Tuesday, March 3, 2009

Vacuuming is most fun when the hamsters are loose.


In my 758 blog entries, I don't ever remember writing about hamsters. Oh wait, I forgot that I told the story about Tierney murdering her Siberian Hamster by OD'ing it on sunflower seeds. Hamsters will eat themselves to death if giving unlimited food. Now it sounds like they might also work themselves to death. Two stories in the news are very interesting. Researchers at Georgia Tech fitted hamsters with special detector jackets that measured the power generated while they ran on a wheel. Sure enough, they discovered it takes 1,000 hamsters to generate enough power to make a cell phone call. Neat, huh? Well, this is better. Another group of scientists have invented a vacuum cleaner that is controlled by a hamster running inside an exercise ball. The very same company that makes the robot vacuum cleaners, iRobot, created the device because they just wanted to have fun and then post the video on YouTube. I hope Linda does not get any ideas about harnessing my energy to do chores.