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eople who don't share your viewpoint aren't idiots

When did he say that? The truth is, most voters are generally uneducated and rely on mainstream media to provide them with sufficient information, simply because they either don't have time, or don't care enough to research things for themselves. As such, they're going to pick up on mainstream headlines, and those headlines are manufactured by the underhanded tactics of the opposing party. Hell, just look at the percentage of Americans who *still* think Barack Obama is a frickin' muslim (answer: 1 in 10, according to the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, which is a non-partisan organization).

Similarly, I bet there's a shockingly high number of people who believe that Bush was somehow complicit in the 9/11 attacks.

The fact is, people are, as an aggregate, stupid and easily duped. And, the sad corollary is that evil, underhanded campaign tactics *work*.

because the past was so unhealthy.

Actually, yes. The overall measure health seems to be measured by is life expectancy. It is significantly higher now than in the past for most parts of the US, and continues to climb as medicine and health issues are solved. Take a look at this Map (and RTFA!) and make your statement again. As Georgia (and its neighbors) remain in the past, so does the avg life expectancy relative to the rest of the US. One of the main suggested causes is health education, something most other states have improved upon year over year. Georgia is at the bottom. Try the stats page (pdf) google turns up as hit #1 on "Georgia Education Rank", Ga ranks in the 40s for most things that count, and top10 where it makes you wonder how that could be (ie: 9th largest, 5th fastest growing state, but 49th High School graduation rate and 44th childrens health). Georgia is behind, its painfully obvious.

Tm

...high rates of obesity (soul food), diabetes (sweet tea), and heart disease....

Having just moved from there, to the Bay Area, Ca....
Yes, Ga is unhealthy. Alot of the blame can also be put on the government of the state, which continues to push for more and wider highways (as if 16 lanes isnt enough), continue to allow and support the majority of power plants running on fossil fuels, mainly coal and including 3 of the dirtiest in the US, with two in the top 3 of that list. This, combined with naturally high humidity, ultra high pollen counts and high temperatures makes the air quality suck, putting Atlanta in 4th for most challenging place to live with asthma and consistently in the Top Ten smoggiest cities. This keeps people inside. Going anywhere basically means driving there as sprawl and the resulting proliferation of more roads without increased mass transit or even bike lanes(again, gvmt sponsored), reckless drivers in large vehicles thanks to (previously, and relatively) cheap gas and the whole "southern/redneck" bit that leans towards F250s with 12"lift on mud tires, and the horrid air make it difficult to impossible to walk or bike anywhere (outside of Down/Mid Town Atl) for fear of your life. So people tend to sit on their fat asses in their offices all day and eat at one of about 20 McDonads or Waffle Houses in the 2mi radius of their home (after driving there of course)... not that I miss having a 24h eatery nearby (I miss my WaHo and Marietta Diner!). Add to all that that NASCAR is a "Sport" in Ga, and as such, "exercising" consists of sitting in bleachers (or on the sofa), smoking, drinking budweiser and eating chilli cheese dogs while watching cars go in circles.

Alot of this could be fixed by improving mass-transit, curbing Sprawl (which is what really caused the drought) and improving Atlanta's Bikability. Generally getting people out of their cars and walking or biking places. MARTA's subway line only goes to about 3 useful places: the airport, downtown, and perimeter mall, while a majority of people live in Cobb County, which rejected having anything to do with a Marta rail line (think: "It will bring in the colored people to steal our TV's!").

Ga is way behind in most rankings of things as well: the Gov'ner has repeatedly struck down attempts to allow Sunday sales of any alcoholic beverage (outside of a restaurant), the most recent time saying it would teach "better time management," thus keeping Georgia one of 3 states still having such arcane blue laws. The state is kept in the past though laws like this, as well as the control the churches have over it and its citizens, which al

This is poisoning the available information...

Hmm. If googlebombing is "poisoning the available information", so is any act of speech taken with effectiveness of communication in mind.

This is no different than cranking out handbills noting that McCain wants to overturn Roe v. Wade or John McCain thinks it would be okay if U.S. troops stayed in Iraq for another hundred years. No one is engaging in slander, libel, rumormongering, or censorship here; they're spreading true and relevant information.

I know martinw89 linked a page containing all of the links, but in case that was too confusing, I better link them again:

Article 1
Article 2
Article 3
Article 4
Article 5
Article 6
Article 7
Article 8
Article 9

Hope that helps

Ok, USAToday says it was in Albany.

