Update: Volokh scooped me by a day and a half!
There's a problem in Sweden, in Stockholm at least: a surplus of wild rabbits. They have a solution and it's one readers here might've suggested: shoot the dear little pests. PETA is, as you would expect, livid -- and it gets better!
Shooting them (the rabbits, that is) leads to yet another problem, those unsightly heaps of dead bunnies. Rather than feed them to the poor or make lovely rabbit-fur coats for everyone, the resourceful Swedes've come up with a clever solution to that, too: burn the little rodents for energy! The company that's handling this is Konvex and their Chief Executive Leo Virta points out, "Just as with us people ... the bodies contain a lot of fat and fat has exactly the same energy content as normal heating oil for instance."
Y'know, Gramma, it's been a cold Winter....
Y'know, we could probably combine health care cost cutting with our desire to reduce our dependency on foreign oil. How many old people we got lying around?
ReplyDelete(Alternately, we could reduce our obesity problem. We could institute mandatory liposuction and use the excess fat.)
Any stats on the incidence of tularemia?
ReplyDeleteM
Patrick: We could set up at Wal-Mart. Make people swipe their ID to get one of those little "I'm too fat to walk across Wal-Mart" carts, and then send the Soylent Police to their homes later.
ReplyDeleteI've seen some land whales there I could probably drive across country on the renderings from. In my Suburban.
I've always been a big fan of rabbits and hares; when I was growing up we ate a lot of cottontails and snowshoes. My mom used to stew the hares with onions, carrots, and big fat homemade noodles; good stuff on a winter evening.
ReplyDeleteEwww! I wouldn't want to be downwind of the power plant.
ReplyDeleteRabbits actually do not have much fat. That is why people in survival situations can starve to death eating rabbit everyday.
ReplyDeletehttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rabbit_starvation
Rabbit & bacon mighty tastey. Squirrel and bacon mighty tasty.
ReplyDeletePheasent and bacon mighty tastey.
Do I see a pattern here?
See Ya
All I know about rabbits is that they make awful pets. If they're good for fuel, so much the better.
ReplyDeleteJim
PS - F*ck PETA. Ahem.