Byron & Phoebus attempted translation

[mikebailey at speakeasy.net]

probably more than a little iffy, but here goes (apologies to real German speakers for inevitable mistakes)

Full of the bulb:

The Australians have condemned them to be turned off, because 
they endanger our planet.  We will run out of light bulbs.
...
A bulb that doesn't burn out is eerie to people.  Thomas Pynchon
wrote of the immortal bulb Byron in several pages of his 1973 work,
Gravity's Rainbow.  Byron simply keeps burning, while all the
other bulbs around him burn out.  So he comes to the attention of
the light bulb cartel Phoebus, which controls the burning-span of
lightbulbs, and they want to melt him down.  Byron escapes, and
tries to unite the bulbs of the world against the dangerous cartel.
It (his plot?) collapses and (he?) has to watch helplessly while
the cartel shortens the life of his companions.

Stolen Lifetime

Byron isn't just a notion - the cartel really exists.  The bulb-rulers
constantly steal the lifetimes of lightbulbs.  In Germany, a bulb
usually lasts about 1000 hours.  "The lamp manufacturers have adapted
their process to this goal, in order to make a profit," says the
sociologist Markus Krajewki.  The technology has long existed to make
bulbs last longer.  Anyway, there's a Chinese bulb that burns 5000
hours, but the cartel won't import them.

Krajewski has investigated the history of lightbulbs: on the
24th of December, 1924, Phoebus founded regional cartels to
set the world market divisions, prices, and lifetimes of bulbs.

Within a year the average bulb's lifetime was shortened from 5000 hours
to 2000.  After the 2nd World War, a 1000 hour bulb was mandated. 
The cartel that was trying to break Byron really existed, and some
maintain that it still does.