Get it Right

 YOUR = It belongs to the person you're talking to.

YOU'RE = The person you are talking to is the following.

TO = In the direction of, or for the purpose of.

TOO = Also.

TWO = The number between one and three.

WANT = Desire.

WON'T = Will not.

WHETHER = Depending upon if.

WEATHER = Rain, snow, hot, cold, etc.

WHICH = Deciding between two or more options.

WITCH = Person with supernatural powers.

SUPPOSEDLY = According to someone else.

SUPPOSABLY = Something that could happen in the future.

THERE = That place.

THEIR = It belongs to those people.

THEY'RE = Those people are the following.

DO GOOD = Be helpful to others.

DO WELL = Succeed.

BE GOOD = Be a moral person.

BE WELL = Be healthy.

LITERALLY = Not just a figure of speech.

Rambling Bullshit

A duck's quack does echo.  Chewing gum does not stay in your body for seven years.  A bird will not abandon its babies or nest if you touch them.  You do not only use ten percent of your brain.  Undercover cops do not have to tell you they're cops if you ask them.  If a cop forgets to read your rights, you do not immediately go free.  Carrots do not improve your eyesight.  Spinach does not make you stronger or give you chest hair.  The heel of the bread will not make your hair curl.  Vitamin C does not stop you from catching cold.  Your eyes will not pop out of your head if you sneeze with your eyes open.  You do not need to pee on a jellyfish sting.  You do not need to blow into a video game cartridge.  You do not need to shake a polaroid.  Vaccinations will not make your children autistic.  Cell phones will not give you brain tumors.  Blood inside your body is not blue.  Pop rocks and soda will not make you explode.  A burglar cannot sue you because he hurt himself while robbing your house.  Lie detectors do not work.  Truth serum doesn't work.  Bulls are not attracted to the color red.  Masturbating will not affect your eyesight or grow hair on your palms.  Plants cannot sense when someone is thinking about fire.  There is no musical note that will make you shit your pants.  Bats are not blind.  You do not catch cold from cold weather.  There is no official grammatical rule against splitting infinitives.  Your hair and fingernails do not keep growing after you die.  Having a hymen has nothing to do with being a virgin.  Shocking a recently dead person with a defibrillator will not bring them back to life.  Your mattress is not full of dead bugs.  The IQ test you took as a child has nothing to do with your intelligence as an adult.  Gluten-free diets are not better for you unless you have a very specific disorder preventing your body from digesting gluten.  Shaving your beard will not make it grow back thicker.  No actor hanged himself on the set of "The Wizard of Oz."  The pull tabs from soda cans are not being used to raise money for charity.  Eggs are not a dairy product. The moon landing was not faked on a sound stage.  The Prince of Nigeria is not going to send you any money.  Covid-19 is not caused by 5-G towers.  Getting a blood transfusion from someone younger than you will not make you age backwards.  Nuclear waste is a metallic solid, not a glowing green liquid.  AR-15s are not machine guns.  Antibiotics do not kill viruses, they kill bacteria.  It is not impossible for two snowflakes or two sets of fingerprints to be identical.  Teeth do not dissolve in soda.  Dust is not made of dead skin.  Amish people are not prohibited from using modern technology, they are prohibited from using unnecessary technology.  Oysters are not an aphrodisiac.  Cracking your knuckles will not make your knuckles bigger or give you arthritis.  Salem witch trials never burned anyone at the stake.  Roman gladiator fights and medieval jousts were not fights to the death.  The United States does not have an official two-party system.  The Catholic Church never opposed evolution.  You cannot ride a kangaroo.  You cannot tip a cow.  Cockroaches are not immune to nuclear radiation.  If you make a silly face as a child, it will not freeze that way.  Sporange rhymes with orange.  FDA-approved GMOs are not dangerous.  Puerto Rico and the U.S. Virgin Islands are not the 51st and 52nd states.  The Rebel Flag is not the same as the Confederate Flag.  French fries were not invented in France.  German chocolate cake was not invented in Germany.  Fortune cookies were not invented in China.  Apple pie was not invented in America.  You cannot target weight loss to a specific part of your body.  Nicholas Copernicus was not burned by the Inquisition.  Frankenstein is the name of the scientist, not the monster.  Zelda is the name of the princess, not the hero.  You do not get cancer from living near windmills or power lines.  You will not asphyxiate from sleeping with a fan on.  A tomato is both a fruit and a vegetable.  Nobody put razor blades in the Halloween candy.  Elvis Presley is dead.  Tupac Shakur is dead.  John F. Kennedy is dead.  Adolf Hitler is dead.  Andy Kaufman is probably dead.  The Bermuda Triangle is not a portal into another dimension.  Dating websites do not match people based on science.  