Oh, Those Swedish: Ingenuity From the Land of Ikea

A Swedish company plans to harness the body heat generated by thousands of commuters scrambling to catch trains at Stockholm’s main station to heat a nearby office building.

What a great idea. And what a great article! I love that they thought it up over coffee.

I might be a freelance writer living a life of leisure, but there was a time that I worked in an office. And during those long and miserable years, I have attended many a morning meeting. And during those meetings, many people drank many, many cups of coffee. But never once did a good idea come from this – in fact, I don’t think we ever decided everything at those meetings except perhaps where to go for lunch.

This article also makes me think of  an excerpt from the New York Times Metropolitan Diary:

A few years ago, on a particularly sticky and miserably hot summer day in New York, I was entering the subway and passed a father and his small son waiting on the platform. The boy asked, “Daddy, why is it always so much hotter in the subway?”

His dad answered, “Because it’s closer to hell, son, closer to hell.”