Unexpectedly Intriguing!
13 December 2013

If you take time to think about it, the Sun is perhaps best understood as being an uncontrolled nuclear fusion-powered ball of fiery plasma in the sky. As you can imagine, it's relationship with the Earth is complex, especially as scientists have only just determined that our planet is only just within the Sun's "habitable" zone, which is a fancy way of saying that we are only just far enough away from it to avoid it both boiling away the oceans and being burned into carbon-based cinders.

Which is completely cool, if you take some more time to think about it. The problems begin however if you don't think about it, as the architects of London's "Walkie-Talkie" Skyscraper apparently did not do as they designed and built what has turned out to be a multi-story solar energy concentrator with the capability of distorting and damaging the parts of cars parked on the streets below it. Via Core77:

Of course, there are people who try to harness the power of the sun in a positive way, but who are also hopelessly inept at it. Unsurprisingly, most of those people are being heavily subsidized by the government.

And then, there are those who do get it, who aren't subsidized by the government at all, who can do genuinely incredible things with the power of the sun, on purpose. Here's Grant Thompson, who has properly harnessed the intense power of the sun using the screen from an old big-screen projection television set (via Core77, who described the device that Thompson created as "an absurdly powerful, eco-friendly death ray capable of heating things to 2000 degrees Farenheit"):

Small wonder then that "ever since the beginning of time, man has yearned to destroy the sun." Those French candle makers were certainly on the right track years ago with their petition to the government against its destructive power.

Flashing forward to today, the real-life satire is that today's hopelessly inept candle makers now get government subsidies.

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