Mike Looks with Curdled Displeasure at the Idea of the Wooden Magno Radio

Mike shares his scabrous view of the $200 Magno Wooden analog radio:

I am foursquare in sympathy with the kind of real, tangible environmental conservation that spares rain forests the chainsaw and species extinction, but I loathe this sort of vacuous environmental gesture. It embodies the replacement of sentiment for reason and sanctimony for real results. It's worse than those curlicue light bulbs that 14 year old girls pressure their suburban parents into buying under the wholly fallacious premise that they will save the polar bears. It's Bono's radio, bought more as a badge of moral superiority than out of any real desire to save that vague, amorphous thing called 'the environment'.

Oh, and by the way, no frequency numbers or any indication which knob is for tuning and which for volume printed on the radio - as strong a hint as one could get that this thing was not really intended to be used. And there are enough potential pitfalls with new radio designs without adding 'termites' to the list.

Comments

[Jesse Menn]

Excuse me, those CFL bulbs make an enormous impact. Even if we ignore the roughly $55 in savings per replaced incandescent (assuming a 10,000 hour CFL lifespan and $0.12/kwh electric rate), there's still a 75% drop in energy use by simply replacing a light bulb. That's massive. Is it going to directly save the polar bears? No. Is outlawing incandescent bulbs in most applications so that the US will migrate toward CFLs going to make a relatively major impact on the environment via energy use? Yes, it probably will.

While I agree that the radio looks like some stupid piece of kitsch you could purchase at Urban Outfitters, and is obviously a stab at die-hard environmentalists, I think your CFL comparison is not only insulting to people who purchase CFLs and aren't 14 year old suburban girls, but given the impact of CFLs, also rather uneducated and uncaring.

[Mike W]

Look, we're all entitled to our opinions, and that's mine.

Those new bulbs contain toxic mercury, give off what I and many others regard as a poorer quality light, and generate an awful lot of electromagnetic radiation, which certainly is a concern to radio hobbyists and may or may not be a health issue as well. In a nation where people think nothing of jumping in a 6000 pound SUV to go buy a quart of milk, I just think that eliminating regular 60 Watt bulbs is a strange place to start.

That's all I have to say on the matter. You want to go out and buy CFL's, no one's stopping you.

[Scooby214]

I actually have a mixture of CFL and incandescent bulbs in my house. I don't exactly use the CFL bulbs for their energy savings, but as a convenience for me. I figure that the energy savings is a bonus on those particular fixtures. I have found that the CFL bulbs add noise to some of my vintage radios when I use them near the bulbs, but I don't have the bulbs in every room of my house.

I use the outdoor CFL flood bulbs for my outdoor security lights. My security lights are difficult to replace, and they stay on all night long. The increased battery life (and any energy savings) are welcome. They are switched on by a photocell sensor (one of the good electronic ones that won't damage CFL bulbs). I also use CFL bulbs indoors in places that are inconvenient to replace.

I always use good 130v incandescent bulbs at my desk and the work table, as the light they put out is superior to CFL bulbs. The 130v bulbs last much longer than standard incandescent bulbs, due to voltage fluctuations in my area.

I like the CFL bulbs in some applications, but I wouldn't want to outlaw the use of incandescent bulbs.

Brian

[Terry, the Real American]

My brother switched to those CFL bulbs. Those things have Mercury in them, which will kill children hundreds of miles away if you drop one on the floor. So the insidious, rights-destroying government makes selling incandescent bulbs a felony and guarantees all US landfills will be full of Mercury seeping in the water table for decades to come.

After my brother got his electric bill, he found it had risen dramatically, so he got rid of the Liberal Mercury-poison Save the Whales Bullshit bulbs and replaced them with good old incandescents.

Liberals will outlaw candles next, while yelping in hysterics and histrionics about "just wanting to protect children from soot."

[coby]

nevermind the gratuitous consumption caused by this device. better to minimalize environmental impact by buying something thats already been made (as opposed to creating demand for a current production run)

i be this thing has a Balsa ferrite anyways

[GregS]

Agree with you about that wooden radio. It just screams "poseur". If we were still enclosing radios in wooden cabinets made of high quality old-growth wood, as in the days of yore, then this might be good for the environment. But switching from modern plastic cases back to wood, wood that's harvested on the other side of the planet? They probably use more hydrocarbons harvesting and shipping the wood than they would use in making a plastic case.

Agree also with the commenter who said "better to minimalize environmental impact by buying something thats already been made"

Re CFLs: I use a mix of CFLs and incandescents at home. I don't notice any RF noise from the CFLs unless I put the radio within about a foot of the light bulb. But I think the claims of their lifespan are exaggerated. I've had four CFLs burn out after only a year or so of use - they didn't even outlast the incandescents I used to use there.