A Viable Alternative?

I just read an article profiling the "Greening The Bluegrass" competition, in which teams of three to six high school students from 11 counties came up with ways to make central KY a better place. Most of them focused on ways to increase recycling levels in their counties, which is good stuff.

Plus, kids doing community service is always a good thing, right?

Sure, especially when they're being paid $7.25 an hour out of Federal Stimulus funds.

What?

Can't say that I've ever heard of students being paid a wage to participate in a competition. Did I mention that the winners each got a laptop and a printer? I have no problem with that part, but to be paid for their time spent developing their project?

Weird.

Anyway. That wasn't the reason I started writing this, but when I got started, I had trouble stopping. So back to my point. In one paragraph, the article states: "One group, in a presentation of alternatives to fossil fuels, listed 'electricity.'"

Whoa.

I'm not sure which is more appalling: the fact that some of KY's kids think electricity is an alternative to fossil fuels (most of KY's electricity actually comes from fossil fuels) - or the fact that the author of this article thought this was an appropriate observation to make in an article telling us how great the program was.