There is no predictable pattern in the lottery numbers.  Wearing metal jewelry does not make you more likely to be struck by lightning.  Logic and creativity are not concentrated in opposite sides of your brain.  Pilgrims did not wear buckles on their hats.  The Dow Jones does not reflect the stability of the economy.  Body toxins cannot be extracted through your feet.  Pencils have never contained lead.  You do not lose most of your body heat through your head.  Drinking lots of milk will not make children grow up faster.  Borrowing a large sum of money and paying it back the next day will not improve your credit score.  You cannot clone a person from a hair clipping.  The X in Xmas is the Greek letter chi.  Evolution does not continue in a predictable straight line.  Owning 51% of company stock does not give you absolute control of a company.  Egyptian pyramids and crop circles were not made by space aliens.  You do not need to drink eight glasses of water per day.  Going swimming right after eating will not cause you to get a cramp and drown.  Caffeine does not make you more energetic, it just delays your sleep cycle.  Antidisestablishmentarianism is not the longest word in the English language.  The Great Wall of China cannot be seen from outer space.  The Declaration of Independence and the U.S. Constitution are not the same thing.  Aesop did not write the story of the Frog and the Scorpion.  You cannot break the internet by getting too many clicks on a post.  An airplane's black box is neither black nor a box.  The dark web is not just used for crimes.  You are not swallowing spiders in your sleep.  Contrails are not chemtrails.  You should not starve a fever.  You should not drink water out of a cactus.  Humphrey Bogart did not say "Play it again, Sam."  James Cagney did not say "You dirty rat."  Frankenstein's Monster did not say "Fire bad."  Tarzan did not say "Me Tarzan, you Jane."  Captain Kirk did not say "Beam me up, Scotty."  The Wicked Witch of the West did not say "Fly, my pretties, fly."  Ricky Ricardo did not say "You got some 'splainin' to do."  Marie Antoinette did not say "Let them eat cake."  Dracula did not say "Blah."  Gamma rays will not give you superpowers.  Climate change is not a hoax.  Protein powder will not make you stronger.  Rhinoceros horn powder does not improve sexual performance.  Alexander Graham Bell did not invent the first telephone, he patented it.  Charles Darwin did not invent the theory of evolution, he revised it.  Thomas Crapper did not invent the toilet, he improved it.  Thomas Edison did not invent the light bulb, he owned the company that improved it.  Stan Lee did not create Marvel Comics, he was a hired writer.  Rabbie Burns did not write Auld Lang Syne, he modified it.  Aleister Crowley did not create the Hermetic Order of the Golden Dawn, he created a splinter group.  Richard III was not a hunchback, he had scoliosis.  Vikings did not wear horns on their helmets.  Pirates did not bury treasure chests, make treasure maps, carry parrots on their shoulders, make people walk the plank, or say "arrrr."  Schizophrenia is not the same thing as multiple personality disorder.  The Freemasons are not the same as the Illuminati.  John Smith and Pocahontas were never a couple.  Not all unfortunate events are ironic.  Not all unexpected things are random.  Not all extremely moral or extremely powerful fictional characters are Mary Sues.  High voltage will not electrocute you as long as the amperage is low.  Chocolate will not give you acne as long as the sugar is low.  Turkey does not contain enough tryptophan to make you fall asleep.  You do not get warts from touching frogs.  You should not put butter on a burn.  You should not try to suck the venom out of a snake bite.  You should not burn off a leech.  You are not required to wait twenty-four hours before reporting a missing person.  The Bible does not say anything against lesbians.  You have more than one gene that affects your eye color.  When you get arrested, you do not get one free phone call.  The U.S. Constitution does not contain the phrases "separation of church and state," or "innocent until proven guilty."  You cannot get high from smoking hemp.  Children do not learn languages or musical instruments faster than adults.  The Large Hadron Collider cannot turn the earth into a black hole.  Dinosaurs were not lizards.  Multi-level marketing is a scam.  NFTs are worthless.  The Mayans did not attempt to predict the end of the world.  The body mass index is not a reliable indicator of health.  Not all sympathetic magick is Voodoo.  Most of Rhode Island is not on an island.  MSG is not bad for you.  Prostitution is not legal in Las Vegas, but the laws are rarely enforced.  Sitting close to the television or reading in a dark room do not affect your eyesight.  Sell-by dates are not the same as expiration dates.  Punching a pillow does not calm you down when you're angry.  Red wine does not cure high blood pressure.  The Ugly Duckling did not transform into a beautiful swan, it was a swan all along.  The Inquisition did not execute nine million witches.  No one found Noah's Ark.  