bike generated electricity and its vicissitudes

April gave us two prominent news stories about places using stationary bikes to generate electricity.  It's green power, of course, but the social meaning of such "renewable power" turns out to be determined almost entirely by the whole state of things in which it's embedded.  In the first story, for instance, bike-power appears as a... let us say unusual punishment enforced on prisoners unfortunate enough to be locked down in Arizona.  In the second story, by contrast, bike-power is a luxury for wealthy and rootless cosmopolitans.

First up: a report on "America's toughest sheriff"'s decision to require inmates at an unusual outdoor jail in the proto-police state of Arizona to pedal on a stationary bike to generate electricity if they want to watch television:

Arpaio installed an energy-generating stationary bike (PDF) attached to a TV when he found that 50 percent of the inmates were overweight, many morbidly so. As long as an inmate is pedaling, the bike will produce 12 volts of energy--just enough to power a 19-inch tube TV. But if an inmate stops pedaling at a moderate speed, the TV shuts off.
Because inmates can't be forced to exercise, access to cable TV could provide incentive for them to do so. Female prisoners will test the program first, because they were more receptive to it, Arpaio says.

Next: a story about the Crowne Plaza Hotel in bicycle-friendly Copenhagen, at which guests who pedal a stationary bike to generate electricity earn a free meal:

Guests will have to produce at least 10 watt hours of electricity - roughly 15 minutes of cycling for someone of average fitness....Guests staying at Plaza Hotel will be given meal vouchers worth $36 (26 euros; £23) once they have produced 10 watt hours of electricity, hotel spokeswoman Frederikke Toemmergaard told the BBC News website.

Here you can make your own conclusion. 

Make it witty.