Imagine you could make fuel out of poor people. The only downside is that the poor people have to be converted to a combustible liquid in the process. Imagine that although there are many alternatives to using poor people as fuel, those alternatives cost way more. In fact, the alternatives are so much more expensive, widespread use would impact your standard of living by about twenty percent.
Obviously using humans for fuel would be wrong and you wouldn’t do it. But I’m not done confusing your moral compass.
Now let’s say the people who are used as fuel are volunteers, of a sort. For every twenty people who volunteer to become SUV fuel, only one will be randomly selected. The other nineteen get a host of benefits including pensions and paid educations. Let’s say human fuel is so economical that one human converted to fuel pays for the benefits to the other nineteen. And the one poor person fuels an entire town’s energy needs for a year.
In this scenario, you’d be powering your car with liquefied poor people, but your conscience would be cleared by the knowledge they all volunteered. It’s a free country. They took the chance of being one of the nineteen lucky ones, but it didn’t work out. Some volunteered because they thought it was their best chance for upward mobility. Some thought it was their patriotic duty. But it was their decision. No one forced them.
Let’s say the politicians argue that in the long run, this policy of using poor people for fuel will save lives. The thinking is that we’ll eventually develop other fuel sources, but for now we need the strong economy to pay for health care and a strong national defense against terrorists and whatnot. All of the volunteers are hailed as heroes.
Under those conditions would you use poor people to fuel your car?
Bonus question: Are you already doing something close to that?
Friday, July 20, 2007
Wednesday, July 18, 2007
Million Dollar Idea...!
Have you heard of an online service for kids called Webkinz? It’s like a cross between cocaine and puppies. Kids can’t resist it. It’s frickin’ brilliant.
Before you use the Webkinz service, you have to buy a stuffed animal that comes with a code. You use that code to activate an animated character in an online world that looks like your stuffed animal. The brilliant part is that your online critter will become sick if you don’t regularly visit and care for it. Somehow this makes kids emotionally invested.
Kids can earn fake money by playing games on the system. That money goes toward caring for their online creatures, including buying furniture and so on. Kids love it. But I think kids aren’t the biggest market for this sort of thing.
I think single women would want an online boyfriend they could totally control. But here’s the hook: The online boyfriend is a “project.” If you don’t sign into the system regularly, your online boyfriend will start dressing with clothes from the 80’s, smoking, gambling, staying out late, and flirting with other women.
It’s the “owner’s” job to make the virtual boyfriend eat right, exercise, look for a job, and trim his nose hair. If he scratches his crotch or passes gas during an online dinner party, he gets no virtual sex for a week.
The women could earn fake online money by playing games just like in the Webkinz model. For example, imagine a Tetris-type game where articles of clothing fall from above and you have to assemble them into coordinated outfits before they reach the ground. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be a hit.
Here are some more online game ideas for the virtual boyfriend site:
- Quickly identify which movie at the Cineplex would make a human feel the worst. Send the online boyfriend to watch it.
- Send the online boyfriend to the drugstore for you and try to assemble a basket of items that is the most embarrassing.
- Make the online boyfriend carry a purse through a tough neighborhood without being beaten to death.
- How about a game set in a Mexican restaurant where all the tables have candles? The object is to navigate your online boyfriend around the tables and to the Men’s room without him tooting too near the candles and setting the other diners aflame.
Do you have any more game ideas?
Before you use the Webkinz service, you have to buy a stuffed animal that comes with a code. You use that code to activate an animated character in an online world that looks like your stuffed animal. The brilliant part is that your online critter will become sick if you don’t regularly visit and care for it. Somehow this makes kids emotionally invested.
Kids can earn fake money by playing games on the system. That money goes toward caring for their online creatures, including buying furniture and so on. Kids love it. But I think kids aren’t the biggest market for this sort of thing.
I think single women would want an online boyfriend they could totally control. But here’s the hook: The online boyfriend is a “project.” If you don’t sign into the system regularly, your online boyfriend will start dressing with clothes from the 80’s, smoking, gambling, staying out late, and flirting with other women.
It’s the “owner’s” job to make the virtual boyfriend eat right, exercise, look for a job, and trim his nose hair. If he scratches his crotch or passes gas during an online dinner party, he gets no virtual sex for a week.
The women could earn fake online money by playing games just like in the Webkinz model. For example, imagine a Tetris-type game where articles of clothing fall from above and you have to assemble them into coordinated outfits before they reach the ground. You can’t tell me that wouldn’t be a hit.
