2010-10-30
Explanation
This comic satirizes the engineer's compulsion to optimize systems, even when the optimization is wildly impractical. In the first panel, an apartment manager tells a new tenant that water and gas are paid for, but he is responsible for electric. In the second panel, the tenant -- eyes gleaming with manic excitement -- declares "Fool!" and outlines an elaborate plan: he will attach a flywheel to the showerhead, which will spin a dynamo, which will charge a capacitor bank, which will connect to all the wiring in his apartment. He has found a way to convert the free water into free electricity.
In the third panel, the tenant triumphantly tells the apartment manager that he has bypassed the system entirely, because the manager did not reckon on him being "an engineer!" The apartment manager's dry response captures the absurdity perfectly: "We had assumed nobody would spend so much money and time just to save a few dollars." The engineer has spent far more on his Rube Goldberg energy system than he will ever save on electricity, but the principle of the hack matters more to him than the economics.
The votey panel drives the punchline home: the engineer, standing proudly next to his contraption, laughs and announces that now, every six months, he can turn on a light bulb. The comically low energy output confirms that the system is a complete failure by any practical measure -- but presumably a triumph of engineering spirit. The comic captures a well-known personality trait among engineers: the obsession with solving a technical problem regardless of whether the solution makes any real-world sense.