He was one of the actors who provided motions that were fed into the computer to generate orcs and elves during CGI battle sequences.

Five seconds with Google would have told you the same.

I think you should take in a few of the "innocents"

http://www.allheadlinenews.com/articles/7010883859
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-06-27-russia-gitmo_N.htm
http://abcnews.go.com/International/wireStory?id=4033420
http://www.rferl.org/featuresarticle/2006/03/fbc50158-46a9-4921-80db-195b1fe720b8.html
http://www.france24.com/en/20080508-suicide-bomber-former-guantanamo-detainee-usa-iraq-mosul-kuwaiti
http://archives.econ.utah.edu/archives/cubanews/2007w46/msg00251.htm

So once you've got Omar Bin Whackjob and a few of his friends settled into your home, why not pick up a few 100lbs of Fertalizer and leave him your credit card so he can rent a truck?

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/news/2005-06-07-office-fit_x.htm
"Sitting at their desks is about the last thing workers would do in Dr. James Levine's office of the future.
Dr. James Levine keeps a 1 mph pace on his treadmill while checking his e-mail.at the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.
Instead of being sedentary in front of their computers, they'd stand. But instead of standing still, they'd walk on a treadmill. And instead of meeting around a conference table, they'd talk business while walking laps on a track."

But just a standing desk with a tall stool to alternate with can work wonders for back pain and good posture.
The walking is probably better on the knees though.

I think Romney would be a good choice, and is quite likely. I'm totally with you on grid-lock. That's why McCain was my second pick over Hillary originally, up until he said he wants to appoint more judges like Roberts and Alito.

Both Roberts and Alito basically lied to Congress to get appointed. That McCain specifically points to them as his examples of good judges really turns me off. I recently put McCain in 3rd place after Hillary over this issue.

Whoa- more and more the democrats are the party of the cities.

compare this: http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap970830.html
and this: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm

You can babble about whatever you want, but at least back it up with something. And most of us here at slashdot know that the blue areas contain, say : Silicon Valley, NY, etc. The things that separate america from the rest of the world. How come?

Again, I'm not speaking in absolutes. What I am saying is that just as someone living in Iceland hasn't the slightest clue about the best way to farm macadamia nuts, people who rarely venture into the hinterlands need to be aware of the fact that they aren't as well equipped to determine their fate. Should some bean-counter sitting in a corner office buy a flat screwdriver because it's cheaper when the mechanic down on the factory floor is the person who knows he needs a Philips? Sure, open space is a good thing. Better is Ag Pres as exists in Pennsylvania. But in my experience it's the people who have lived there for many years who push for it if for no other reason than to keep the thousand-houses per acre developers at bay. But back to my original point which is that the voting results by county is much more telling than the results by state. Here's a link: http://www.usatoday.com/news/politicselections/vote2004/countymap.htm There are exceptions of course but a large percentage of the counties that voted Democrat are clustered around major metropolitan areas.

I think that the revenue from the tourists is a good thing. It helps keep the Russian space program going, which will be the only way to get to/from the station for 5+ years after 2010.

From http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/clinton/clin826.htm How impeachment works: The Constitution gives the House of Representatives the power of impeachment - the constitutional equivalent of an indictment - and gives the Senate the power to try all impeachments. The first step in removing the president is the approval of articles of impeachment by the House Judiciary Committee. A majority vote of the full House is then needed to impeach and send the case to trial in the Senate. The chief justice of the United States presides at the trial, and a two-thirds majority of those senators present is needed to convict. Conviction results in automatic removal from office. Most of the house and two thirds of the senate are needed, and they have to decise that he has committed a crime. If so, the person being impeached will be removed from office and the next in command takes the post. *shudders at a Cheney presidency*

To put the performance of the machine in perspective, Thomas P. D'Agostino, the administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, said that if all six billion people on earth used hand calculators and performed calculations 24 hours a day and seven days a week, it would take them 46 years to do what the Roadrunner can in one day.

http://www.usatoday.com/news/index/nns25.htm

Bloody socks:

Pair of dark, crumpled socks found at the foot of Simpson's bed; DNA tests found the genetic markers of Simpson and his ex-wife.

Prosecution: contended this directly linked a victim to Simpson.

