Insert obligatory Popeye joke here

In the weird-but-potentially-useful area we find MIT's latest creation, solar cells that use the photosynthesizing cells of spinach to pull their juice from the sun's rays. So far they're hard to make, aren't terribly efficient and last only three weeks but eventually should be easy and cheap and be good for the environment and self repairing to boot. Our major concern here is the choice of spinach. We really hope it was a result of more than one of the researchers watching a Popeye cartoon and having a eureka moment. Please oh please tell us it was more than that.