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January 21, 2007
A Solution to the Energy Crisis
Yesterday I encountered a group of kids just bouncing off the walls -- running, screaming, everything -- and I wondered why kids have so much energy. Oh yeah, it's because they don't work. Maybe those nineteenth-century factory owners who employed children actually had the right idea. With all that energy, child workers could probably be pretty productive. I suggested this idea to my ex-boyfriend Erik, who is a pediatrician, and thus knows more about children than I do, and he was skeptical that child energy could actually be focused in that way. After all, kids' energy is totally random, which is why they have trouble sitting still and concentrating in school. But, he continued, if we could hook them up to some kind of giant hamster wheel and harness their energy to a generator, we might just have a solution to the energy crisis. Parents' productivity would also go up because they wouldn't have to spend as much time running around after their children. I think Erik has a real solution on his hands, but he is hesitant to propose it to anyone, for fear that he might get kicked out of the American Academy of Pediatrics.
Posted by eklanche at January 21, 2007 09:53 AM
Comments
So I'm thinking "How efficient would the conversion of McNuggets and Kraft macaroni into hamster-wheel-turbine gigawatts be?" Given the energy expended in processing most kids' foods it might just be more efficient to burn coal. But then it dawns on me that the kids are going to eat the McNuggets anyway and are just going to waste the energy kicking the backs of people's church pews and airplane seats, so we might as well go ahead and yoke them up. And to keep them running we can dangle a Sony Playstation just out of reach.
Posted by: dmerch at January 22, 2007 09:11 AM
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