Defense: suggested socks were planted at house by police, then blood was put on socks later at the police lab to frame Simpson; most compelling evidence of tampering is that some blood soaked all the way through one sock to other side, which it shouldn't have done if a foot was in it.
Bloody Bronco:

Small spot of blood found near driver's outside door handle of Simpson's Ford Bronco; other blood found smeared inside on console, door, steering wheel and carpeting; DNA tests showed some of the blood apparently a mixture with genetic markers of Simpson and the victims.

Prosecution: said Simpson drove Bronco to and from crime scene.

Defense: challenged interpretation of DNA tests, particularly those suggesting a genetic match to Goldman in a mixture; noted that the genetic material of an unknown person was found in the steering wheel blood; suggested police planted some of the blood; elicited testimony that the Bronco was entered at least twice by unauthorized people while it sat in a police impound yard.

WILLIE FORD, police videographer: Filmed items inside Simpson's house day after the killings; saw no socks at foot of bed.

FREDRIC RIEDERS, founder of National Medical Services laboratory in Willow Grove, Pa.: Detected EDTA, chemical used by laboratories to preserve blood samples, on samples from sock and back gate. Jan. 8, 1997:

As I said before, planting of evidence is quite common in certain police forces. It makes the investigation simpler. The way it works is that the police picks evidence from the crime scene and places it in a way that connects their main suspect to the crime.

Personally, I think he is absolutely 100% guilty, but the theory and timeline proposed by police is not quite right in that he might have had help from a third person, and that he must have washed up in a place other than his home, since very little blood was found in his house, while he was supposed to be soaked on it

Brain damaged caused by lead, mercury, fluoride and other chemicals do far more to increase crime rates than music and video games.

And unlike the theory behind music and video games causing crime, the theory that lead poisoning causes crime is hard science.

The evidence is clear, lead in the environment causes brain damage, and damaged brains are criminal brains.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/07/07/AR2007070701073.html

http://www.usatoday.com/news/health/2007-10-28-lead-crime_N.htm

http://www.independent.co.uk/environment/green-living/ban-on-leaded-petrol-has-cut-crime-rates-around-the-world-398151.html

Pundits come and pundits go, but one group has quietly predicted the winner of the presidential election every four years since the Eisenhower administration: kids.

Most political junkies won't give it the time of day, but the Weekly Reader presidential poll of schoolchildren has pegged every winner since 1956.

Would not surpirse me if iphone were now exclusively for Verizon.

How about this and this

"The drama involves a woman lobbyist who may have helped to write key telecom legislation."

uh-huh. Methinks there's lots of Verizon money creating a green mist around McCain's head.

Consoles have parental controls as well:

Here is handy instructions for each one:

http://www.usatoday.com/tech/columnist/kimkomando/2006-12-28-parental-controls-consoles_x.htm

They went down by over 14% in the last three months alone.

A minor dip in a long-term trend.

In 2000, the median value of an American single family home was $119,600. After the recent slump, the median value of a home in the first quarter of 2008 is $196,300. A 64% increase in eight years - I'm pretty sure salaries haven't risen that fast.

I purchased my house in 1995, for $130,000. Houses on my street - smaller houses than mine - have gone for upward of $260,000 in the past few years, and houses in the neighborhood have gone for over $300,000. Salaries haven't doubled in that time.

Yes, if you believed "real estate can only go up!" and bought too much house, or fell for a balloon mortgage, it sucks to be you. But that doesn't change the fact that housing prices have risen much faster than salaries over the past decade or so.

Oh come on, that's ridiculous! Spreading money around flat makes no sense...

Just a quick example of why:

Estimates show that about 27% of Medicare's annual $327 billion budget goes to care for patients in their final year of life. (from here: http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/health/2006-10-18-end-of-life-costs_x.htm). 15k dollars might make a slight difference in helping a healthy household get through an easy year, but for older folks it's not even close to replacing medicare.

The submitter quotes the most frightening parts of the article and our current "trade partner" China is well positioned to spy. We trust them to make equipment and non free software like Cisco routere has proved itself impossible to check.

Still, most of the hacks are common and anyone could do it. Time and time again we read about autopropagating botnets for Windows and how they cover large parts of the internet. When that system is used on corporate and government desktops, anyone can exploit it.

What do you mean they didn't even try to get Verizon? Verizon rejected Apple iPhone deal - USATODAY.COM...

The American Medical Association restricts the supply of MDs, and by law you can't get most medical care from anyone who isn't an MD.

AC is correct: you cannot be a "realtor." You can be a "REALTOR" (Registered trademark) if the National Association of Realtors permits it.

