Science teachers, if you ask me, have a lot to answer for. Don’t be surprised if by the end of this you too have a grudge the size of a small moon against this freakish (and usually balding) phenomenon.

Take my science teacher as a prime example. He had this thing about energy. He loved energy more than his wife (which was why his wife left him). At the start of every lesson he would make this big speech about energy: “It’s incredible!” he would exclaim. “It transforms from one thing to another, and it lives forever!” Now, after several years of this speech, made at least four times per week, I noticed a pattern forming in our class-room. The pattern was very simple. It said: let’s use as much energy as we can, because it’s never going anywhere, therefore we cannot waste it.

It all would have been fine if it was only our teacher making this speech, but over time I discovered that because of something called a ‘curriculum’, many teachers were making similar ones. The result? A generation of children who gave not a hoot for energy was produced. They turned into adults which then took the whole energy-wasting thing to another level of wastage. So there you have it, science teachers have a lot to answer for. If I had my way they would be made to go up in a shuttle and fix the holes in the ozone layer with their own sweat and blood.

Of course, the age we live in now is much more conscious of the energy-wasting problems. Click the link if you’d like to find out what you should already know!