Here are some more online game ideas for the virtual boyfriend site:
- Quickly identify which movie at the Cineplex would make a human feel the worst. Send the online boyfriend to watch it.
- Send the online boyfriend to the drugstore for you and try to assemble a basket of items that is the most embarrassing.
- Make the online boyfriend carry a purse through a tough neighborhood without being beaten to death.
- How about a game set in a Mexican restaurant where all the tables have candles? The object is to navigate your online boyfriend around the tables and to the Men’s room without him tooting too near the candles and setting the other diners aflame.
Do you have any more game ideas?
Tuesday, July 17, 2007
General Nonsense
Flying Dinosaurs
Once upon a time there were dinosaurs. They died and decomposed and turned into oil. Millions of years later, humans turned that oil into plastic. Recently, plastic became the major building material for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. There’s your proof that dinosaurs can fly.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19421415/
This got me wondering if the 787 is a new form of life. After all, it’s carbon-based, i.e. mostly plastic, and more intelligent than most people I know. And it reproduces, in the sense that more 787s are being built. But is that enough? I turned to Wikipedia to find out the definition of “life.”
According to some stranger with no credibility, life is characterized by “growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.” Luckily, intelligence is not part of the definition. So we can skirt that argument.
Metabolism is essentially the chemical reactions in a living thing. The 787 has plenty of chemical reactions. If it didn’t, the engines and the air conditioning wouldn’t work. You might argue that the majority of the plane has no chemical reactions. Luckily, the definition of life doesn’t require a minimum percentage of chemical reactions. It just has to have some. Check.
The 787 also eats and poops. Its food is people. And its poop is people who are a few hours older and slightly more decomposed. People enter the 787s stomach, stay there for a few hours decomposing, and exit through the rear (I’m hoping, because it makes the analogy more spiffy). The passengers pay money for this trip, which goes into the financial bloodstream and results in fuel and replacement parts being added to the plane. It’s not a perfect analogy, I grant you that, but some bugs have their skeletons on the outside and no one complains about that.
The 787 obviously reproduces, with help from humans. There will be more 787s next year than this year. You could argue that the plane can’t reproduce on its own, but neither can some flowers. They need bees to pollinate them. Technically, no animal could reproduce without the help of other plants and/or animals, because you can’t procreate if you have nothing to eat. Most life depends on other life, directly or indirectly, in order to reproduce.
To qualify as life, the 787 must also adapt to its environment through changes originating internally. It’s designed to do just that. If the plane senses a drop in cabin pressure, it releases the oxygen masks. If it’s on autopilot, it continuously adjusts its path to compensate for wind. Clearly it adapts to its environment.
So there you have it. The 787 Dreamliner is alive. And you are jet poop. Deal with it.
Once upon a time there were dinosaurs. They died and decomposed and turned into oil. Millions of years later, humans turned that oil into plastic. Recently, plastic became the major building material for the new Boeing 787 Dreamliner. There’s your proof that dinosaurs can fly.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19421415/
This got me wondering if the 787 is a new form of life. After all, it’s carbon-based, i.e. mostly plastic, and more intelligent than most people I know. And it reproduces, in the sense that more 787s are being built. But is that enough? I turned to Wikipedia to find out the definition of “life.”
According to some stranger with no credibility, life is characterized by “growth through metabolism, reproduction, and the power of adaptation to environment through changes originating internally.” Luckily, intelligence is not part of the definition. So we can skirt that argument.
Metabolism is essentially the chemical reactions in a living thing. The 787 has plenty of chemical reactions. If it didn’t, the engines and the air conditioning wouldn’t work. You might argue that the majority of the plane has no chemical reactions. Luckily, the definition of life doesn’t require a minimum percentage of chemical reactions. It just has to have some. Check.
The 787 also eats and poops. Its food is people. And its poop is people who are a few hours older and slightly more decomposed. People enter the 787s stomach, stay there for a few hours decomposing, and exit through the rear (I’m hoping, because it makes the analogy more spiffy). The passengers pay money for this trip, which goes into the financial bloodstream and results in fuel and replacement parts being added to the plane. It’s not a perfect analogy, I grant you that, but some bugs have their skeletons on the outside and no one complains about that.
The 787 obviously reproduces, with help from humans. There will be more 787s next year than this year. You could argue that the plane can’t reproduce on its own, but neither can some flowers. They need bees to pollinate them. Technically, no animal could reproduce without the help of other plants and/or animals, because you can’t procreate if you have nothing to eat. Most life depends on other life, directly or indirectly, in order to reproduce.