There is not a giant hole in the earth's crust surrounding the North Pole that leads to the kingdom of the Mole People.  Pi is not exactly three.  Dreaming in color is not a sign of creativity.  Camels do not store water in their humps.  Not all social awkwardness is a symptom of a personality disorder.  Getting drunk will not make you see pink elephants.  Pulling out is not birth control.  The Monopoly Man does not wear a monocle.  A daddy long-legs does not have enough venom to kill a human.  Urine is not sterile.  Labor Day has nothing to do with celebrating the military.  Black people do not have extra muscles in their legs.  Human hearts are not heart-shaped.  Talking to people in their sleep does not plant hypnotic suggestions.  Magnets do not cure arthritis.  The Church of Satan does not literally worship the devil.  There is no one official Arbor Day.  There is no one official Ray's Pizza.  Teenagers are not having rainbow parties.  Paying income tax is not voluntary.  Earth is not flat, and most of the people who say it is are trolling.  Wiccans were not present in medieval times.  Eastern Orthodox Christians are not Protestants.  You do not automatically lose your American citizenship if you receive an honorary title from a foreign country.  Muscle memory is not stored in muscles.  The food pyramid is nonsense.  Blind people do not have super hearing.  Flushable butt wipes are not good for plumbing.  Marijuana is not being sold to finance terrorism.  People cannot yell or wave for help when they are drowning.  The AIDS virus was not created in a laboratory.  Glancing to the left or the right has nothing to do with whether or someone is lying or telling the truth.  Your school did not put anything you did on a permanent record.  Ostriches do not bury their heads in sand.  Pitbulls and Rottweilers are not more aggressive than other dog breeds.  Men do not think about sex every twelve seconds.  Lightning often strikes the same place more than once.  Humans did not evolve from chimpanzees.  You cannot thaw out and reanimate a caveman.  Calling evidence circumstantial or hearsay does not automatically make it inadmissible in court.  It is not dangerous to eat steak that is pink in the middle.  The red juice from beef is not blood.  Nobody ever went insane from playing Dungeons & Dragons.  You cannot hard-boil an egg by playing loud music at it.  Elephants are startled by all sudden movements, not just mice.  You cannot control the state of subatomic particles with your mind.  Food that falls on the floor does not stay clean if you pick it up within three seconds.  Video games do not make people violent.  Jackalopes are not real.  "Fuck" and "shit" are not acronyms.  Sneezing several times in a row will not make your heart stop.  There is no such thing as space madness.  Medieval armor was not that heavy.  You cannot get rid of an infection by drinking or injecting antiseptic.  Jumping in the air while in a falling elevator or crashing airplane does not stop you from being injured.  You cannot shoot the lock off a door with a handgun.  There is no correlation between having large feet and having a large penis.  Bees do not die after they sting you.  It is not against the law to write on money.  It is not against the law to video record in a public place.  It is not against the law to drive with your car's interior lights on.  The Bible does not specify what type of fruit was in the Garden of Eden.  As far as I know, the world is not being controlled by extraterrestrial lizard people.  George Washington's false teeth were not made of wood.  Christopher Columbus did not prove the earth was round.  Albert Einstein was not bad at math.  Richard Nixon was not impeached, he resigned.  Benjamin Franklin was not a Quaker.  Sinbad did not play a genie named "Shazam."  Fred Rogers was not a Vietnam War veteran.  William Shakespeare did not have a ghostwriter.  Nelson Mandela did not die in prison in the 1980s.  Julius Caesar was not deaf in one ear.  Winston Churchill was not born in a ladies' restroom.  Cass Elliot did not choke to death on a ham sandwich.  Bobby McFerrin did not commit suicide.  Napoleon was not shorter than average.  Adolf Hitler did not have only one testicle.  Catherine the Great did not have sex with a horse.  Walt Disney was not cryogenically frozen.  Paul McCartney was not replaced by a lookalike.  Reasonable suspicion is not the same as probable cause.  Heckling comedians is not part of the show.  Bottled water does not come from a natural spring.  Solar panels will not drain the sun of all its energy.  Illegal immigrants are not casting fraudulent votes.  Trends in fashion magazines are not the same as cultural standards of beauty.  Engagement rings were not used in medieval times.  Jesus was not white.  Buddha was not fat.  Playing classical music will not make your baby grow up smarter.  Having another drink does not cure a hangover, it only postpones it.  You cannot enhance a photo to show details that were not in the original photo.  You cannot vouch for an illegal immigrant.  Prosecutors cannot build a case on character witnesses.  