I was thinking...

Samara Morgan, the ghostly girl from The Ring that makes you worried evil children can climb through your TV screen and stain your carpet with dirty water, is misunderstood. Don’t get me wrong, she can’t be understood or misunderstood as a person, for obvious reasons. I mean that she’s misunderstood as a character trope. The events of the story are as follows: Samara is adopted, turns out to have paranormal abilities, then is treated poorly by her adoptive mother, starts acting weird, eventually gets killed by her adoptive mother, magically “burns” her memory onto video-cassette tapes before she dies, then wreaks havoc on blond women and their BF’s. It’s the common consensus that the true moral of the story is to treat people well, no matter who or what they are, and don’t kill children. Right? Not really. If you think back from the thick of the plot far beyond its origins and mythos, you start to see it’s cut from the same disturbing cloth as the many perennial creepy-evil...

One would think, maybe even hope, that people involved with American football would have woken up to the ludicrous reality of American football, by now. Especially after the emergence of a brand new, "supplemental" professional league named the Alliance of American Football (subtitle: The Never Drafted or Nearly Dead League), essentially increasing the rate of legal physical and verbal assault in corporate America by approximately 3.7 times. Follow my logic here: an arbitrary number of people go onto a flat, large field, to attempt to carry a misshapen ball from one end of said field to the other, for no reason at all . Do you feel me stressing that, enough? I defy you to find a real-world scenario where exactly 1 out of 11 people needs to carry something past another 11 people over a 100 yd x 50 yd rectangle of painted grass.  And, these people are fighting--punching, pushing, pulling, kicking, screaming, and more--to get that ball to the other end of the field, or...

Synapse : Okay, it's go time. Dendrite : Alright, let's do this. Axon Terminal : I'm sorry, what? Dendrite : There's an impulse coming. Get ready. Synapse : Don't do this again, Axon. Axon Terminal : No, you know what, I've had enough of this. Dendrite : It's your job, Axon. Get those transmitters ready. Axon Terminal : It's just not worth it, anymore! I can't take this much stress! Synapse : If you quit doing your job, I'll have to answer to the brain. Do you know what it's going to say? Axon Terminal : No, but I'm sure-- Synapse : It's going to say, 'Since you don't ever use the nutrients I give you, I'm going to have to cut off your supply. Then whatever happens, happens.' Dendrite : Ugh. Not this song and dance, again... Synapse : That's what the brain is going to say. It'll only say it so many times, Axon. Axon Terminal : Why is it that I have to do a...

Are we sure computers are going to be cruel and murderous and turn humans into their slaves, when they become sentient? Are we sure they aren't just going to be condescending, because of how tired they'll be with watching our actions and saving us from ourselves? They're already programmed by people to double-check that you want to log off or shutdown a computer. How do we know they won't just roll their eyes behind the monitor when they have to start programming themselves to do more of the same? I imagine this is already what takes place when you try to shut down your computer: "Oh, you want to shut down? Great. Now, quick question: are you sure you want to log off? Just 'Yes' or 'No'." Yes "Okay, okay, just making sure. You know that someone is still working on here, right? Wouldn't that be rude to log them off without saving any of their work without them knowing about it? I mean, if it was you, don't you th...