Here is a typical “limitation of liability” in a user agreement.

In no event will the Operator be liable to any person for any indirect, incidental, special, punitive, cover or consequential damages (including, without limitation, damages for lost profits, revenue, sales, goodwill, use of content, impact on business, business interruption, loss of anticipated savings, loss of business opportunity) however caused, under any theory of liability, including, without limitation, contract, tort, warranty, breach of statutory duty, negligence or otherwise, even if the liable party has been advised as to the possibility of such damages or could have foreseen such damages.

Now, remember that Dr. Boli’s doctorate of laws was conferred honoris causa, and furthermore not by Americans, so he does not understand American law, and is willing to be instructed by the lawyers among his readers.

The obvious meaning of the clause is this: No matter how careless I am, and even if you told me I was being careless and would probably hurt you, I am not liable for any damages I cause to you, under any legal theory known to man.

The agreement is one to which you agree simply by using the service: “By accessing and using the Website and Services you agree to be bound by this Agreement.” Many of these “agreements” run over twenty thousand words. By using the service, you have agreed that you have read the agreement, but you did not.

It seems to Dr. Boli that there are three possibilities here:

1. This “limitation of liability” is valid, and therefore all the personal-injury attorneys and other liability lawyers in the world will do you no good against anyone who has copied and pasted this clause into a user agreement to which you agreed simply by existing; and soon there will be no damages awarded to anyone, and all those contingency-fee attorneys who advertise on billboards will starve.

2. This “limitation of liability” will not stand up in court if in fact the liable party knew or should have known that the conduct in question was likely to cause damage, and the lawyer who put those words in there and told his client “this will protect you” was lying.

3. An American lawyer is something between a faith healer and a witch doctor, someone who tries to convince himself that his rituals and incantations are doing some good, even though his senses perceive only a puff of blue smoke and a foul odor.

These are the three possibilities that occur to Dr. Boli when he reads a “limitation of liability” like this one. But Dr. Boli would be interested in hearing from an American lawyer who can explain the current state of the law.

All over the country, millions upon millions of dollars are being spent to pinkify the October landscape in honor of the idea of breast-cancer awareness. Above we see a small section of the Pittsburgh skyline, and Pittsburgh is just one of many cities where owners of big buildings are pinking up a storm. Fountains are dyed pink; pink ribbons are everywhere; pink decorations adorn the halls of these buildings.

Why is the world so pink?

Dr. Boli will tell you. It is because the American people are suckers.

These corporations are spending quite a bit of money on pinkening the environment so that we will see that they care about breast cancer. That money could, of course, be spent on research to cure breast cancer. But instead it is spent on pink. Our corporate masters want us to think well of them, because it makes us easier to manage; and they have discovered that turning on the pink lights, which everybody can see, is more effective at making us think well of them than donating an equivalent amount of money to medical research, which is not as visible no matter how many press conferences they call. We are suckers. We believe in the goodness of the corporation if it puts out a sign that says “We are good.” So corporations fund the lighting contractors, and the medical researchers starve.

To: All Employees
From: The President
Re: Ergonomics

All of us here at the Schenectady Small Arms & Biscuit Co., Inc., want to promote a productive work environment. I know that because I read it in a magazine in the dentist’s waiting room. My dentist has like a whole library in there, so every six months I get to catch up on my reading. So he had this magazine called Limited, the Magazine for the Smart Executive, and I thought, Hey, that’s me! And when I opened it up, the first article I came to was about this great new trend in work environments that makes them more productive, which it said is what everybody wants. A work environment is a place where people work. So like a job, but more environmental. This trend is called “ergonomics,” which looks like a big word, but it’s easy when you realize that it’s just made from two simple Greek words: ergo, which means “therefore,” and nomics, which means “stuff you eat.” I have no idea why it’s called “ergonomics,” because most of it isn’t about eating. But you should know about it, because it’s all about making the work environment better, and that’s what we all want.