A Rubik's Cube is not that difficult.  Googling is not research.  Roulette is not a game of skill.  You cannot use a ventilation duct to crawl from one part of a building to another.  You cannot swallow your own tongue.  Alcohol does not raise your body temperature.  Keeping batteries in the refrigerator will not make them last longer.  An atomic bomb will not stop a hurricane.  Ghosts are not made of neutrinos.  God is not made of Higgs bosons.  Standing with your hands on your hips does not make you more confident.  You cannot grow a watermelon in your stomach by swallowing a watermelon seed.  Having a stroke or a brain tumor does not cause you to smell burnt toast.  A living cell removed from your body does not react to your emotions remotely.  You do not get hemorrhoids from sitting on a cold seat or from eating spicy foods.  You do not get breast cancer from using deodorant.  The boiling point of water is not a universal constant.  Mary Poppins is not a witch.  Putting a wet phone in rice does not make it dry out faster.  You cannot cure someone of amnesia by hitting them over the head.  Sea captains do not have legal authority to perform weddings.  A goldfish does not have a memory of only three seconds.  Spiders do not make webs with their mouths.  Sharks do not blink.  A dragonfly does not have a lifespan of only twenty-four hours.  You do not end a radio transmission by saying "over and out."  Black widows almost never kill their mates.  Lemmings do not jump off cliffs.  Speed-reading does not work.  Jigsaws are not used to make jigsaw puzzles.  The human body is not exactly 98.6 degrees.  Ice does not melt from the pressure of standing on it.  Twinkies do go bad.  Spontaneous human combustion is not a real thing.  You cannot turn someone's hair white by scaring them.  American bread does not taste like cake.  Drinking alcohol through a straw does not get you drunk faster.  Waking up a sleepwalker does not give them a heart attack.  You do not get carpal tunnel syndrome from typing.  Myers-Briggs personality types are meaningless.  Sinking ships do not evacuate women and children first.  Honey does not cure seasonal allergies.  "Ain't" is a word.  "Irregardless" is a word.  Spicy food will not cause a pregnant woman to go into labor.  You should not give milk to an adult cat.  You should not give bread to a duck.  Nice guys do not always finish last.  Celery does not have a negative number of calories.  Men's trousers are not tailored to accommodate whether you dress left or right.  There is no purple in a rainbow.  Poinsettias are not that poisonous.  Wolf packs are not organized into alphas, betas and omegas.  Fish do not grow to the size of their tank.  You should not put a stick in the mouth of a person having a seizure.  Men and women have the same number of ribs.  Women did not used to have ribs removed to fit into their corsets.  Prince did not have ribs removed in order to suck his own penis.  You do not have more bacteria cells in your body than human cells.  Hot water does not freeze faster than cold water.  You are not legally required to display flags according to the U.S. Flag Code.  Reading a dead person's will at a family gathering to reveal who gets what is a thing that only happens in movies.  Sugar does not make children hyperactive.  There is no medical benefit to eating a placenta.  Scientists did not discover a star that is older than the universe.  Women's high-heeled shoes were not derived from Chinese foot-binding, they were derived from cavalry soldiers.  Brontosauruses did not have a second brain to control their back legs.  Infrared cameras do not allow you to look through walls.  Coca-Cola did not invent Santa Claus.  You have more than five senses.  Most people are not descended from Genghis Khan.  Kayan women's necks will not suddenly break if they remove their neck rings.  You do not need a colon cleansing.  Typing faster will not make you a better computer hacker.  Switching hands while masturbating will not prevent your penis from curving to the side.  Earwigs do not lay eggs in people's ears.  Sharks are not attracted to human blood.  Wearing a hat will not make you go bald faster.  Shining red LED lights on different parts of your body will not cure baldness, obesity or erectile disfunction.  Ancient Greeks could see the color blue.  Subliminal advertising does not work.  The United States does have roundabouts.  Most people in medieval times were not illiterate.  Your tongue does not have different sections for sweet, salty, sour and bitter.  Disneyland does not give you a lifetime free pass if you were born at the park.  Kicking a car's tires does not actually tell you anything.  Scented candles are not just as bad for your lungs as cigarettes.  Pallbearers were never called "huckle-bearers."  Getting a tan does not improve your resistance to skin cancer.  Not everyone goes through the same stages of grief in the same order.  Tetanus has nothing to do with rust.  Moss does not always grow on the north side of the tree.  You are very unlikely to drown in quicksand.  There is no such thing as a normal person.