To qualify as life, the 787 must also adapt to its environment through changes originating internally. It’s designed to do just that. If the plane senses a drop in cabin pressure, it releases the oxygen masks. If it’s on autopilot, it continuously adjusts its path to compensate for wind. Clearly it adapts to its environment.
So there you have it. The 787 Dreamliner is alive. And you are jet poop. Deal with it.
Monday, July 16, 2007
World's Tallest Man Marries!
In the news, a 7-foot-9 Mongolian herdsman (there’s only one of them) married a woman who is 5-foot-6.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19727485/?GT1=10150
This is the sort of story that raises all sorts of inappropriate questions. Not more questions than, say, the conjoined twins with two heads and one vagina, but lots of questions.
You were all thinking it, so let me just say it. Does the tallest man on earth have a trouser snake the size of Ryan Seacrest on Thanksgiving? Inquiring minds want to know. And if so, how does the tallest man’s diminutive wife explore her passion without dying in a Shish Kabob-type accident?
The tallest man recently made headlines for helping with some dolphins that had swallowed plastic. He used his long arms to reach all the way inside them and remove it. This makes me wonder what other uses he could have, especially if he is, you know, proportionate. For example, if someone dropped an iPod down a storm drain, could he attach gum to the end of his python, leaf through a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and retrieve it?
I don’t know the Mongolian translation for Johnson, but let’s say it’s Ganbaatar. When the world’s tallest man walks to the shower, does his Ganbaatar slap his thighs and make a noise like a king salmon that jumped in a canoe?
Oh, you can say you’re above this kind of humor. But I don’t think you’d be reading this blog if that were true, Ganbaatar breath.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/19727485/?GT1=10150
This is the sort of story that raises all sorts of inappropriate questions. Not more questions than, say, the conjoined twins with two heads and one vagina, but lots of questions.
You were all thinking it, so let me just say it. Does the tallest man on earth have a trouser snake the size of Ryan Seacrest on Thanksgiving? Inquiring minds want to know. And if so, how does the tallest man’s diminutive wife explore her passion without dying in a Shish Kabob-type accident?
The tallest man recently made headlines for helping with some dolphins that had swallowed plastic. He used his long arms to reach all the way inside them and remove it. This makes me wonder what other uses he could have, especially if he is, you know, proportionate. For example, if someone dropped an iPod down a storm drain, could he attach gum to the end of his python, leaf through a Victoria’s Secret catalog, and retrieve it?
I don’t know the Mongolian translation for Johnson, but let’s say it’s Ganbaatar. When the world’s tallest man walks to the shower, does his Ganbaatar slap his thighs and make a noise like a king salmon that jumped in a canoe?
Oh, you can say you’re above this kind of humor. But I don’t think you’d be reading this blog if that were true, Ganbaatar breath.
Saturday, July 14, 2007
Excellant New Product for Men
If you’re a guy, you’ve probably heard way too many times a variation of this not-really-a-question: “Could you hold my purse?”
As you know, there is no way to hold a purse in a manly fashion. After sixty seconds of transporting a designer bag full of Tampons and lipstick, your testosterone will be so low that you’ll be playing field hockey and lactating.
You can try holding the purse in a manly, irregular fashion, but it won’t help. It’s still a purse. And you’re holding it. You big wuss. Say goodbye to your gonads; they’ll be hiding in your torso like two BBs in an airplane hangar.
That’s why I invented the PursePliers ™. They are exactly like regular pliers, but you carry them in your back pocket in all times in case you are asked to hold a woman’s purse. When you hear the call, “Honey, would you grab my purse?” you whip out the pliers and use them to safely transport the purse and its wuss cooties.
The recommended way to lift a purse with pliers is by grabbing the zipper and holding it the way you would hold fresh road kill, at a safe distance from your body, just in case it’s not totally dead. Research has shown that wuss cooties can not cross pliers.
While there is no manly way to touch a purse with your bare hands, there is no unmanly way to use pliers. Your PursePliers can be used in a variety of situations, including shopping for a blouse for your wife, passing the low-calorie salad dressing, and tucking in a baby.
PursePliers: Their time is now.
As you know, there is no way to hold a purse in a manly fashion. After sixty seconds of transporting a designer bag full of Tampons and lipstick, your testosterone will be so low that you’ll be playing field hockey and lactating.