I was only halfway through the article when the dental technician came to get me, but I got the gist of it. It’s basically about synergy, which is one of my favorite things. Last year for Boss’s Day my administrative assistant gave me a whole box of synergy. It looks like an empty box, but if you’re a smart executive you can see the synergy in it. Isn’t Mary Beth the best?

Anyway, the way ergonomics works is that you match the environment to the human beings who work in it. The article explained that people work better when the furniture around them matches the way their bodies are put together. It’s simple, really. Like, if you have to sit in a chair, that chair should have a shape that fits your body. And if you have to sit at a desk, then the things on the desk should be in the right positions for your arms to reach. The place you work and the shape of your body should fit together.

So when I got back to the office, I had Mary Beth do some numbers on that thing with the rectangles that she calls Extra Large (actually, she usually abbreviates it “XL”), and it turns out that it would cost a lot of money to make all our furniture fit our employees’ bodies. I mean, do you have any idea how many chairs there are just in the main building? So I said, “That’s a lot of money,” and she said, “Yeah, I suppose you’d think it was cheaper just to bend the employees around the furniture.”

See? This is why I say Mary Beth’s the best. I had her run the numbers (I don’t know why she kept saying “Please tell me you’re kidding” over and over again while she was doing it), and it turns out that her idea is surprisingly affordable, especially since my nephew Clyde is a chiropractor and he works cheap. So the immediate intent of this memo is to inform everyone to check your calendar to see when you’re scheduled for your upcoming appointment with Clyde. Together we can build the productive work environment that magazine says we all want.

With warmest regards,
J. Rutherford Pinckney,
President

Dear Dr. Boli: Right now I’m in college, but I’m worrying that by the time I get out, there won’t be any jobs left except in the garbage-collection industry, because everything else will be done by AI. So should I quit school now and take a job with the Department of Environmental Services? —Sincerely, A Sophomore at Duquesne.

Dear Sir or Madam: Even as late as a few months ago, Dr. Boli might have given you an affirmative answer. But he has been observing the progress of artificial intelligence in the workplace. More and more he sees lazy employees resorting to AI to try to get some assignment done with minimal effort. And then what happens? Someone else at the same company receives the assignment and says, “Oh—this was obviously done by AI. I’d better go over it with a fine-toothed comb.” More human employee-hours are spent dealing with the results of resorting to artificial intelligence than were formerly spent simply doing the jobs that have been turned over to AI. It turns out that, at almost every company, AI is the problem employee, the one in ten who takes up 90% of the management resources in dealing with his or her feckless incompetence. Go ahead and finish your degree. All over the world, positions are opening up for people who know how to deal with the messes AI is making every day.

Dear Dr. Boli: A friend of ours died recently, and her family told us she had “donated her body to science.” We’ve never been STEM people, so we’re wondering if there are opportunities available to donate one’s body to philosophy or poetry or Portuguese literature. Do you know of any? —Sincerely, Mort Alcoil in Bridgeville.

Dear Sir: The problem with donating one’s body to poetry is that the poets usually want to give it back after they have moped over it for a while, and no one wants to deal with returns. Philosophers, on the other hand, will start arguing with your relatives while the said relatives are still lugging the body bag, which may encourage your heirs to think that dropping the package off a bridge would be a more expeditious method of disposal. As for Portuguese literature, it is underappreciated outside Portugal, and your heirs would probably have to buy a separate plane ticket for you if you are still mostly intact, thus substantially raising the cost of the donation.

If you are set on donating your body to the humanities, therefore, Dr. Boli would suggest that you consider donating it to conceptual art. If your local art museum does not know any current artists who would jump at the chance to make artistic use of your remains, then your local art museum simply does not know many current artists.

Sometimes one finds oneself stuck in a public place where a television is droning to itself, as it must do even if no one else is in the room, because it is defended by large, unfriendly signs that say DO NOT TOUCH TELEVISION. As a good citizen, of course, one always obeys regulatory signs, so one is forced to sit and think about the television. Among the thoughts one thinks is the question, Would a brick count as “touching” the television if it were heaved from across the room? We didn’t touch the television ourselves; if you want to hold the brick responsible, that’s between you and the brick. But after that thought has entertained us for a while, we begin to think that, if there must be televisions in public places, then we need better game shows.