Both restrict capacity of the labor in their industries. This is known to create at best Cournot competition. Meanwhile, a market that is not capacity constrained has Betrand competition - where the mere threat of entry can keep prices near their minimum. Cournot competition reduces economic efficiency (id est, screws you out of money).

I'd estimate the average working American is getting "screwed" (how much he pays less what a competitive market would cost) by about $6,000 per year (of the approximately $16,000/yr of medical expense he and his company pay). Your paycheck is probably light by $500 per month due to the AMA tax.

It is also worth noting that a supply shortage of saved lives is equivalent to preventable deaths. This artificial shortage raises prices of having your life saved while simultaneously reducing your odds of having your life saved.

The AMA and NAR are de facto monopsonists, restricting the ease of health care and real estate purchase respectively, and using your medical bills and need for housing to make their members artificially richer.

Don't believe that doctors are getting paid "too much"? See if you can find the trend in the Forbes best paying jobs in America:
1. Anesthesiologist
2. Surgeon
3. Obstetrician
4. Orthodontist
5. Oral Surgeon
6. Internist
7. Prosthodontist
8. Psychiatrist
9. General Practitioner
10. Chief Executive Officer
11. Physician and Surgeon, Other
12. Pediatrician
13. Dentist
14. Airline Pilot
15. Podiatrist
16. Lawyer

Productivity in the US has been going up steadily over the last decade, but real median income has gone down. Where does all that extra money go that you're not getting paid? Your company spends it on health insurance, most of which ends up in the hands of MDs.

OPEC dominates the trillion dollar global petroleum industry. The AMA dominates the two trillion dollar national medical industry. Politicians blame OPEC for our economy because doctors write big checks.

I guess that is why they passed this law.

Or for that matter, a candidate/party who supports disenfranchisement. Democrats, the party who WON'T let you vote as a form of punishment.

You mean "a" party who won't let your vote count as a form of punishment. The Republican party does the same thing.

Such a wonderful 2-party system we have in America. I'm just waiting to see who the Libertarian will be. Maybe there will be someone worth voting for.

"Worth voting for" depends on what state you're in. If you're in a swing state, your vote actually has a one in a million chance of deciding the election, and there are enough differences between McCain and Obama that you may conclude that voting for one or the other is worth sucking up your principles even if there's a good third party candidate on the ballot.

I'm in Texas, on the other hand. With a one in a googol chance of my vote deciding the Presidential election, I'm free to vote my conscience since I'll be "throwing my vote away" no matter who gets it. The stupidity of the Electoral College partially cancels out the stupidity of plurality voting, hoorah! Unfortunately this year the "Libertarian" is going to be Bob Barr, a man whose commitment to liberty probably would have meant more if he'd discovered it before getting kicked out of Congress.

and have at least a modicum of academic freedom, contrasting with the poor researchers in TFA in the UK.

There are plenty of stories that show US academics have no more freedom, some reported here before.

Can you please stop equating every ideology with every other. After all if you say that then you are evil too, since whatever ideology you have, it is evil by this standard.

Sure, anyone can LIE about his intentions and use any religion to achieve personal ends. Sure. But there is also the truth. There are facts one can look up.

Obviously nobody vouches for the behavior of EVERY last man (or woman) who claims to follow some ideology. However for most ideologies one can easily assemble facts. A trivial example might be that any true socialist is to take the bus, and not to have his own car. If not, one is obviously not a principled socialist. That just about every socialist politician have multiple personal cars does not mean socialism allows for everyone to have a personal car, it is vehemenently opposed to it. Likewise, Al Gore isn't in favor of lowering HIS OWN co2 output, and thus isn't really concerned about the environment, at least not in principle. He's a career politician who will switch sides if he deems it wise. Does that mean that environmentalism doesn't have a message ? Does it mean that environmentalism wants to give everyone a personal private jet ? Obviously not. It exists, and it's message is quite clear, despite the fact that it's main proponent is such a big "environmental sinner". Real socialist exist (e.g. in Israel, the settler movement), and real enviromentalists exist.

The same can be said about a "true" Christian and a "true" muslim. They exist. Not merely someone who claims to be Christian or muslim, but one who truly is, and looks to the bible (or quran) for guidance. Those are books, who haven't been changed for X years (bible : 1900 years, quran : about 60 years now), and are considered constant. Their contents do not change, and cannot be turned into just anything. There may be some room for interpretation, but certainly not as much as you claim there is. The ten commandments are VERY clear, and their meaning, even if they are currently poorly translated, is a known constant for nearly 4000 years now.

