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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."
Srsly, I'm amazed that some people are clever enough to breathe.
I think there might be other reasons for young people moving away. Their narrow-minded elders, a town council willing to be swayed by nonsensical arguments, the simple pure idiocy that seems to prevail. The people who stay are happy with the situation (or just can't get out).
Oh arse
I also thought it was too insane to be true and looked up the local rag. Jane Mann really does come across as being utterly demented, her husband only marginally less so.
Mielipiteet omiani - Opinions personal, facts suspect.
Well, I'm worried about the fact that nobody can say for sure that solar panels don't cause cancer. What other things are they hiding from us? Like, nobody has assured us that solar panel aren't causing tsunamis or earthquakes, or price increases on beer.
Some day dumb people should be just set up to vote in fake elections. They won't know.
They already are. Not caught on to that yet?
"I said we should set up fake elections for the dumb people, so our elections WORK."
If your surname happens to be Rockefeller or something like that then you don't need to ask. That's been already the case for ages now.
I see bigotry for the southern US is alive and well here on Slashdot. Why look into all the facts when you can parrot this juicy headline.
Conservative, mod down for violating
Every community has these kooks. I've had the sad misfortune to be on a jury with one. It took all my willpower not to choke the ignorant bitch. We had a case where a car put on their turn indicator and stopped to let traffic go by before turning. The car behind them stopped and so did 3 others but one girl, very cute and sweet looking, plowed into the back of an elderly couple's car. She stated that she felt it wasn't the girl's fault because she probably wasn't looking. She said that shit completely sincere. It went on like that all day.
How goes the joke...
A UN poll asked the question "What, in your opinion, would be the best solution the problem of food shortages in the the rest of the world ?"
The poll was a miserable failure:
People in China, Russia, and North Korea didn't understand the word "opinion."
People in Canada and Western Europe didn't understand the word "shortages".
People in South America didn't understand the word "solution".
People in Australia didn't understand the word "problem".
People in Africa didn't understand the word "food"
And people in America didn't understand the phrase: "the rest of the world"
Unicode killed the ASCII-art *
Please, please don't judge North Carolina by these rubes. This dumb little town is about 100 miles from Research Triangle Park, the largest concentration of PhDs in the world. North Carolina is a progressive and beautiful state with the best climate in the eastern US. It has traditionally had the best public education system in the South.
Yes, we are currently in the clutches of a backwards Republican state government so there are lots of headlines about regressive policies. But this is an aberration ( the first Republican government in over 100 years) and it will not last long.
"He took a duck in the face at 250 knots." -- William Gibson, Pattern Recognition
And yet, what I do on my own land — build a solar plant or dig a lake or raise cows — should not be subject to other people's voting.
The whole idea of "zoning laws" and "permits" for this and that is absolutely contrary to freedom and property rights.
So you'd be perfectly happy with a strip mining pit next to your house? How about a toxic waste dump? Or a landfill? Hey it's my property, I can do whatever I want with it right?
If what you want to with your property won't impact others, great. But if it does, then they very much have a say in the matter.
~X~