Yesterday I was counting calories, and I came to a quandary; a good tasting item was 36 calories less than a great tasting similar item. In my days count, those 36 calories were outside of my acceptable range of 1,800 calories. Even though it would only be 2%. So what’s the big deal?
It wasn’t; I had that great meal and never thought twice about it; and it probably made up for those many days that I never got within 10% of 1,700 much less the whole target. So what’s the big deal?
Well, that really is the question; what is the big deal about 2% or 10%? These days, if a discount is only 10%, we don’t even slow the car, much less get out and go look. Could you imagine Macy’s or Sear’s making a full spread ad in the Sunday newspapers across the country about a “2 Day, 2% OFF” sale? They would get laughed out of town.
In the old days of picture framing you could have regular clear glass, or a frosted glass called “non-glare” that in the back room we just called “the fog”, because, that’s all it did; no glare, just a big white fog, and you still couldn’t see your picture, it just cost you about 20% more. It’s still offered today. If you bring your 9mm Glock along, stick it to my head, I’ll actually sell you some. Really.
Here in the 21st century we have learned that the blue leisure suit is now hmmm gray, and the afro has turned kind of orange, her really bitchen paisley acetate dress that felt so good during the slow dances is well looking more like that science project near the back of the refrigerator and the back ground has turned into ‘where were we?’ all because of age. Not! And, it wasn’t really because the photo was poor quality, except the Kmart snaps. But mostly it was Ultra Violet, that same stuff you have your lenses coated to guard against.
I’ve heard people use terms like “SPF for your art”, or “Sun Block for that special memory”, and those are hmmm ‘good’, but let’s get real here. What that “99% UV block” means is that in a certain range of the light spectrum that we can’t see (unless we go down to the disco and dance the night away under the black light), 200-400 nanometers, which is the range of UVA and UVB rays that cause the most damage to our skin, retinas, and disco era photos; the coating on your glasses, and the new coating on what is called “Museum Glass” blocks almost all of the harmful rays of light.
But let’s talk about “light” for a moment, and I’ll try to keep it lite. There are different measures of light and they all mean different things. Let’s take that 100watt light bulb we used to love (that now gets marketed but it got downgraded to a 60watt), at 100watts it pumped out 2,100 lumens (the light the eye perceives) where the 60 only produces around 1,600 or hmm 40% less, or about the same as a 23watt compact florescent light.
People worry about the sunlight, but now have Low-E glass, double paned windows, so where the sunlight hitting the house maybe knocking on the window at 32,000 ft pounds of pressure, by the time it gets inside, it’s floating around at less than 1,600. Meanwhile those 8’ long tube fluorescents, that incandescent bulb you refuse to swap out for anything else over in the corner lamp, and the three compact fluorescents about the room combine to pump the room full of 4,000 foot pounds of light. So without getting deep about all of this, the answer is that it isn’t the sun, as much as all the light we produce inside that is killing that Monet poster, the chenille bed spread, and the “on-sale” leather couch.
So, what to do? Well, regular glass only blocks about 38% of the nasties, acrylic called OP3 blocks 98% but scratches, or there is Conservation Clear glass that blocks 97%, and then the stuff I was originally talking about, Museum; at 99%.
So what has this to do with counting calories, well I was eating that muffin, while I was looking over a seemingly totally ridiculous ad campaign touting that this company’s Museum glass now blocks 99% instead of the industry’s standard 97%.
And so it got me wondering; “how much money will they spend to convince me that 2% really makes that much difference?”
2%? Really? Now I’m waiting for that Sears ad.
