North Carolina town rejects solar because it'll suck up sunlight and kill the plants

When the global warming shit hits the fan the wealthy will be first in line for government aid to relocate their posh beach-front property to the new beach front.

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They are big in Seattle, at least up to the last election cycleā€¦ Young kids full of hope and dreams yet to have the harsh reality of the world beat them down. Even way back when I was in high school it was obvious he was a higher order kook. Enjoyable to watch but not much more.

Actually, that would be ā€œevangelischā€ (which would correspond to the English word *evangelic); there is also the new import of the word ā€œevangelikalā€ from English ā€œevangelicalā€ to describe those American-style churches.

Well, Iā€™m in Austrian, not German, so I might have missed it if it is only relevant up north, but I have never heard of it.

In my experience, the most popular forms of bullshit around here currently include homeopathy, a few other ā€œalternative medicineā€ schools, and some post-modern pop philosophy of the ā€œthere is no such thing as objective realityā€ variety.
The Catholics are also silent on matters of science, so their remaining hardcore fringe (1%?) shouldnā€™t concern us now. The others are what I would call non-dogmatic delusions. They involve systematic misunderstandings of science, but no willful misunderstandings. I canā€™t think of a stereotypical German compound word for them either at this moment, but they need a different word than fundamentalist Christians.

According to the definition you have just given, I am afraid that I must admit defeat on behalf of my mother tongue. Your description seems to match exactly the concept of ā€œdoublethinkā€ described by Orwell in ā€œ1984ā€. Oceania, or Airstrip One to be more exact, has beaten us to it.

Donā€™t. Just donā€™t. Google Translate must only be used for translating from a language you donā€™t know to a language you do know. Otherwise, gibberish will ensue.

But there is a word ā€œGeistfeindlichkeitā€, from ā€œGeistā€ (spirit, mind) + ā€œFeindā€ (enemy) + a bunch of suffixes. ā€œHostility towards the mindā€, an attitude of being opposed to everything intellectual.
Unfortunately, this is not a word that I could apply to a learned Catholic theologian or to a post-modern philosopher who will try to explain to me that natural science is fundamentally irrational because it presupposes an objective reality, and we know from [citation of three separate philosophers Iā€™ve never heard of] that doesnā€™t exist.

You can, of course, have simple, or not-so-simple knowledge questions. But you can still play with synonyms. Just because you are likely to have heard it before and understood it, that doesnā€™t mean youā€™ll think of the right synonym at the right time.
There is indeed less room for puns (both homonyms and homographs) in German. My daily newspaperā€™s crossword puzzle likes to use deliberate spelling mistakes in the hints to make use of similar words. One part of the hint will fit a particular word, but there will be an extra ā€œtā€ in the spelling of the hint, and when you add that to the word, it will fit the rest of the hint.

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In an earlier and to my mind more mean-spirited earlier version of my post, I mentioned alternative medicine as another manifestation of German willful ignorance. Any contact with the German health system will provide ample evidence of this, and whether manifest as actual alternative therapies, prescription of teas and poultices for actual or imagined complaints, or the prescription of excessive treatments for less-critical issues (it works because itā€™s expensive) Iā€™ve never been able to work out whether this is doctors knowingly attempting to utilize the Placebo Effect, or whether they are as taken in as their clients.

Geistfeindlich is a super word.

Really Cory? This click baity troll the yokels headline is not correct. They already have 3 solar farms and chose not to rezone more property to allow a fourth solar farm. People were concerned that the town was becoming a wastelandā€¦ because while Solar Farms are good they donā€™t provide the donā€™t provide the same value as a library or maybe some other use of the land that would employ more people and they already have 3 solar farms. Why let any of that get in the way of a good lets make fun of a few slow people and get lots of clicks on our website. For some dumb ass reason I thought you were better/different and that I could pretty much trust you as a source of news but no instead you cherry picked a few loony statements and put that forth as a reason the ā€œtown rejects (itā€™s fourth) solar (project)ā€. Everyone here in the BoingBoing echo chamber couldnā€™t bother to look any deeper either. sigh

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Iā€™m not sure about the ā€œwillfulā€ part. Thatā€™s a straightforward case of believing in A even though a little bit of thinking would make you conclude that A is BS. Religiously-motivated BS is more like believing in A and knowing that logical thinking would lead you to believe A is BS, and therefore rejecting logical thinking because it is obviously evil.
Iā€™ll try to make up two different words for the two situations.