Therefore "Christianity" (meaning Christians who follow the bible) will not use violence to achieve world domination in a honest interpretation (and by definition, people like that are honest). Islam will. Jesus did not attempt to conquer, nor did he kill people who doubted him. Muhammad DID, and those acts are accepted as sacred acts in the islamic faith.

Killing people for criticizing islam is the normal case in islam, not the exception. Google for "Asma bint marwan", and you will read that the islamic prophet sent out assasins in the night. Therefore, that is not an unacceptable act in islam, just like anything Jesus did is per definition not unacceptable (including insulting a woman (and her husband btw) for getting divorced, however everyone knows the story about the stoning, and utterly shaming a woman in public for "sleeping around", is perfectly acceptable Christian behavior, and this will never change, violence against a woman for that is unacceptable, and that too, will never change).

Well here is the islamic version of the stoning story :

(same story as in the bible until the judgement is made, and continues) Allah's Messenger (may peace be upon him) pronounced judgment about both of them and they were stoned. Abdullah b. 'Umar said: I was one of those who stoned them, and I saw him (the Jew) protecting her (the Jewess) with his body.

If you criticize this action, muslims are to try to kill you (which is specified in another hadith, see again the Asma Bint Marwan story). Needless to say, this law is still applied in many muslim countries, including Iran and a few others.

Note also that Christians (and ... "mostly" Jews, which today means nearly all of them) try to respect what they call God's law THEMSELVES.

In summer 1952, a Remington Rand executive approached CBS News chief Sig Mickelson and said the Univac might be able to plot early election-night returns against past voting patterns and spit out a predicted winner. Mickelson and anchor Walter Cronkite thought the claim was a load of baloney but figured it would at least be entertaining to try it on the air.

On election night, the 16,000-pound Univac remained at its home in Philadelphia. In the TV studio, CBS set up a fake computer -- a panel embedded with blinking Christmas lights and a teletype machine. Cronkite sat next to it. Correspondent Charles Collingwood and a camera crew set up in front of the real Univac.

By 8:30 p.m. ET -- long before news organizations of the era knew national election outcomes -- Univac spit out a startling prediction. It said Eisenhower would get 438 electoral votes to Stevenson's 93 -- a landslide victory. Because every poll had said the race would be tight, CBS didn't believe the computer and refused to air the prediction.

I just glanced over the channel lineup for my area (I honestly didn't know what NBC was offering), and I'm in favor crappy TV networks self regulating themselves further out of my view.

It isn't much a surprise, given the lack of NBC on the chart.
/half-joking, half-not

People still RENT their phones...
http://www.clientleasingservices.com/

750,000 of them, according to usatoday...
http://www.usatoday.com/news/offbeat/2006-09-14-phone_x.htm

The article is about Child Porn, NOT GGW

For someone to have pictures to look at, someone had to take those pictures. To me, both parties victimized the child and are not equally sick, but very close.

Infrequent? What rock have you been living under?

Today, just about all "computer forensic examiners" in the US spend 50-80% of their time on child porn cases. This is well over 10,000 people working for local, state and federal law enforcement. Child porn cases are the #1 workload item for Army CID.

Yes, this means there is enough work for 10,000 people to spend all day, every day doing nothing but digging out child porn from seized computers.

I do not know the number of convictions in the last year, but I'm sure there have been thousands of them. Just US Attorneys did 1700 cases in 2007, which is federal level alone.

It is not a trivial problem and is absolutely not "infrequent" in any regard.

The government wouldn't build its botnet by infecting innocent people's computers like criminal hackers, Williamson wrote. Instead, the military could use PCs it was going to throw away. And it could expand that botnet's computing horsepower by implanting its code on other government computers.

Fixed that for you.

Remember, if they want white poon, they have to rape a female US soldier. Who will then get punished if she raises a stink about it.
Examples: http://www.usatoday.com/news/opinion/editorials/2004-02-05-our-view-usat_x.htm
http://mibodegaonline.com/2008/04/04/another-us-female-raped-by-fellow-soldiers-kbr-rape-case/
Google for Jamie Leigh Jones, etc...

Whatever one thinks of the war in Iraq, it has forced us to prioritize scientific and engineering issues we previously had not emphasized. As they say, necessity is the mother of invention. For example:

Techniques to defeat highly asymmetric warfare tactics such as the use of IEDs. There's been a lot of money pouring into trying to solve that problem, because solutions will save lives. Google "counter IED" and you get an idea of the communications and jamming technologies involved.

