Month: December 2015

We looked for solar panel farms in Woodland, N.C., but didn't find any. (credit: Google Maps)

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."

These comments were reported not in The Onion, but rather by the Roanoke-Chowan News-Herald. They came during a Woodland Town Council meeting in which Strata Solar Company sought to rezone an area northeast of the town, off of US Highway 258, to build a solar farm. The council not only rejected the proposal, it went a step further, voting for a complete moratorium on solar farms.

Streetlights in Minnesota are just captivating. (credit: FX)

Warning: this piece contains minor spoilers to several episodes of the show. 

By now everyone knows Fargo's famous disclaimer—"This is a true story." The Coen Brothers' 1996 classic starts the same way each episode of the TV series it inspired on FX does, but just because something is true doesn't mean it can't get a little fuzzy or downright weird. And the currently-in-progress-season two is playing with pop culture's favorite oddity—aliens. UFOs, technically.

Then again, were there UFOs in this season's penultimate episode last Monday? The cop (Lou Solverson, played by Patrick Wilson), the villain (Angus Sampson as Bear Gerhardt), and everyone in-between sure seemed to stop mid-firefight to stare at something, but only the in-over-her-head beautician (Kirsten Dunst as Peggy Blumquist) said anything: "It's just a flying saucer, hon." This is the same person who hallucinated a Lifespring coach in her basement one week earlier.

Fargo, obviously, is not a true story. The people are made up, the intercity travel times fudged, the Midwest accents exaggerated. But among other things making its current season an all-time great is that its brand of aliens feels different. Rather than having any scientific or nefarious purposes or creature-like appearances, Fargo's aliens are... a mystery. That's what makes this season the most realistic pop culture depiction of extraterrestrial life to date.

(credit: Nick Berardini)

One of the best bits of the modern world is the way that anything you buy online inevitably comes with a bunch of user reviews telling you why your purchase does or doesn't suck. Sometimes the compulsion to leave such a review can strike even in situations that most of us would probably feel are a little inappropriate, with employees of Taser International, maker of the occasionally lethal stun guns, apparently the latest to leave reviews without the kind of disclosure that professional reviews might be expected to contain.

Some one-star reviews posted on Amazon and iTunes for Killing Them Safely, a documentary film looking at the Taser stun guns and the safety issues around them, appear to have been posted by Taser International employees, using their own names. The dangers of Tasers are contested by the manufacturer and law enforcement agencies deploying the weapons, and the employees seem to be taking to the user reviews to express their dissatisfaction with the film.

The film's director, Nick Berardini, spotted one dubious review on iTunes, purporting to come from one Uriel Halioua. The review complains that the film is "poorly narrated"—in true user review form, Halioua appears not to have even watched the film, as Berardini says it has no narration—and concludes that it's "swill." The name Uriel Halioua is an uncommon one, but one person who does appear to be blessed with it just happens to work as a pre-sales systems engineer at Taser International. Peculiarly, that review seems now to have been deleted and reposted by a different user, "BobRossRocks."