Dilemma 4/30/09

Self-knowledge
is a dangerous thing
and can't be granted
by a single vision.

--Craig Erick Chaffin


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You are able to see disasters that will happen in the future, but you cannot do anything that will change the outcomes.
2. You have realistic dreams, some of which predict the future, but you never know until after events unfold which dreams are predictive.

Dilemma 4/29/09

So early it's still almost dark out.
I'm near the window with coffee,
and the usual early morning stuff
that passes for thought.

--Raymond Carver


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Coffee plants die out.
2. The government bans soft drinks for health reasons.

Dilemma 4/28/09

And when the eve is born,
In the blue lake the sky, o'er-reaching far,
Is hollowed out and the moon dips her horn,
And twinkles many a star.

--Henry Wadsworth Longfellow


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. The sky becomes completely and permanently covered by clouds.
2. Most of the trees on Earth die for an unknown reason.

Dilemma 4/27/09

. . . . Looking for
signs to quiet fear, I creep
closer to his bed and hear
his breath come and go, holding
my own as if my own were
all I paid. Nothing I bring,
say, or do has meaning here.

--Philip Levine


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. A very contagious flu affects most of the people in your neighborhood.
2. A very contagious flu affects most of the people in another country.

Dilemma 4/26/09

What happens to a dream deferred?

Does it dry up
Like a raisin in the sun?

Or fester like a sore--
And then run?

--Langston Hughes


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You know for certain that you will never achieve any of your dreams.
2. You know for certain that someone you love dearly will never achieve any of his or her dreams.

Dilemma 4/25/09

Imagine if your precious nose
were sandwiched in between your toes,
that clearly would not be a treat,
for you'd be forced to smell your feet.

--Jack Prelutsky


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Your sense of smell becomes so sensitive that everything that has a smell bothers you.
2. Your sense of hearing becomes so sensitive that every sound you hear bothers you.

Dilemma 4/24/09

Changed? Yes, I will confess it – I have changed.
I do not love you in the old fond way.

--Ella Wheeler Wilcox


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. The entire world population suddenly becomes female.
2. The only babies born in the world are male.

Dilemma 4/23/09

When that I was and a little tiny boy,
With hey, ho, the wind and the rain,
A foolish thing was but a toy,
For the rain it raineth every day..

--William Shakespeare (Happy Birthday, Will!)


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Someone goes back in time and prevents Shakespeare from being born.
2. Someone goes back in time and prevents your closest friend from being born.

Dilemma 4/22/09

"O Oysters," said the Carpenter,
"You had a pleasant run!
Shall we be trotting home again?"
But answer came there none-
And this was scarcely odd, because
They'd eaten every one.

--Lewis Carroll


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Several deep sea fish species go extinct due to overfishing.
2. The government bans all types of fishing.

Dilemma 4/21/09

I never saw a Purple Cow,
I never hope to see one,
But I can tell you, anyhow,
I'd rather see than be one!

--Gelett Burgess


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. An experiment in genetic manipulation turns you into a purple cow.
2. An experiment in genetic manipulation turns you into a purple human-cow hybrid.

Dilemma 4/20/09

Ours is a freedom of hope
a spiritual grounding in our birth
the belief we shared, and still do today
Shaken from our yoke of slavery
so long as we don’t put on a new one

--Raymond A. Foss


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You die fighting against oppression.
2. You give up all your freedom and privacy in order to stay alive.

Dilemma 4/19/09

Your pain is the breaking of the shell that encloses
your understanding.

Even as the stone of the fruit must break, that its
heart may stand in the sun, so must you know pain.

--Khalil Gibran


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You spend the rest of your life in chronic pain.
2. Your closest loved one spends the rest of his or her life in chronic pain.

Dilemma 4/18/09

Life, friends, is boring. We must not say so.
After all, the sky flashes, the great sea yearns,
we ourselves flash and yearn

--John Berryman


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You spend the rest of your life in a empty room with nothing to do.
2. You spend the rest of your life bouncing from crisis to crisis with no downtime.

Dilemma 4/17/09

Torture will give a dozen pence or more
To keep a drab from bawling at his door.
The public taste is quite a different thing-
Torture is positively paid to sing.

--Hilaire Belloc


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You are forced to torture a good friend to his or her breaking point.
2. You are tortured to your breaking point.

Dilemma 4/16/09

Over the dead line we have called to you
To come across with a word to us,
Some beaten whisper of what happens
Where you are over the dead line
Deaf to our calls and voiceless.

--Carl Sandburg


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Your child is brain dead, and you agree to turn off the life support system.
2. Your parent is brain dead, and although you know it is against your parent's stated wishes, you keep your parent on life support.

