# Just Stupid People Things **URL:** \ **Category:** The BBQ Pit\ **Created:** [December 13, 2015, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361 "2015-12-13T21:30:04Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/1 "2015-12-13T21:30:04Z")
Stupid People pissing you off? Here’s your chance to share the misery. At the moment, the Stupid People of Woodland, NC, are on my list. ([cite](http://www.roanoke-chowannewsherald.com/2015/12/08/woodland-rejects-solar-farm/?utm_source=fark&utm_medium=website&utm_content=link)). Woodland and the neighboring areas have several existing solar panel farms. The Woodland town council was considering a proposal to zone some more lands for solar farms. The proposal was defeated, however, because … oh, it’s all so damned Stupid. Here, let me just quote this: > [@](#): > > Jane Mann said she is a local native and is concerned about the plants that make the community beautiful. > > She is a retired Northampton science teacher and is concerned that photosynthesis, which depends upon sunlight, would not happen and would keep the plants from growing. She said she has observed areas near solar panels where the plants are brown and dead because they did not get enough sunlight. > > She also questioned the high number of cancer deaths in the area, saying no one could tell her that solar panels didn’t cause cancer. > > \ > > Bobby Mann said he watched communities dry up when I-95 came along and warned that would happen to Woodland because of the solar farms. > > “You’re killing your town,” he said. “All the young people are going to move out.” > > He said the solar farms would suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland. There may be legit concerns about wanting a diversified industrial base around the town, but no, Stupid People, the solar panels are not going to suck up all the sunlight and cause you cancer. ---
**Author:** ![Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/happy_fun_ball/32/17664_2.png) [@Happy\_Fun\_Ball](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Happy_Fun_Ball)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 9:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/2 "2015-12-13T21:34:27Z")
+1 ---
**Author:** ![raventhief](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/raventhief/32/4_2.png) [@raventhief](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/raventhief)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 9:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/3 "2015-12-13T21:51:04Z")
:eek: That woman quoted was a science teacher ??? ---
**Author:** ![Dendarii\_Dame](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/bbce88/32.png) [@Dendarii\_Dame](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Dendarii_Dame)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 9:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/4 "2015-12-13T21:53:45Z")
A neighbor (from where I used to live) had a MIL who believed that Earth’s weather and earthquakes were all caused by astronauts walking on the moon. She wasn’t, however, a science teacher. ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_jeffrey_lebowski/32/215_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Jeffrey_Lebowski)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 10:11pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/5 "2015-12-13T22:11:54Z")
Serious question - aren’t some ecosystems decimated by solar panels farms? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/the_other_jeffrey_lebowski/32/215_2.png) [@The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Other_Jeffrey_Lebowski)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 10:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/6 "2015-12-13T22:13:48Z")
nm ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 10:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/7 "2015-12-13T22:33:04Z")
> [@The\_Other\_Jeffrey\_Lebowski](#): > > Serious question - aren’t some ecosystems decimated by solar panels farms? All industrial development is potentially a problem for the local wildlife. If they built oil rigs there, or paved it over and put in an office park or manufacturing plant in, there’d also be ecosystem destruction. Even if they decided to grow lettuce, or tobacco, or whatever they grow in their corner of the world, it would inevitably alter the local environment. It’s important to do environmental impact studies on any new development. This is also relates to what I said, about wanting a diverse industry base around a city. That’s important economically - but also environmentally. And I strongly believe that protecting the environment of a location is every bit as important as protecting the economics. Maybe moreso. You can comeback from an economic crash a lot easier than, for example, replacing established bogs and wetlands. But short of leaving the land fallow, anything they do there is potentially going to cause problems, environmentally. Regardless - cities need industry. It’s a tradeoff, and as I said there are legit concerns to be discussed here. But while acknowledging that unrestrained industrial use is problematic, the environmental problems inherent in solar industrial farms are not caused because the panels hog all the sun light and there won’t be enough energy for businesses. That’s the specific bit of Stupid that I’m pitting, atm. ---
**Author:** ![Novalyne](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/n/22d042/32.png) [@Novalyne](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Novalyne)\ **Post date:** [December 13, 2015, 11:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/8 "2015-12-13T23:57:15Z")
> [@raventhief](#): > > :eek: That woman quoted was a science teacher ??? I’m a science teacher, and I’m not surprised. I used to teach in Texas, and I met countless biology teachers who did not believe in evolution. :mad: ---
