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North Carolina Town Defeats Big Solar's Plan To Suck Up the Sun (arstechnica.com)
mdsolar writes with this excerpt from Ars Technica: The citizens of Woodland, N.C. have spoken loud and clear: They don't want none of them highfalutin solar panels in their good town. They scare off the kids. "All the young people are going to move out," warned Bobby Mann, a local resident concerned about the future of his burg. Worse, Mann said, the solar panels would suck up all the energy from the Sun. Another resident -- a retired science teacher, no less -- expressed concern that a proposed solar farm would block photosynthesis, and prevent nearby plants from growing. Jane Mann then went on to add that there seemed to have been a lot of cancer deaths in the area, and that no one could tell her solar panels didn't cause cancer. "I want information," Mann said. "Enough is enough."
If one looks deeper, they'll find that this is really a zoning decision and has nothing to do with fear of solar. The town already has approved other solar farms which are actively being built, but they don't want another one in this particular area. The writer of an article chose to ignore the entirety of the panel discussion and select a few ignorant and irrelevant statements made during the proceedings just to give the people a rise. And thus the reaction we see here. It looks like there are more ignorant folks out there than just the few in this town.
And here we get to the one comment that needed to be made on the story and then close the article for comment.
The article itself was catered specifically to slashdotters who are emotionally disturbed and must be constantly reassured that they are better than other people. Now those people, feeling all good about themselves can have advertisements shown to them while they read comment after comment that soothes their ego and Dice Holdings gets to get richer.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Oh sure, it's a few selected quotes. But those quotes were still from people walking around freely.
In any normal place, people that amount of knowledge about the world would not be allowed to leave school without a teacher to accompany them, or a parent picking them up.