That Israel/Palestine Thing.

There's been conflict in the Middle East for the past 5000 years or so. Obviously, we can't just fix it it all in a handful of hastily-typed paragraphs. Or can we?

No, we can't. But we can totally solve the Israel/Palestine part. We'll get to the rest later.

Here's the deal. We've got two groups of people who both lay claim to a hunk of land. But it's not about just any land. It's holy land. So simple relocation won't work, even if you used an internationally-recognized arbitration system like rock-paper-scissors (two out of three).

So to crack this nut, we'll call on the advice of one of the original problem-solvers and personal hero of mine, King Solomon.

That's right. We're going to cut it in half. When King Solomon ruled that the baby claimed by two women be cut in half, the true mother proved herself because she would rather give up the baby than see it harmed. Ideally this would work here, too. Either the Israelis or Palestinians would say, "oh no, we'd rather see the holy land occupied by our enemies than destroyed." Easy peasy, rightful owner determined.

But we're not idealists. We're pragmatists. Chances are slim that either party will make it that simple. So we'll have to follow through. We split the land. We cut every temple in half. Then we build out a second land mass into the Mediterranean, just like they did with Chicago into Lake Michigan. Then each land mass gets half the holy stuff.

Half is better than nothing, right? Plus, they each get to create jobs for the people moving everything. Artisans can work to replicate the second halves of the artifacts for each side. Tourism goes up because people will have to make two pilgrimages.

But you're asking who gets to stay in the "old" land and who gets the "new". Even cut in half, one is clearly better because it's the original, right? Wrong. Because the new one has all the beaches (excepting the Dead Sea).

So there you go. One Israel. One Palestine. Each with their own broken heart pendant of cultural and religious identity. The primary source of conflict in the Middle East stabilized. And all we have to do is move some mountains.

Or we could just do time shares. It works in Aspen.

Overpopulation.

Earth is quickly becoming overcrowded as our population continues to explode. In short order, the demands of this bulging mass of humanity will outstrip what our beleaguered planet can provide. Then things will get ugly fast.

The solution here is pretty simple. Mandatory, reversible vasectomies to every male child born, starting today. This will solve:

Overpopulation.
The futility of abstinence education.
Trapping someone into a relationship with an "accidental" pregnancy.
Orphans (except the dead parents kind).
Those sense-raping commercials for NuvaRing®.

And perhaps most importantly, unprepared, unwilling, and incapable parents. You can still have kids. You just need to pass a test. This will be a simple test. A straightforward test. It will be as follows:

Do you want a baby?
Why do you want a baby?
Do you know what to do with the baby once you get it? Please elaborate.
Are you going to give your baby a terrible name (e.g., something you can buy or eat)?
Are you going to pass your prejudices, ignorance, and anger on to your baby or will you instead attempt to make it a better person than you?

If you can pass this test, you will get your vasectomy temporarily reversed (or sperm donor, etc.).

This will solve everything until the population shrinks to endangered species size.

Of course, this will create a small problem with Catholicism. This will be easily solved by electing a Pope that doesn't hate fun.

Killing Sprees.

Touchy subject. Still, probably worth solving.

Suicide is a terrible thing. It may seem like a victimless solution to someone in the throes of depression, but to the grieving friends and family left behind, the loss is real and painful beyond imagination.

The only thing worse is to take someone with you. Murder is the ultimate act of selfishness. It is the mindless and irreversible assertion that your wants and needs outweigh those of anyone else. We will not be solving murder yet. But we will tackle the multiple victim murder sprees that are occurring at an alarming and increasing rate.

The people that commit these horrible acts are unbalanced, to say the least. They are susceptible to suggestion. They are lonely. Without anyone to love, they can only focus on themselves. They are lazy. Why get to the root of why everyone shuns them when they can just kill them off?

When one of these shootings (and it's always shootings, isn't it?) occurs, the media circus that erupts around it is like a beacon to their damaged minds: "I'm ignored. I'm going to die forgotten. Unless I kill the people that torment me, cementing my place in history." And then they kill themselves, in the ultimate act of cowardice.

You want to be remembered, douchebag? Fine, but it's going to be on our terms.

Here's the deal. The next time this happens (and it will; sorry, this isn't a quick fix), we report the story. Then we move on. There will be no in-depth fucking tutorial on how he bought the weapons and planned the attack. There will be no round-the-clock punditry blaming video games or junk food for the actions of an unloved, unimaginative idiot.

What will the 24-hour news networks do with all the extra time they aren't spending on this frivolous coverage? There will be these two essential follow-ups, and then the issue is buried with the dead.

First, a brief and respectful mourning for the loss of life and celebration of the lives of the victims.

Second, a vicious, relentless attack on the character of the perpetrator. Every name he was called, every pimple, every failure, every shortcoming as a human being, in short, everything that drove him to kill will be broadcast to the world.

The subsequent generations of potential spree murderers will not see an aloof killer who terrified the hearts of a nation. They will see all their worst fears come to life: Here's a picture of the killer when he was stood up by his prom date. Here's his 6th grade diary detailing his constant struggle with nocturnal emissions. Here's his expulsion letter from Space Camp.

In short order, spree killings will fade as the misanthropes realize that they will go down in history as that which they hate most: themselves.

Oh, also, we won't make it so goddamn easy to buy a handgun and/or automatic weapon when you have a documented history of mental instability and/or poor judgment. This will also help solve the problems of gang violence and Texas.

Top Chef.

I came into Top Chef late in the game, only really watching in full this past season. It just ended, so I won't spoil the ending outright, but the result of tonight's finale was endemic of everything that is wrong with what is otherwise a reasonably good piece of reality television.