More to be added as I think of them.

Exponential Stupidity

 Let's say I invent a really bad idea.  (Left-handed people should be executed by electric chair.)

Then let's say I symbolize that idea with a catch phrase or a logo.  (A red hand.)

Now let's say there are an infinite number of people in the world.  If I tell ten people that the hand-lightning symbol is the "cool" thing to display on a website, social media post, tshirt, or whatever, and two people agree to post it, then I have two people displaying my symbol, and unknowingly supporting a mass murder proposal.

The next cycle, those two people show the symbol to ten more people each (a total of twenty), and eight of each group ignore it (not out of morality but just out of disinterest), so the remaining two out of each group repeats the symbol.  This means four new people have posted the hateful symbol without considering its implications.  However, by now, the first two people have learned the symbol's meaning, and have removed it, replacing it with a counter-symbol.  (A green hand.)

The next cycle, the four displaying the red hand have seen the green hand and adopted it, but by now have also passed the red hand symbol onto eight more people.  This means that now, not counting myself, there are eight red hand symbols and six green hand symbols.

This pattern can repeat itself indefinitely, with the next cycle showing sixteen reds and fourteen greens, and the cycle after that showing thirty-two reds and thirty greens.  The pattern will move increasingly closer to a half red and half green, but the reds will always slightly outnumber the greens, because the "bad" symbol is always one generation ahead of the correction.

Now let's say that I want to justify my position by popular opinion.  While the red-hand-displayers do not understand the meaning, and while the larger public have either not yet encountered either symbol or have seen one or both and taken no interest, there is no display symbol for indifference or for understanding, so I can extrapolate the opinions of the general public by the symbols on display.  If I see more red hands than green hands, I can make the assumption that more people side with the mass execution position than oppose it.  Despite the fact that each person displays the red hand for only one cycle, and the supporters of the green hand are growing in number each day, the raw numbers show that red hands consistently outnumber green hands.  This validates and strengthens my original position, no matter how many people strongly oppose it.

What's more, the greens, upon seeing the raw numbers are unlikely to dispute it, believing the reds to be posting in earnest.  Why?  Because people generally like to feel smarter and more moral than those around them, so it's easy for them to accept the idea that 100% of the "others" are in favor of a bad idea.

Of course, in the real world, there are not an infinite number of people, so the common wisdom would be that the pattern would reach a limit at some point, where no more reds can be added.  However, due to the fact that the expanse of ideas turns back upon itself several times, the growing will slow over time, and the expansion of the green posts will not necessarily reach all of the red posts.  This is why multi-level marketing schemes fail before they reach the entire population, but never die out completely, because there are always a supply of people who may yet be potentially taken in by them.  The population may not be literally infinite, but it is functionally infinite.

Consequently, anyone who posts a bad idea reduced to a simple logo or catch phrase (such as "America first" or "All lives matter") the result is that the OP always gets to experience the appearance of mass public support just over half the population, without necessarily having the real support of nearly as many people, or anyone at all.

Sex and Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs

We're all familiar with Maslow's Hierarchy of Needs:

1. Survival (food, water, air, etc.)
2. Security (seat belts, insurance, smoke detectors, etc.)
3. Belonging (friends and family)
4. Esteem (accomplishment, popularity)
5. Self-Actualization (being your true self and in control of your life)

Maslow also suggested Self-Transcendence, which is outside the chart, because it's basically sacrificing yourself for a cause, which puts you at experiencing the pyramid in reverse order, because you're self-actualizing ahead of survival.  Maybe instead of a pyramid, it should have been a circle, but whatever.

We all look at these basic needs and ask the same question:  Where is entertainment?

A lot of people try to cram entertainment into one of the other sections, like saying that people can enjoy entertainment as a group, therefore, it's on level three; or being entertained is part of who you are, therefore, it's on level five.  I think these are copouts.  I think Maslow just forgot one.  So let's just put Entertainment in at two-and-a-half or three-and-a-half, depending on whether you think people get bored before they get lonely or vice-versa.

Now we come to an interesting item.  Where is sex on the pyramid?  Maslow put sex at the very bottom, because the way he saw it, sex is biological in nature, and therefore makes it the same as food and sleep.  I think most people would question this.  We NEED food to survive, we NEED air to survive, but we don't typically need sex for survival.  In fact, we don't really seem to need sex at all, we just sort of want it.  I would consider sex not to be a need, but as a means to GET what we need, making it an indirect need in the same way as money.  We don't need money, but we do need the things that money can get us.

Suppose a rapist holds a knife to your throat, and demands sex or else he will kill you.  Sex becomes a tool for survival.

Suppose you're a prostitute who goes out, has sex for money, and then uses that money to pay rent.  Sex becomes a tool for security.

Suppose you're in a romantic relationship, and having a good sexual experience with your partner brings you closer together.  Sex becomes a tool for belonging.

Suppose you're a frat boy who bangs a hot chick and then goes to brag to your friends, or alternatively, you're a rich old man who marries a young hot trophy wife to show off at parties and make other men jealous.  Sex becomes a tool for esteem.