**Author:** ![Senegoid](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/senegoid/32/6606_2.png) [@Senegoid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Senegoid)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 2:57am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/9 "2015-12-14T02:57:29Z")
Of course, solar panels do soak up all the sunlight right where the panel is at, creating a shadow on the ground underneath. That is, a solar farm occupies a large amount of ground space that can’t really be used for anything else, and the ecosystem is damaged for at least as long as the solar farm is present. What might not be well-understood, neither by supporters nor opponents, is how much ground space a solar farm needs to cover, in order to generate a desired amount of electric power. Imagine a row of houses, or one-story office buildings, with solar panels on the roof. One reads estimates from time to time, suggesting that such panels could supply some substantial portion of that building’s electrical needs. Personally, I think solar panels on roof tops are a good idea, since they obviously don’t waste any space that you were going to use for anything else anyway. But note, this doesn’t scale well (actually, doesn’t scale _at all_) for multi-story buildings. Imagine now a ten-story office building, that you are trying to power with solar. A ten-story building, with a given footprint, only has the same roof space as a one-story building with similar footprint. If you could develop enough solar power for one floor of the building, you still need outside power for the other nine floors. Now try to imagine doing that with solar. You would need a solar farm that occupies ten times the footprint of that ten-story building to generate enough power for all ten floors. If you have a 20- or 30-story building (like in a large-city downtown). You’d have to pave over the whole Mojave Desert for that. This might work for a smallish town with lots of open space surrounding. But it really can’t be a total solution to our electrical needs on a large scale. It can be a significant contribution. ---
**Author:** ![kaylasdad99](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/kaylasdad99/32/3398_2.png) [@kaylasdad99](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/kaylasdad99)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 3:20am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/10 "2015-12-14T03:20:32Z")
Plant life doesn’t rely on the entire solar energy spectrum to thrive, though, does it? Isn’t it possible to develop solar cells that can harvest energy from selected portions of the spectrum, and remain transparent to the energy that could sustain photosynthesis? ---
**Author:** ![Isamu](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/7c8e57/32.png) [@Isamu](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Isamu)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 3:26am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/11 "2015-12-14T03:26:52Z")
It’s true. Kids need sunshine and if they don’t get enough, they leave town for the big city. ---
**Author:** ![Declan](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/d/ecae2f/32.png) [@Declan](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Declan)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 3:39am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/12 "2015-12-14T03:39:30Z")
> [@Merneith](#): > > Stupid People pissing you off? Here’s your chance to share the misery. I just had a news article show up on Facebook, regarding this principal in Brooklyn, being her first year. Decides that she is going to, Im not sure if she is banning or if she is simply rebranding for ethnic diversity reasons, things like Christmas and T-giving and a few others. Now we see things like this showing up , almost every other christmas and usually what will happen is that someone will make a phone call, and the offending official gets the facts of life explained to them, and then the policy will get reversed. But it keeps happening. I’m not sure what the thought process of these people is and why they think that this time, people won’t notice it or care. Is she stupid, I can’t decide. Declan ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 5:50am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/13 "2015-12-14T05:50:26Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > What might not be well-understood, neither by supporters nor opponents, is how much ground space a solar farm needs to cover, in order to generate a desired amount of electric power. > > Imagine a row of houses, or one-story office buildings, with solar panels on the roof. One reads estimates from time to time, suggesting that such panels could supply some substantial portion of that building’s electrical needs. Personally, I think solar panels on roof tops are a good idea, since they obviously don’t waste any space that you were going to use for anything else anyway. > > But note, this doesn’t scale well (actually, doesn’t scale _at all_) for multi-story buildings. Imagine now a ten-story office building, that you are trying to power with solar. A ten-story building, with a given footprint, only has the same roof space as a one-story building with similar footprint. If you could develop enough solar power for one floor of the building, you still need outside power for the other nine floors. > > Now try to imagine doing that with solar. You would need a solar farm that occupies ten times the footprint of that ten-story building to generate enough power for all ten floors. If you have a 20- or 30-story building (like in a large-city downtown). You’d have to pave over the whole Mojave Desert for that. An interesting solution to this is being adopted by some suburban office buildings. The solar panels are built over the parking lots -essentially, the lot becomes partially roofed over. Covered walkways are created and some shade is provided for the cars too. The parking lot is already ruined from an ecological standpoint, so making use of that acreage for solar as well makes a whole lot of sense. Here’s an article about an installation near me. > **[\[node:Title\]](https://www.csrwire.com/press_releases/34097-solar-canopies-installed-at-l-or-al-usa-s-berkeley-heights-administrative-offices)** > > Innovative LEED Certified Offices Provide a "Great Place to Work" That's Good for the Environment I can’t find a good online picture of the finished project, but it actually looks pretty neat. If you want, I can post some pictures I took of it. ---