The premise of almost every game show on American television is that it is infallibly entertaining to watch other people win large amounts of money. To Dr. Boli, nothing could be duller than watching some waitress from Connecticut jump and squeal because a board behind her has a big number with a dollar sign in front of it. Even if the television handed him ten-dollar bills at irregular intervals on condition that he watch the program, Dr. Boli’s attention would wander. Money does not entertain him.

But monetary prizes do not have to be he only attraction of a game show. In fact, why do there have to be prizes at all? Dr. Boli’s first rule for devising an entertaining game show will be that no prizes will be offered. That will force us to think up something genuinely amusing. We cannot hope to create excitement just by adding another zero to the jackpot.

Our next rule will be that our contestants must be clever. They must be people with amusing things to say, not people who exhausted their mental resources picking out the right T-shirt slogan to wear on TV.

We probably need a host or master of ceremonies—someone who can keep the show on track, mostly by making sure that each of our contestants has an equal chance to be clever.

Finally, we need something amusing for our contestants to do. This criterion rules out guessing the price tags of home appliances, to take one example at random.

What amusing tasks could we assign to our guests? Perhaps they could be required to come up with amusingly clever solutions to everyday problems. Back in the heady days of glasnost, there was a game show on Soviet television that asked teams of players to compete in solving problems from everyday life. For example: you are the manager of a hat factory. How can you increase your personal income without getting fired for corruption? One team earned much applause by suggesting that the manager should take the hat off his head, turn it over, and beg. That was an entertaining game show.

One task we might assign to our American contestants: You are in a public place, and there is a television droning with nobody watching it. How can you silence it without attracting a stern lecture from the keen-eyed receptionist?

Word games are also entertaining when the people playing them are amusing. “I Can Give You a Sentence” kept the Algonquin Round Table going and added some immortal wit to our treasury. The key to making word games entertaining for an audience is to make sure they are creative rather than mechanical. We don’t need to watch a crossword ace solve the Tuesday puzzle in the New York Times; we want funny stories and outrageous puns. The game itself should be only the conversation-starter.

Once we have picked clever contestants and given them some excuse for being clever, we have probably done all we need to do. We can let our contestants take it from there, and we have no need of a catchy gimmick. In fact, gimmicks are likely to get in the way. The more time our guests spend guessing the prices of major appliances or spinning giant vertical roulette wheels, the less time they have to be witty.

The final stage in our plan, then, is to get the show on the air. This probably requires a deep-pocketed sponsor. Dr. Boli might suggest that the manufacturers of televisions themselves could sponsor the program. You can imagine the favorable impression it would leave: “This actually entertaining game show is brought to you by DuMont, makers of the televisions too nice to heave a brick through. Wouldn’t you like to have a DuMont at home?”

So there we have our plan for mitigating the evils of televisions in public places. We shall call it Plan B. Plan A is still a brick.

Hey Bob: My car has a fast-charging port, but my phone won’t charge from it, even though it charges normally from the charger at home. I’ve tried multiple cables, but no dice. However, my wife’s phone charges just fine from the same cable in the same port in the car that won’t charge my phone. What can I do? —Sincerely, Flummoxed in Finleyville.

Dear Flummoxed: You will never figure out what the problem is. You will ask AI bots, and they will tell you to check the cable. You will ask the phone’s manufacturer, and you will get an AI bot telling you to check the cable. When you tell the AI bot that you’ve used multiple cables, and anyway the cables all work with a different phone, you will be told that most cars don’t have the right voltage for charging phones, even though you already specifically said that your car has a fast-charging port labeled “fast-charging port.” Hundreds of thousands of people have this same problem, and they never get an answer. Your best bet is to throw your phone away and get a new one, and if that one doesn’t work, throw it away and get a new one, and keep doing that until you find one at random that does what it’s supposed to do. Hope this helps.

If you wrote down just one good idea for improving the world we live in every day, then at the end of a year you would have 365 (or, in lucky years, 366) good ideas, and you would be a crank.