Here's the thing. They have to stop judging meal to meal. If someone can excel time after time and then get ejected on a technicality or a mis-timed misstep, you're not likely to actually end up with the best person as Top Chef.

So from now on, they will need to judge each contestant cumulatively. Now I know why they don't currently do this. It's because if someone starts to run away with the competition, they will lose any sense of drama, and thus ratings.

Unless they find a new way to spice things up. First, in addition to the judges, the chefs will judge each others' dishes. This will shake up the results. Second, chefs will be allowed to poison dished, but they can't dictate who gets what plate. So they may end up killing a judge, in which case they are sent home immediately.

Also, the first challenge of the next season will be cooking and eating Toby Young, thus solving the dual problems of Toby Young and the irrational vilification of cannibalism.

Politicians.

We have a bit of a problem with our politicians being disgraced, indicted, and passing laws that well and truly screw us. Luckily, this is a pretty easy fix.

First, anytime someone runs for office, the attorney general of their state will launch an immediate probe into them for anything they have vowed to fight. If a politician vows to be a beacon in the fog of corruption, we will tap their phones and dig into their finances. If they claim to hate homosexuality or any form of sexual impropriety, they will be tailed to see if they are coming onto underage staffers or cruising in public restrooms. If they are running on a campaign restoring dignity to an office, they will be tested for any signs of dignity.

Believe me, this will save us a lot of re-elections and emergency appointments.

Second, as stated before, no politician will be able to vote on a bill unless they can prove they understand what it means.

Finally, all lobbyists will be sent to companies for medical, pharmaceutical, and beauty product testing, replacing the animals they currently use, thus helping solve the problem of animal cruelty.

This fucking economy.

Let's talk about the big elephant in the room: the decaying corpse that is our economy.

I'm going to be honest. This one isn't going to be easy. But it will be a whole lot easier if all the experts would just stop making it worse. So let's fix it.

The health of the economy is simply a matter of perception. If everyone thinks things are fine, they'll keep spending money and investing and all that crap people with money do. But people tell them the economy is bad, and then the people with the money shove it in rich people matresses (banks), shove it in super-rich people matresses (Swiss banks) or give it to Ponzi schemers to piss away.

So, first things first. Any experts or pundits found making public statements that the economy is troubled will be put to death. Their organs will be harvested, thus helping solve the problem of people dying. The remains will be fed to the polar bears.

Politicians who do not hold an advanced degree in economics from a respectable institution of higher learning will not be allowed to publicly disparage the efficacy of an economic package. In fact, in order to vote on any given bill, politicians will be required to pass a short aptitude test on the subject of the legislation. The exam will be written by a non-partisan group of experts. This will solve the problem of terrible laws being passed.

The government will then pay unemployed people to be the new experts and pundits, who will tell people to go ahead and invest their money and buy stuff. This will help solve unemployment and get money back into the economy.

Next, we'll convert all publicly traded companies back into private companies. With no stocks, there will be no more stockmarket crashes. There will also be no more stockbrokers.

In fact, any job wherein you are not producing a good or providing a service that can be explained to a 6 year-old will be eliminated. These are jobs that siphon money out of the economy and give it to people who buy yachts and name them "Camilleon." Stockbrokers will be given jobs as stockboys so they can keep their existing business cards with minor modifications.

With no board of directors or stockholders to answer to, companies will be held accountable for their actions at the executive level. All white collar crimes will be punishable by death.

The myth of corporate citizenship will also be put to death, so companies can't pretend they have all the rights of a person with none of the responsibilities. Companies will no longer be able to call campaign donation caps a violation of their right to free speech. This will help put an end to companies owning our government, and then making them pass laws that benefit them in the short-term while dooming the long-term health of the economy.

So, in short: stop calling it a depression before it's a depression. No more jobs that can't be explained in under 30 seconds at a dinner party. Corporations stop trying to suck the life out of people like they're wheatgrass at a Jamba Juice. Bing bang boom, economy's fixed.

The melting of the ice caps.

A common mistake "experts" make when attempting to address a problem is to attempt to solve the problem at its source. This is ridiculous. You must attack the symptoms.

Take global warming. For years men and women of science (scientologists) have been trying to reverse global warming. They even tried to to trick it by renaming it climate change. This was foolish. Global warming is not self-aware.

No, the way to fix climate change (the preferred nomenclature when it is cold outside and you want to convince people something exists when their door handle is frozen shut and they have to climb in their car from the passenger side) is to solve each of its many manifestations.

Today, we solve the melting of the ice caps.

The ice caps are giant sheets of ice, held in place at the top and bottom of the world by a striped barber pole that runs through the center of the earth. Due to climate change, they are melting, contributing to a variety of weather-related phenomena and threatening to kill off the polar bears and penguins, two of our planet's primary sources of cute.

The solution to this problem is to put thousands of refrigerators and air conditioners at the poles. How will we power them? Solar power, of course. We will train the bears to use the refrigerators. They will use the ice-makers in the doors of these refrigerators and scatter the ice around the area. The air conditioners will lower the temperature so the cubes can freeze into new ice caps. The refrigerators will also allow the bears to preserve and store their food, which will help them stay well-fed until their eco-system has stabilized.

Who will train these bears to use refrigerators? The zoologists who will lose their jobs when we solve the problem of zoos being kind of sad and creepy.

Who will provide the refrigerators and air conditioners? They will be built in factories staffed by formerly unemployed workers, part of our solution to this fucking economy.

Who will pay for these factories? The oil companies. They still owe aquatic wildlife a solid. This will square things.

With the ice caps problem all sewn up, we can turn our attention to the other symptoms of climate change. But that's for another day.