Trauma medicine has been getting a lot of innovation. For example, the Pentagon has a 250 million dollar effort to create the ability to regrow limbs, noses, etc of wounded soldiers. The HemCon bandage, a portable heart-lung machine, and improvements in treatment methodologies are discussed here.

Materials science has been getting the kind of attention it hasn't seen in a long time. One example with obvious civilian application is the push for novel flame-retardant woven and knitted fabrics.

Looking more to the future, the war's need for intelligence from foreign-language sources has driven DARPA to fund automatic translation research. That's a real tough problem, but if they can solve it has enormous civilian applications.

The list goes on an on. I'm not saying it justifies a war, but war certainly does drive scientific and engineering research to solve thorny real-world problems.

AL Gore has no need for a new commission, his family's a large investor in Oxy, Occidental Petroleum.

You forget the main point of any realistic dystopian society: at least initially, you have to allow a few dissidents to "prove" that dissent is allowed and that the people are "free". All the while, the people in power are concentrating their power and limiting the media's right to cover dissent by uncovering dissidents and getting them canned, limiting which press have access to key government events, planting people in editorial/analyst/writer positions, bribing commentators, and outing confidential sources, undermining the credibility of the media and endangering the lives of dissenters. I could probably go on for several pages like this.

We can get away with criticism because we are relatively unimportant and unable to create a credible threat against the power structure, whether through force, through block voting, or through running for public office. Someone important criticizes the administration, though, and bad things happen....

You forget the main point of any realistic dystopian society: at least initially, you have to allow a few dissidents to "prove" that dissent is allowed and that the people are "free". All the while, the people in power are concentrating their power and limiting the media's right to cover dissent by uncovering dissidents and getting them canned, limiting which press have access to key government events, planting people in editorial/analyst/writer positions, bribing commentators, and outing confidential sources, undermining the credibility of the media and endangering the lives of dissenters. I could probably go on for several pages like this.

We can get away with criticism because we are relatively unimportant and unable to create a credible threat against the power structure, whether through force, through block voting, or through running for public office. Someone important criticizes the administration, though, and bad things happen....

"How many year (nee: decades) will it take to pay one of those off?"

Typical supercritical cycle gasified coal plants average around 625MW output. Here's a typical example:

http://www.usatoday.com/money/industries/energy/environment/2007-12-26-coal-main_N.htm

I'll take a wild stab and guess they'll average 400MW output (the wind farm in the article is expected to average about 2MW output). That equates to 3,500 GWh per year, or about 200 times as much as the wind farm.

"As for maintainence costs; how much does it cost to maintain a coal fired plant? How much does it cost to maintain a nuclear plant? How much does it cost to handle the waste product from same? How much ongoing environmental impact is there?"

This was easy to find:
http://www.nucleartourist.com/basics/costs.htm
$30 per MWh, or $0.03 per KWh.

Over 10 years that 2 billion amounts to 5.7 cents per KWh, plus 3 cents operating cost, yielding 9 cents per kilowatt hour for a payoff time of 10 years. Or less.

"I'm no tree hugger by any stretch, but the fact that a town was able to generate an annual surplus of natural energy with no environmental by-products is a pretty decent little achievement."
Agreed, but NOT AT THOSE PRICES!

FYI, a little research yesterday indicated John Deere is using Suzlon 1.25 MW S64 wind turbines. Other projects seem to average 2 million per turbine plus tower construction costs and transport. So I'm guessing that someone slipped a decimal point somewhere and the cost is 9 million, not 90 million.

And at 90 million, over 10 years, that's 7 cents per KWh plus maintenance and interest, which sounds a LOT better to me. Meaning we'll probably see more of them.

How many birds have the wind turbines killed so far?

http://www.usatoday.com/news/nation/2005-01-04-windmills-usat_x.htm/

you go ahead and get a permit to do all that bush did on a historical home in gore's neighborhood.

go ahead. I'm sure no one will mind. Or will they?

Now, go to bumfuck texas, and you'll find you can do pretty much whatever your ROI calculator and oil buddies tell you to do.

You can make the argument that gore shouldn't have bought that particular house in that particular neighborhood, but you'd have to know why he was there to make that kind of determination. Generally, people determine where they want to live first, and where to live in that area second.

Yahoo's photo-sharing site is not #1 but is pretty popular, too.