More than a few people were taken in by a guy peddling a coal/solar hybrid system at Solar Power 2007. "But, smokestacks on the roof — that just doesn’t make sense," said a government bureaucrat, who shall remain unnamed pending resolution of my grant proposal.

Indeed, it doesn’t. As the less credulous might have predicted, it was a marketing spoof by Sharp Solar:

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Stories like this don’t tell themselves.

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This, fight fans, is textbook campaigning in the YouTube era. Come up with a shtick that makes your points judo-style, make it funny, post it on the internets and watch your message spread.

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