Suppose you're a swinger or part of the BDSM community, and your sexual activities are integral to your chosen lifestyle and the way you perceive yourself.  Sex becomes a tool for self-actualization.

The point is that sex is not limited to any one place on the hierarchy.  In fact, if we include entertainment as a need by itself, then casual sex can be a form of entertainment.

Once again, however, self-transcendence doesn't fit, because sex wouldn't typically be a tool of self sacrifice for a greater cause, unless some asteroid is about to destroy the earth unless you have unprotected sex with a person with an untreatable deadly STD, which as far as I know, has not happened.

The Unemployment Problem

Let's say I own a factory that makes widgets.  I employ ten people at ten dollars per hour, and each of them works a forty-hour week.  That means I'm paying a total of four thousand dollars per week for labor.

Our quota for the week is ten thousand widgets.  This means that to make quota, each employee has to make twenty-five widgets per hour, and I'm paying forty cents per widget (not including raw materials and overhead).  If one employee calls in sick, the other nine can work a little bit faster to pick up the slack.

Now let's say that an inventor comes along with a machine that can allow my workers to increase production by a factor of ten.  The machine still needs an operator to turn it on and keep an eye on it, but when running, it can produce two hundred and fifty widgets per hour, per operator.  And now, we have a problem.

Option 1:  Let's say I don't buy the new machine, and keep doing business as usual.  My competitors will surely buy the machine, which means that they'll be able to produce more volume at a faster rate.  If my factor suffers a setback, such as a snowstorm closing the roads or a flu epidemic causing all my employees to call off at the same time, my company will never be able to catch up, by my rival will.  I'll be run out of business.  So I can't pick option one.

Option 2:  Let's say I buy the machine, and continue having my employees work a forty-hour week.  This means that by the end of the week, I will have produced one hundred thousand widgets, overshooting my quota by ninety thousand.  Most of those widgets won't get sold, so they'll get thrown out, but because of the increased supply, they'll be a lot cheaper, but not enough to create more demand, so I'll take a loss on sales.  Also, I'll be using raw materials at a faster rate, which means I'll take a loss there too.  So I can't pick option two.

Option 3:  I buy the machine, and lay off nine of my employees.  The remaining employee does all the work himself, puts out ten thousand widgets per week, and I'm cutting my labor costs by ninety percent.  At first, this sounds like a good deal, except for two problems.  First, I'm now completely dependent upon one employee, which means that if he's ever sick or gets a flat tire or something, my entire production will stop.  Second, because there are now nine newly unemployed people, that lowers the gross domestic product.  If too many people are out of work, it can lead to a chain reaction which will lead back to me.  (In other words, those nine people can't buy shoes, which means the shoe-seller has to lay people off, which leads to those people not buying hats, which causes the hat-seller to lay people off, which leads to those people not buying burgers, which causes the burger-sellers to lay people off, which leads to those people not buying widgets.)  It would not be wise for me to pick option three.

Option 4:  Let's say that instead of laying off any workers, I simply cut their hours.  If I have ten employees, and each employee can produce two hundred and fifty widgets per hour using the new equipment, and my quota is ten thousand widgets, then I only need each employee to work four hours per week.  (It doesn't matter whether I have them all work at the same time or stagger them.)  Everything balances out, and I'm still saving ninety percent on labor.  However, since each employee will only be getting a weekly salary of forty dollars, and no one can survive on forty dollars per week, all ten of my employees will seek jobs elsewhere.  Once they find a decent-paying job, they won't need to work for me anymore, and may even be forced to quit due to scheduling conflicts with their new employers.  With no one willing or able to work for me, I'll have to shut down production.  So I can't pick option four.

Option 5:  Let's say that I buy the machine, keep all the employees, but instruct them only to produce ten thousand widgets total, while still requiring them to put in a forty hour week.  This would solve basically all of my problems, as I would now be paying the exact same number of people as before the exact same amount of money as before to produce the same number of widgets as before in the exact same amount of time as before, the only difference being that I can now get caught up more easily in the case of setbacks.  The only down side is that now, I'll have ten people doing four hours of work stretched out over a forty hour week, meaning that each person will spend a total of thirty-six hours each week standing around deliberately wasting time.  This isn't a good use of my time or theirs.  Option five is doable, but not ideal.