You can try holding the purse in a manly, irregular fashion, but it won’t help. It’s still a purse. And you’re holding it. You big wuss. Say goodbye to your gonads; they’ll be hiding in your torso like two BBs in an airplane hangar.
That’s why I invented the PursePliers ™. They are exactly like regular pliers, but you carry them in your back pocket in all times in case you are asked to hold a woman’s purse. When you hear the call, “Honey, would you grab my purse?” you whip out the pliers and use them to safely transport the purse and its wuss cooties.
The recommended way to lift a purse with pliers is by grabbing the zipper and holding it the way you would hold fresh road kill, at a safe distance from your body, just in case it’s not totally dead. Research has shown that wuss cooties can not cross pliers.
While there is no manly way to touch a purse with your bare hands, there is no unmanly way to use pliers. Your PursePliers can be used in a variety of situations, including shopping for a blouse for your wife, passing the low-calorie salad dressing, and tucking in a baby.
PursePliers: Their time is now.
Wednesday, July 11, 2007
Frightening Little Question
Ok! The previous blog entry was a midday thought that I managed to put in words only during the end of the day. Here's the actual entry for the day...
When I watch a movie, I enjoy it more if I can empathize with one of the characters. I imagine myself in his or her situation: solving a crime, falling in love, wearing a leotard while battling injustice, and whatnot. It’s hard to enjoy a movie if I can’t relate to how the characters are feeling, even if they are different from me. That’s normal, right?
So how the f*ck do you explain the popularity of horror movies?
There are only two kinds of characters in a horror flick: the victims who are dying horrible deaths, and the psychopaths that are doing the killing. My problem with those movies is that I automatically empathize with the victims, and I can feel their pain. When a character gets impaled with a sharp object, I imagine what that would feel like. I think it would hurt. So I steer clear of horror movies. Yet millions of people enjoy that type of entertainment. Here’s your frightening little question of the day: Who are horror movie fans empathizing with?
By process of elimination, I assume fans of horror flicks are imagining themselves as the killer, thinking how cool it would be to disembowel attractive teenagers. Frickin' Hell! There are millions of these psychopath movie-goers. And they look just like normal people.
I wonder how many times in my life I’m at a store, for example, swiping my debit card, and the cashier is looking at me and thinking “It sure would be fun to drive a spike through his forehead and make a vest from his skin.” It probably happens more often than I’d like.
Do you enjoy horror movies? If so, what the f*ck is wrong with you?
When I watch a movie, I enjoy it more if I can empathize with one of the characters. I imagine myself in his or her situation: solving a crime, falling in love, wearing a leotard while battling injustice, and whatnot. It’s hard to enjoy a movie if I can’t relate to how the characters are feeling, even if they are different from me. That’s normal, right?
So how the f*ck do you explain the popularity of horror movies?
There are only two kinds of characters in a horror flick: the victims who are dying horrible deaths, and the psychopaths that are doing the killing. My problem with those movies is that I automatically empathize with the victims, and I can feel their pain. When a character gets impaled with a sharp object, I imagine what that would feel like. I think it would hurt. So I steer clear of horror movies. Yet millions of people enjoy that type of entertainment. Here’s your frightening little question of the day: Who are horror movie fans empathizing with?
By process of elimination, I assume fans of horror flicks are imagining themselves as the killer, thinking how cool it would be to disembowel attractive teenagers. Frickin' Hell! There are millions of these psychopath movie-goers. And they look just like normal people.
I wonder how many times in my life I’m at a store, for example, swiping my debit card, and the cashier is looking at me and thinking “It sure would be fun to drive a spike through his forehead and make a vest from his skin.” It probably happens more often than I’d like.
Do you enjoy horror movies? If so, what the f*ck is wrong with you?
Nice or Evil..?
Let’s say your spouse decides to cook you an extra special meal. It’s your favorite. It takes him/her a lot of work. You enjoy the meal and naturally offer to do the cleaning up by yourself.
But here’s the kicker: Your spouse loves to cook, and you hate to clean up, especially after a long day and a big meal. As you wipe down the table and wash the extra-high pile of pots and pans from the extra-special meal, which thought do you have?
1. My spouse gave me something special tonight.
2. I got screwed in this deal.
But here’s the kicker: Your spouse loves to cook, and you hate to clean up, especially after a long day and a big meal. As you wipe down the table and wash the extra-high pile of pots and pans from the extra-special meal, which thought do you have?
1. My spouse gave me something special tonight.
2. I got screwed in this deal.
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