From: Zero Powers (zero_powers@hotmail.com)
Date: Thu Apr 20 2000 - 14:10:57 MDT
>From: QueeneMUSE@aol.com
>
>In a message dated 4/19/2000 2:20:26 PM Pacific Daylight Time,
>bbrown@transcient.com writes:
>
> > One comedian had the best idea I have ever heard. Make inmates peddle
> > bikes
> > > all day and night to provide electricity for the whole nation. No one
>will
> > > ever want to go back after ten years of that.
> >
> > Eh. I like it.
> >
> > Actually, hard labor is not a bad alternative for this purpose. If the
> > choice is between stocking shelves at the grocery store or breaking
>rocks in
> > prison, the guy who doesn't want to bother working has a clear incentive
>not
> > to become a criminal. I think you'd still want shorter sentences that we
> > have now -- maybe 4-6 months of labor instead of a year of current-style
> > jail.
>
>
>
>Yeah but that's not the same. For one thing the bike/electricity idea
>serves
>to solve TWO problems at once, Greenie conservationists AND Law and Order
>Goons will like it. Criminals will be put to a higher purpose, instead of
>making things, they'll be like little power supplies....
>Second, hard labor isn't new, the bike idea is.
I often wonder, those mornings when I and a host of others are sweating like
crazy on various self-inflicted torture devices as treadmills, stationary
bikes, etc., how difficult it would be to translate all this wasted energy
into some sort of usable power. And why no one has thought to do it. Every
morning in my gym there are about 100 people pedaling, walking, and pumping
all those machines. Does anyone here no whether it would be difficult to
translate any of that motion into usable power?
Burning up last night's lasagna is good enough reason for me to keep working
out, but I'd feel even better about it if I was contributing to the green
movement at the same time.
-Zero
"I like dreams of the future better than the history of the past"
--Thomas Jefferson
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