The 70's called. They want to know what we thought was wrong with their foreign policy.

I think (hope) you mean "fallacy"...

Obvious is different from proven.

So... The US should be able to tax foreign companies on their income earned in foreign companies because of the general protection and stability that the US provides (or at least use to provide) to the world in general? Aren't they "freeloading" too? "If you want to sell in the United States we get to tax your global profits?" Is that what you want?

With AdBlock and NoScript you don't see any of that crap. X10 pretty much started it in the late 90's and it's pretty much gone downhill ever since.

When I first started using those tools I wanted to only block the bad actors, but I quickly found that pretty much everybody was bad to some degree. Now with malware attacks through served ads I don't understand why anyone wouldn't be using these tools.

Checking the "reward" box from SlashDot to turn off ads doesn't change a thing that I see.

Some of the stuff on Jezebel might cross that line occasionally.

Oops. Math error. Divide all of my numbers by 365.

So only about 1.5 to 2 million birds (BrightSource) to 46 million (green group) to 145 million (government).

I think it's funny that BrightSource's bird kill numbers are being trusted when they say 1,000 per year. This story says that "federal wildlife investigators" are estimating one "streamer" every two minutes on average. That would be 240 per day assuming 8 hours of operation. The Center for Biological Diversity estimates 28,000 per year. That's only about 76 per day.

The Exxon Valdez spill killed (from my quick search) an estimated 200,000 to 300,000 birds, about what this would kill in 10 years or so at mid-20k birds killed per year. So, build 10 of these plants (or larger with even more roasting capacity) and you have the equivalent (in bird deaths) of an Exxon Valdez oil spill each year. A wise sage once said "It's not easy being green."

If this were a coal or oil source quoting bird kills, would people be so willing to accept their numbers at face value? BrightSource is wanting to build a much larger plant right in a migratory corridor. They have a strong incentive to lie about the numbers.

Also, if you want to compare birds killed here to birds killed by "dirty" energy, scale this ONE complex's Kill per Megawatt up from its (planned) capacity of 392 MW to that of what you're comparing to. Assuming that the plant generates power 8 hours per day year round at 100%, you get about 3.2 GWh of electricity. A search found that for 2010 in the US coal power production was a bit larger than that at 1,994,000 GWh. So, multiply the bird kills by over 600,000 (1,994,000 / 3.2) and you can now compare the kills scaled for power generated. That would be scaling to over 600 million birds by BrightSource numbers and about 17 billion by the environmental group's numbers. The "federal wildlife investigator's" numbers would yield somewhere around 53 billion. I wonder how much coal could be saved by just burning 53 billion birds each year instead...

Don't forget to add in the tortoise habit that was damaged to build this too. I'm trying to think of the name of the thin, extremely fragile layer of crust on undisturbed desert ground that environmental groups want to shut down land so people won't walk on it. (It isn't Desert Varnish. That's what's on rocks.) It takes forever for it to recover. All gone on that six-and-a-quarter square mile site.

But on the bright side, ha ha, at least the owls are safe.

But it's Green! It MUST be good!

I read another story that said that only minutes passed between "streamers".

I can't look at a picture of this plant without thinking "Helios One"...

I have to correct you here. What Goggle actually sells is you and your information so that personalized ads can be targeted directly to you. That's why they scan your email and want you to disclose all of that nice, personal information in Google+.

It's the same with broadcast television. You aren't the customer buying the product (TV shows) with your watching the commercials the price. The advertiser is the customer buying the product and the product is you. The TV show is part of the Costs of Goods Sold.

I used to play Asteroids. I wasn't very good at it.

Don't you mean, "loose you're shit"?

It doesn't sound that evil to me...

That's backwards. The government needs a "good reason" to propose a rule, NOT a "good reason" not to.

And I totally agree with your signature calling for the repeal of the 17th Amendment.