Dilemma 4/15/09

We talk of taxes, and I call you friend;
Well, such you are,—but well enough we know
How thick about us root, how rankly grow
Those subtle weeds no man has need to tend

--Edna St. Vincent Millay


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You find yourself in serious legal trouble over a mistake you made on your taxes.
2. An innocent friend is in serious legal trouble over taxes due to an untraceable mistake made by the government.

Dilemma 4/14/09

Ah, fill the Cup: -- what boots it to repeat
How Time is slipping underneath our Feet:
Unborn To-morrow, and dead Yesterday,
Why fret about them if To-day be sweet!

--Omar Khayyam


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You are unable to remember anything that happened before each current day.
2. You are unable to forget anything.

Dilemma 4/13/09

Who am I, too, that I am not on trial, or in prison?
Me, ruthless and devilish as any, that my wrists are not chain’d with iron, or my
ankles
with
iron?

--Walt Whitman


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. A major injustice is perpetrated because no one speaks up.
2. An innocent person is destroyed by the false rumor that she is guilty of a major injustice.

Dilemma 4/12/09

Leaning against a wormy poppy-head,
So wan and worn that he could scarcely stand,
--For he was soon to die,--he softly said,
"Tell me you love me!"--holding hard her hand.

--Thomas Hardy


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You tell a self-destructive lie to someone to prevent them from physically harming themselves.
2. You tell a self-destructive lie to someone to minimize their emotional pain.

Dilemma 4/11/09

In the leaves that are crinkled and curled
Are his ashes of glory,
And what once were an end of the world
Is an end of a story.

--Edwin Arlington Robinson


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. The government mandates which books people can and cannot read.
2. A national group of religious leaders mandate which books people can and cannot read.

Dilemma 4/10/09

And would you learn the spells that drowse my soul?
Work without Hope draws nectar in a sieve,
And Hope without an object cannot live.

--Samuel Taylor Coleridge

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. You work in a mindless factory job that you hate.
2. You work in a high-pressure, high-stakes job that you hate.

Dilemma 4/9/09

Let me not to the marriage of true minds
Admit impediments. Love is not love
Which alters when it alteration finds,
Or bends with the remover to remove:
O no! it is an ever-fixed mark
That looks on tempests and is never shaken;

--William Shakespeare

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Your partner has a long-term affair.
2. Your partner has a sex change operation.

Dilemma 4/8/09

My Life had stood -- a Loaded Gun --
In Corners -- till a Day
The Owner passed -- identified --
And carried Me away --

--Emily Dickinson


You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. A friend with a history of anger issues buys a gun.
2. A friend with a history of depression buys a gun.

Dilemma 4/7/09

They went to sea in a Sieve, they did,
In a Sieve they went to sea:
In spite of all their friends could say,
On a winter's morn, on a stormy day,
In a Sieve they went to sea!

--Edward Lear

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. A medical researcher working on a cure for AIDS disappears at sea.
2. An inventor working on a completely renewable, cheap energy source disappears at sea.

Dilemma 4/6/09

Yesterday, upon the stair
I saw a man who wasn’t there
He wasn’t there again today
I wish, I wish, he’d go away.

--William Mearns

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. A time traveler goes back in time and prevents World War II and the Holocaust.
2. A time traveler goes back in time and prevents you from being born.

Dilemma 4/5/09

hate blows a bubble of despair into
hugeness world system universe and bang
-fear buries a tomorrow under woe
and up comes yesterday most green and young

--e. e. cummings

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. The world is consumed by hatred.
2. The world is consumed by fear.

Dilemma 4/4/09

Up the airy mountain
Down the rushy glen,
We daren't go a-hunting,
For fear of little men;

--William Allingham

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Two little girls in your neighborhood disappear and are never found.
2. The government mandates that all children under the age of 18 get GPS tracking implants.

Dilemma 4/3/09

When we’ve fought the battle bravely and are beaten to the wall,
’Tis the sneers of men, not conscience, that make cowards of us all;
And the while you are returning, oh! your brain is on the rack,
And your heart is in the shadow of the shame of going back.

--Henry Lawson

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. An unemployed man commits suicide.
2. A failed company's CEO commits suicide.

Dilemma 4/2/09

April is the cruellest month, breeding
Lilacs out of the dead land, mixing
Memory and stirring
Dull roots with spring rain.

--T. S. Eliot

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. Lilacs that are bioengineered to glow in the dark accidentally crossbreed with normal lilacs until there are almost no normal lilac plants left.
2. Potatoes that are bioengineered to produce an important vaccine accidentally crossbreed with normal potatoes until there are almost no normal potatoes left.

Dilemma 4/1/09

Some say the world will end in fire, Some say in ice. --Robert Frost

You have the magical power to stop one and only one of the following two scenarios. Which would you prevent?

1. A freak scientific accident triggers a runaway ice age, destroying all life on Earth and turning the world into an uninhabitable ball of ice
2. A freak scientific accident triggers runaway global warming, destroying all life on Earth and turning the world into an uninhabitable inferno.