Option 6:  Suppose I cut my employees' hours from forty hours to four hours per week, but pay them each the same four hundred dollars per week as before.  I could explain this a number of ways, such as putting down that they worked forty hours even though they didn't, or raising their salary to one hundred dollars per hour, or simply switching them from an hourly rate to a weekly rate.  This could run into problems in the case of someone working overtime or calling off, but for the most part, I'm both spending and operating at the same rate as before.  Additionally, I'm saving money on overhead, because I now have an extra thirty-six hours per week where the lights are turned off, heaters and air conditioners aren't running, and no one is using the restrooms, so I'm saving money on both electricity and water.  On top of that, my employees can use their newfound free time for recreational activities, which increases the gross domestic product.  Option six is the most practical option by far.  And yet, it just doesn't seem kosher, does it?

Weird 80s-90s Jokes

The 80s and 90s had some running gags that, not even don't hold up well, but also didn't really make sense in the first place.  I classify these as more "recognition" jokes than "surprise" jokes, because people only laughed out of a sense of "hey, they did the thing."  (Think along the lines of someone pulling out a rubber chicken.)  If any of these jokes were inserted into a modern movie or show, and shown to an audience who wasn't familiar with the gag, they would almost certainly not get a laugh.  And yet, in the 80s and 90s, television and movie writers just couldn't resist the urge to do them over and over and over.  Here are some of the ones I can remember:

*  A woman walks up to a man and tries to flirt with him.  The man immediately says or does something stereotypically gay.  Pause for laughter.  (Alternatively, a gay man may simply be acting stereotypically in a scene for no reason.)

*  An American character is introduced to an Asian character.  The (usually white, but sometimes black) American immediately starts talking to the Asian in Japanese (apparently, the only Asian language).  The Asian character turns to the person next to him and says, "What's he talking about?" with an exaggerated American accent.  No pause this time.  Onto the next joke.

*  Someone uses the phrase "once a month," and someone euphemistically implies that it's kind of like women's periods.  This goes absolutely nowhere.

*  A man has to talk to a woman about something important, but instead of talking to her like a normal person, he creepily follows her for a while.  She rolls her eyes, and threatens the man with pepper spray or karate or something.  THEN the man starts talking about the important thing, and the mistaken-for-a-stalker gag is never mentioned again.

*  A man sees a person from behind, who is obviously a woman, but she happens to be wearing a hat.  When she turns around or removes her hat, revealing long hair, the man is dumbstruck, and possibly exclaims "You're a woman?"  Brief pause for laughter, and then move on with the story.  (I think the thing that bothers me the most about this gag is that it's not so much a joke on the stupidity of the man, but that it's framed like a joke on the audience.  As if I, the viewer, also thought she was a man.  Also, keep in mind that this joke was commonly used at a time when long hair on men was fashionable.)

*  A white man says something without swearing, and a black man replies with a PG swearword (usually "shit" or "ass").  Pause for laughter is optional.

* A white person says or does something stereotypically black (usually awkwardly).  A black onlooker shakes his head and rolls his eyes.

*  Catch-phrases (usually advertising slogans) such as "where's the beef?" or "I've fallen and I can't get up," followed by a (usually long) pause for laughter.

*  Someone says something sentimental, and then immediately announces they have to take a leak.  (Actually, now that I think about it, this gag is still being used.)

* Someone gets flipped upside-down for some reason, and whimsically says to another character, "I guess I'm head-over-heels for you."  Minimal pause.  (The thing that irritates me about this one is that the person's head is specifically NOT over their heels when they say this.)

*  Person A tells person B off, and then dramatically exits the room, closing the door behind him.  Person B says, "That's a closet."  Person A has to sheepishly exit the closet and then leave through the correct door.  Okay, I'll admit that this joke was funny once, maybe twice, but after a while, it just got way overused.

* Someone works in the phrase "thirteen o'clock" or "February the 30th."  Minimal pause.  This one is mostly applied to children's shows.

* Either a nerd or a foreigner attempts to use a colloquialism, but uses one wrong word, usually an antonym.  Another character immediately corrects him.  No pause.

* A person who doesn't "get" what the other person is enthusiastic about starts muttering a list of (usually three) relevant singular nouns to himself, but pluralized.  End of scene.

* A woman tells a man to "man up" or "grow a pair" or some other emasculating remark.  Pause for laughter and heavy applause.

* A person (usually a woman) is completely incompetent throughout the movie/episode, then does something brilliant, skillful or badass right near the end.  Everyone else looks stunned.  Long pause for laughter and applause.

* Someone works in a very specific reference to "Star Trek," usually the original series.  Minimal pause.

* A woman says or does something aggressive or otherwise stereotypically masculine.  The man observing her says something like, "Oh, I like her."  Brief pause.  (Again, we still see this one occasionally.)

* A group of people set up a fake miracle, haunting or UFO sighting.  Afterward, one minor aspect of the hoax was revealed to have been unexplained and presumably real.  Long pause as the characters stare blankly upward.

