series of 4 or 6 bulbs at once.. yet there appears to be no link at all between "sibling" bulbs and their life-span..
It (only) then occurred to me, that ive never heard someone say "well.. its coming around to light bulb month.. going to have to change all my bulbs soon?" because the bulbs show no consistency at all. It is probably a good thing, since you dont come home and find the whole house in darkness, because all bulbs went off simultaneously but if this is design, then the bulb should have some sort of label indicating where on the curve it sits.. and it doesnt, which is pretty curious..
It sounds really strange that any piece of consumer engineering can have such an in-determinate mtbf.. there must be a better explanation and since we have such smart people who work here (and or read this blog) im hoping someone will save me the googling.....
Mrs. Thatcher was so adamant about the non-existence of gremlins that she introduced Gremlin Taxes in the late 80s and early 90s. This forced the gremlins underground and meant they could only do their work at night or risk a Tory kicking.
Labour unions set up around that time tried to introduce MTBF as a "work to rule" incentive, and bring the gremlins back out overground. All this actually did was create unsatisfactory working pressures (anyone remember the "gremlin scabs" crossing the pickets in Swindon? Nasty business), and yet another obsolete and laughable Labour-driven union incentive which suited neither the workers nor the people.
So, your light bulbs give out due to capitalism. And gremlins. You can't predict either, simple. QED.