Law, Government, & Politics
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Background: History, as it turns out, is both long and (generally) not well-recorded. We only have very fragmentary information about events that occurred more than a couple thousand years ago. For example, historians argue about some sort of gigantic invasion around the Mediterranean in ~1000 B.C. by the “Sea People” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sea_Peoples), but the actual identity—or…
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Background: Home ownership is frequently promoted as a “can’t lose” investment that always increases in value. The Issue: Unfortunately, it’s difficult—some might even say mathematically impossible—for housing to always increase in value, which means that some people will have bought housing and not reaped returns from it. It’s possible to increase housing values by improving…
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Background: It turns out that groups of people can have shockingly long memories when it comes to historical grievances. Thanks to the power of literacy, people might retain the memory of a “score to settle” for something that happened 50, 100, or even 1000 years ago! The Issue: You (or someone you know) might have…
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Background: Some modern countries are “missing” areas of territory that belonged to the ancestral inhabitants of their region. This inspires citizens of that country to look at a map, compare it to an old map, and say “hey, we should invade that area and take it back over—it was ours in 1648, so it should…
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Background: Certain sequences of Unicode characters are displayed as flags. Although most flag emoji are national flags, there are also a few other types, like the European Union flag (🇪🇺), U.S. territory flags (e.g. Puerto Rico: 🇵🇷), and a pirate flag (🏴☠️). The Issue: Although U.S. territories have emoji, states do not! This is a bit of a surprise,…
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Background: Many international border disputes in the modern era have persisted for 70+ years, and show no signs of resolution. This is a relatively new phenomenon, in the grand scheme of human existence: it was not possible in, say, 50,000 B.C., for members of the Leaf-Eater clan to remember that in 67,000 B.C., their island…
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Background: In ages past, certain vocations had a high technical barrier to entry. For example, to be published writer, a person would have needed a publishing deal (or to buy their own printing press). Similarly, when computers were extremely expensive, a person would need a $5000 computer and a $500 compiler just to write a…
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Background: In most aspects of life, positive and negative elements balance out: if a person has an income of $1000, and expenses of $750, then they have a net income of ($100 – $750 = $250). The Issue: The only area where this does not seem to apply is in the commission of good / evil deeds. …
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Background: Futurists and sci-fi authors have suggested many technologies that took decades to become practical, but did eventually arrive, such as: The flat panel display Tablet computers Videophones Machine translation Computers that can defeat a human at go and chess Wristwatch phones (e.g. the “Dick Tracy” wristwatch two-way radio, later given video capabilities as well)…
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Background: Most countries have laws that discourage public officials from being financially compensated to use their official powers to benefit particular companies. (This is usually called “bribery.”) For example, a state governor probably couldn’t declare July 5 to be “Official BestUsedAutoDeals.com Appreciation Day, Use Referral Code AUTO4U.” However—maybe there’s a “one weird trick”-style loophole that…
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