It can be both. Depends on the doctor. Some doctors might even realize that some people will demand that ā€œsomething must be doneā€, even when the best option is to just wait it out. Others are really just dumb.

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So one is disingenous dishonesty, and the other is disingenous incuriosity. Iā€™m not convinced thereā€™s a massive difference between the efforts to shore up a crumbling religious ideology, and similar efforts in defence of a bourgeois Weltbild.

Nope. The disingenuity/dishonesty you get from some relligious folks is because they subscribe to a moral imperative to believe. Believing that stuff is good in itself, so being a little dishonest to make it easier to believe for yourself and others can be justified. So they have to win the argument at all cost, never mind the truth.

With the alternative medicine people, we probably have to distinguish between the gullible and the dishonest. The latter get rich selling homeopathic globuli to the former, but Iā€™m sure there are some gullible-but-honest people among the sellers, too.
The fans of alternative medicine are trying hard to be more open-minded than us dogmatic believers in science. They just end up accepting bullshit. I havenā€™t caught them making up lies or engaging in unfair tactics to make their point more believable.

You sound really disappointed.

I can see where a region that is used to having many more people working on any given plot of land might find it difficult to move into the 21st century, now that more is automated and workers actually get paid now, but providing a necessary utility relatively effortlessly and cheap (after installation) is a valuable thing in and of itself.

Are you claiming that the insane comments made by the ā€œexpertā€ were misquoted?

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BTW, did you bother to read the local Roanoke newspaper article which was linked in the original post?

The solar farm companies are seeking placement around Woodland because it has an electrical substation nearby where the solar power generated by the panels can be added to the electrical grid. Strataā€™s proposal would have competed encircling the Woodland substation.

Later in the meeting, the Town Council voted for a complete moratorium on solar farms.

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If every council vote were judged in the media based on what one or two wingnut gadflies had said, a form of this article could be applied to nearly every local decision ever made. This is what happens in a public forum. Iā€™m getting solar and there are federal credits. I think the town council should take advantage of this kind of thing and support it. But I donā€™t believe any of them voted as they did because they actually think the panels will suck up all the sun power.

I also think thereā€™s a tendency for other media outside of the local paper to view everyone from the south as a bunch of hicks. That disrespect is not going to build the cooperation needed to fix climate change. Give the town council a little credit and maybe theyā€™ll come around.

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Are you talking about one of those cryptic English thingies? Iā€™m not sure they exist elsewhere so the problem doesnā€™t arise.

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Gosh, no I canā€™t handle those :smiley: I just do the Quick ones which just mix up synonyms and a bit of general knowledge.

The article this thread is about is from a local paper, presumably written by a local ā€œhickā€. The testimony at the town council caused them to vote for (and pass) a complete moratorium on solar farms despite having previously voted for 3 other solar farms which were in various stages of development at that point.

THAT is an example of the disrespect which is not going to build the cooperation needed to fix climate change.

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Theyā€™re not that difficult once you get used to the mind of individual compilers. Unfortunately I havenā€™t done them since I stopped reading papers (about the time they were getting rid of broadsheets) and the print copy Guardian became a fashion accessory.

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A related theory (yet to be comprehensively disproven) is that waving flags, leaves/branches/trees, tents etc as well as waves on water push air around and cause wind.

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Itā€™s all the fault of those fucking butterflies.

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Nope. Iā€™ve seen butterflies flying when thereā€™s no wind. In fact, now I think of it, it seems that butterflies actually absorb wind (suck it up, if you will). It is never windy when butterflies are around. Coincidence? I think not!

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Thatā€™s some good science youā€™re doing, I tell you what.

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