**Author:** ![Green\_Bean](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/green_bean/32/1760_2.png) [@Green\_Bean](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Green_Bean)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 5:58am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/14 "2015-12-14T05:58:50Z")
Missed the edit window: There are standard ratios for parking spaces per SF for suburban office, so it is easy to ballpark how much parking lot you’d have for your hypothetical 10 story building. (Assuming no covered parking). 3.5 to 4 spaces per 1000 SF is pretty usual. Not sure what percentage of that would get covered with the solar canopies, but it probably wouldn’t be too hard to make a fairly good guess about feasibility for a given building. ---
**Author:** ![Merneith](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/57b2e6/32.png) [@Merneith](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Merneith)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 6:47am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/15 "2015-12-14T06:47:03Z")
> [@Senegoid](#): > > Of course, solar panels do soak up all the sunlight right where the panel is at, creating a shadow on the ground underneath. Right. Just like building an autofactory creates a shadow on the ground underneath. But whatever. That’s not the claim that’s pissing me off here. It’s the claim that solar panels will, and I quote, “suck up all the energy from the sun and businesses would not come to Woodland”, that is the subject of this pitting. > [@Declan](#): > > I just had a news article show up on Facebook, regarding this principal in Brooklyn, being her first year. Decides that she is going to, Im not sure if she is banning or if she is simply rebranding for ethnic diversity reasons, things like Christmas and T-giving and a few others. > > Now we see things like this showing up , almost every other christmas and usually what will happen is that someone will make a phone call, and the offending official gets the facts of life explained to them, and then the policy will get reversed. > > But it keeps happening. I’m not sure what the thought process of these people is and why they think that this time, people won’t notice it or care. > > Is she stupid, I can’t decide. > > Declan Hard to say. We’re not getting the full picture on these “facts” of life. Warriors in the War on Christmas are automatically on the Stupid People list, obviously. I suspect that this school district is the last district in the nation still holding Christmas pageants. I also suspect that time is on your new Principal’s side and that in another twenty years, those Brooklyn guys will also have switched over to Holiday Pageants. I expect her thought process is, “If we switch to a Holiday event, then all our children can participate, not just some of them”, which is a pretty reasonable way for a school admin to think, let’s be honest. I mean, I went to school in the 70’s and even then we were doing Holiday or Winter themed events. And no one goes on Easter Break any more, instead of Spring Break. So it’s really kind of hard to root against the person trying to drag this school district into the present millennium. ---
**Author:** ![Ambivalid](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/a5b964/32.png) [@Ambivalid](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ambivalid)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 7:03am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/16 "2015-12-14T07:03:56Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > She wasn’t, however, a science teacher. Evidently she missed her calling then. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 7:40am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/17 "2015-12-14T07:40:40Z")
I am on the fence as to whether the guy the other night was stupid or just an asshole. There are several of us at a tavern sitting at two tables pushed together, catching up on what we have been up to these last few weeks. So this random guy sits down and starts talking about how he just finished up his last tour at Schofield. And then he says, “So, any Obama supporters here?” We just shut the fucker down, “Sorry, we don’t talk politics: we’re here to enjoy ourselves, not fight.” And it worked. Stupid _and_ an asshole, I guess. ---
**Author:** ![Penfeather](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/penfeather/32/384_2.png) [@Penfeather](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Penfeather)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 9:04am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/18 "2015-12-14T09:04:01Z")
> [@Dendarii\_Dame](#): > > A neighbor (from where I used to live) had a MIL who believed that Earth’s weather and earthquakes were all caused by astronauts walking on the moon. It’s all the giant steps they take. ---
**Author:** ![JcWoman](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/jcwoman/32/2889_2.png) [@JcWoman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JcWoman)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 2:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/19 "2015-12-14T14:42:25Z")
This topic brings to mind a hilarious quote in a news item from several years ago. I heard it on the radio, and it was a year when we had a really bad winter with ice storms in the southern states that dropped power lines over wide areas. The newsy asked a “woman on the street” how the ice storms and resulting blackouts were affecting her. She said she was worried about the food in her fridge going bad. ---
**Author:** ![yanceylebeef](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/yanceylebeef/32/12290_2.png) [@yanceylebeef](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/yanceylebeef)\ **Post date:** [December 14, 2015, 3:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361/20 "2015-12-14T15:26:59Z")
This morning on the way to work, I was stopped one car back at a four way stop. The car in front of me started to roll out, then stopped suddenly. A jogger had run full speed through the intersection, and the driver was looking the other way for traffic. No one got hit, but I was amazed at the umbrage the jogger seemed to take of the situation. Like running full speed through a busy intersection during a morning commute was a normal move that any sane adult would do. I realize that if the driver had struck her, he or she would be at fault. But you can be right, and be right with a broken leg. [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/just-stupid-people-things/740361.md?page=2)