[choc e-Claire]

14. For reasons that cannot be explained, cats can suddenly read at a twelfth-grade level. They can't talk and they can't write, but they can read silently and comprehend the text. Many cats love this new skill, because they now have something to do all day while they lay around the house; however, a few cats become depressed, because reading forces them to realize the limitations of their existence (not to mention utter frustration of being unable to express themselves). This being the case, do you this the average cat would enjoy Garfield, or would cats find the cartoon to be an insulting caricature?

15. You have a brain tumor. Though there is no discomfort at the moment, this tumor would unquestionably kill you in six months. However, your life can (and will) be saved by an operation; the only downside is there will be a brutal incision to your frontal lobe. After the surgery, you will be significantly less intelligent. You will be a fully functioning adult, but you will be less logical, you will have a terrible memory, and you will have little ability to understand complex concepts of difficult ideas. The surgery is in two weeks. How do you spend the next fourteen days?

16. Someone builds an optical portal that allows you to see a vision of your own life in the future (it is essentially a crystal ball that shows you a randomly selected image of what your life will be like in twenty years). You can only see into this portal for thirty seconds. When you peer into the crystal, you see yourself in a living room, two decades older than you are today. You are watching Canadian football game, and you are extremely happy. You are wearing a CFL jersey. You chair is surrounded by CFL books and magazines that promote the Canadian Football League, and there are CFL pennants covering your walls. You are alone in the room, but you are gleefully muttering about historical moments in Canadian football history. It becomes clear that for some unknown reason you have become obsessed with Canadian football. And this future is static and absolute, no matter what you do, this future will happen. The optical portal is never wrong. This destiny cannot be changed. The next day, you are flipping through television channels and randomly come across a pre-season CFL game between the Toronto Argonauts and the Saskatchewan Roughriders. Knowing your inevitable future, do you now watch it?

17. You are sitting in an empty bar (in a town you've never before visited), drinking Bacardi with a soft-spoken acquaintance you barely know. After an hour, a third individual walks into the tavern and sits by himself, and you ask your acquaintance who the new man is. Be careful of that guy, you are told. He is a man with a past. A few minutes later, a fourth person enters the bar; he also sits alone. You ask your acquaintance who this new individual is. Be careful of that guy too, he says. He is a man with no past. Which of these two people do you trust less?

18. You have won a prize. The prize has two options, and you can choose either (but not both). The first option is a year in Europe with a monthly stipend of $2,000. The second option is ten minutes on the moon. Which option do you select?

19/ Your best friend is taking a nap on the floor of your living room. Suddenly, you are faced with a bizarre existential problem: This friend is going to die unless you kick them (as hard as you can) in the rib cage. If you don't kick them while they slumber, they will never wake up. However, you can never explain this to your friend; if you later inform them that you did this to save their life, they will also die from that. So you have to kick a sleeping friend in the ribs, and you can't tell them why. Since you cannot tell your friend the truth, what excuse will you fabricate to explain this (seemingly inexplicable) attack?

20. For whatever the reason, two unauthorized movies are made about your life. The first is an independently released documentary, primarily comprised of interviews with people who know you and bootleg footage from your actual life. Critics are describing the documentary as brutally honest and relentlessly fair. Meanwhile, Columbia Tri-Star has produced a big-budget biopic about your life, casting major Hollywood stars as you and all your acquaintances; though the movie is based on actual events, screenwriters have taken some liberties with the facts. Critics are split on the artistic merits of this fictionalized account, but audiences love it. Which film would you be most interested in seeing?

21. Imagine you could go back to the age of five and relive the rest of your life, knowing everything you know now. You will reexperience your entire adolescence with both the cognitive ability of an adult and the memories of everything you've learned from having lived your life previously. Would you lose your virginity earlier or later than you did the first time around (and by how many years)?

22. You work in an office. Generally, you are popular with your coworkers. However, you discover that there are currently two rumors circulating in the office gossip mill, and both involve you. The first rumor is that you got drunk at the office holiday party and had sex with one of your married coworkers. This rumor is completely true, but most people don't believe it. The second rumor is that you have been stealing hundreds of dollars of office supplies (and then selling them to cover a gambling debt). This rumor is completely false, but virtually everyone assumes its factual. Which of these two rumors is most troubling to you?

23. Consider this possibility:
a) Think about the deceased TV star John Ritter.
b) Now, pretend Ritter has never become famous. Pretend he was never affected by the trappings of fame, and try to imagine what his personality would have been like.
c) Now, imagine that this person the unfamous John Ritter is a character in a situation comedy.
d) Now, you are also a character in this sitcom, and the unfamous John Ritter character is your sitcom father.
e) However, this sitcom is actually your real life. In other words, you are living inside a sitcom: Everything about your life is a construction, featuring the unfamous John Ritter playing himself (in the role of the TV father). But this is not a sitcom. This is your real life. How would you feel about this?

24. Think of someone who is your friend (do not select your best friend, but make sure the person is someone you would classify as “considerably more than an acquaintance”). This friend is going to be attacked by a grizzly bear. Now this person will survive this bear attack; that is guaranteed. There is a 100 percent chance that your friend will live. However, the extent of his injuries is unknown; he might receive nothing but a few superficial scratches, but he also might lose a limb (or multiple limbs). He might recover completely in twenty-four hours with nothing but a great story or he might spend the rest of his life in a wheelchair. Somehow, you have the ability to stop this attack from happening. You can magically save your friend from the bear. But his (or her) salvation will come at a peculiar price: if you choose to stop the bear, it will always rain. For the rest of your life, wherever you go, it will be raining. Sometimes it will pour and sometimes it will drizzle – but it will never not be raining. But it won’t rain over the totality of the earth, nor will the hydrological cycle be disrupted; these storm clouds will be isolated, and they will focus entirely on your specific whereabouts. You will never see the sun again. Do you stop the bear and accept a lifetime of rain?

25. Assume everything about your musical tastes was reversed overnight. Everything you once loved, you now hate; everything you once hated, you now love. For example, if your favorite band has always been R.E.M., they will suddenly sound awful to you; they will become the band you dislike the most. By the same token, if you’ve never been remotely interested in the work of Yes and Jethro Tull, those two groups will instantly seem fascinating. If you generally dislike jazz today, you’ll generally like jazz tomorrow. If you currently consider the first album by Veruca Salt to be slightly above average, you will abruptly find it to be slightly below average. Everything will become its opposite, but everything will remain in balance (and the rest of your personality will remain unchanged). So – in all likelihood – you won’t love music any less (or any more) than you do right now. There will still be artists you love who make you happy; they will merely be all the artists you currently find unlistenable. Now, I concede that this transformation would make you unhappy. But explain why.