It occurs to me that two of the great asylums of the great State of Minnesota should harness their indisputably unsurpassed cogenerators in ways that would literally empower citizens. I refer, of course, to the Legislature and the University. Both serve the public by removing from the street eccentrics and disruptives where, when benefitted by excess intertia, their gaseous output historically has worked little change and harm over time.

I envision that professors and politicians alike be equipped with inflatable backpack devices, with strap-on masks that capture their exhortatory declamations into voluminous balloons. At the end of debate or lecture the accumulated, now highly pressurized, vapors could be exhausted into a network of pipes that could drive central electricity generating turbines.

The result: A magnificent doubling of illumination, first from the knowledge and wisdom transmitted during the oratorical generation phase, and again, from the power that is spun from the released windbags.

There are other benefits, including the forshortening of unnecessarily long speeches and lectures as pressure builds in the inflating wisdom collector.

I leave it to you, dear readers, to realize and report other benefits that come to your mind from this wondeful insight.

i'd pay a dollar a week to see professors wear inflatable backpacks.... but i question your hypothosis that illumination would increase twice... unless we are somehow measuring the brilliance of the academic ego.