* A man fails to or misses an opportunity have sex with an attractive woman.  (It is not necessary that having sex with this woman was ever his stated goal.)  Optional wah-wah sound effect.  Movie/episode ends.

* Someone, without any provocation, insults, belittles, or physically assaults a mime.  Pause for laughter.

* The main character lies down in a bed and immediately assumes that the previous events were all a dream.  Alternatively, the main character wakes up from a dream, but then finds lingering evidence that it was not.

* A child runs to an adult to ask for help.  The adult assumes that the child is lying.  This causes a delay in getting help for about five seconds, and then is not mentioned again.  (This is more of a 60s/70s gag, but it did come up later occasionally.)

* And older and/or sophisticated person makes a disparaging remark about either rock and roll or rap, for no apparent reason.  No pause.  On to the next scene.

* A stereotypical nerd says a stereotypically nerdy thing.  Pause for laughter.

* The entire story is told in flashback.  The teller finally reveals that the story was not true, then in the next scene, reveals to the audience that it was true.  Typically, these types of stories don't need to be told in flashback at all.

* Everyone repeatedly and brutally insults the fat person.  Pause for laughter every time.  For some reason, the fat person is still friends with these people.  (Actually, this joke has probably been around since time immemorial.)

I'll probably add more to this list as I think of them.

Future of the Economy

If we ever to become a fully-automated economy (and I think this is very likely), how will businesses profit? Sure, they'll save money by not having to pay employees, but who will they sell products and services to? If everyone is unemployed, then all your customers have no income. Let's look at some of our options:

A) Keep going the way we're going, and eventually wind up with a bunch of automated factories making only enough products to sell to other factory-owners. A small community of owners getting by on just what they need, while everyone else slowly starves to death, or gets put into prisons.
B) Give everyone universal basic income, creating a welfare state. Since no one is doing any actual work, then no one can increase their earning by working overtime or doing a good enough job to get a raise. The super rich are grandfathered into a life of luxury, while the general public are now locked into a lower-class lifestyle. (Not ideal, but at least in this scenario, no one is starving.)
C) Total communism. All the people who build the now-automated industries now no longer own them. All goods are services are free, provided by the machines, and money doesn't exist. Those in power would NEVER go for this idea, but if they did, we would have to completely rethink our philosophies on individualism. (If I ask the machines to give me a product, do I really own it? Can I trade it? Is stealing even a crime? So many questions.)
D) Ban all new technologies. Revert to a pretechnological society (like the Amish), so that no one loses their jobs to machines. This would solve one problem, but create a whole bunch of new ones, relating to travel, medicine, communication, and how to even regulate something like this. Most people would never go for this idea, but at least pollution would decrease.
E) Create work programs. Have the government or some other nonprofit organization create "busy work" for people. The problem with this is that if you're going to use public funding to pay people for work that doesn't need to be done, you can just as easily pay them without giving them work. In a way, we're back to option B.
F) Force employers to hire more people than they need. This would, first of all, create problems for small businesses. Include them, and you could bankrupt them from over-hiring; exclude them, and you could be taking away their best workers. Second, you would have companies keeping employees standing around with nothing to do for much of the day. (This is already a problem for many companies, which guarantee workers a certain number of hours.) Employers would be spending money on overhead just to keep the lights on in a building where workers aren't working. Counterintuitively, it would be cheaper to pay employees NOT to come in to work. Of course, this raises another set of questions. How much does everyone get paid for not working? Do they all get paid the same, or is pay rate based on the value of the work they would have been doing? And what's to stop someone from claiming that they would be doing a great job, when in fact, if they had come in to work, they would have been slacking off?
G) Capitalism-communism hybrid. Basically, remove all wealth that is already established, then give everyone an "allowance" to spend on whatever they want. (This runs into some of the same problems as in option C, but not all.) The big issue here is that some people are going to want to trade with each other, and when that happens, it's only a matter of time before a second wealth imbalance starts to emerge. Sooner or later, someone is going to end up in debt to someone else to the point where even the allowance can't keep up, and we're right back where we started.
H) Agrarian sanctuaries. Let the rich and powerful live their lives as they wish, but give the poor and unemployed free parcels of land, so they can start growing vegetables and so on, becoming self-sustaining. First problem with this is that it's still unfair and locks people into a class system. Second, not everyone is cut out to be a farmer. And third, eventually, the agrarian societies would improve their own technology and return to where we are today.
I) Matrix. Total emersion in a virtual world, where the problems of society can be programmed away. The big problem here is that any hacker would now have the power of a wrathful god.
J) Wipe out humanity. Let evolution start over. (Let's call this a last resort.)

Those are all the ones I can think of. Any more bright ideas from anyone else?