With all these talks of dust bunnies maybe we should measure things in millifurlongs

The answers actually can be a range of things ... you can get paid to take the ball (cost is negative), or you can have money left over. The question is actually ambiguous, and would only give the answer claimed if one made some primitive assumptions about the nature of money or whatnot. Besides, are they calculating equivalent cost of the wage you would be paid for the time it took you to buy it, are all amounts in US dollars or are they using cents from a different currency -- is inflation included (granted it would probably be minute). What definition of 'cost' are they using? What if the value of the bat deprecates according to some tax code can you include the deprecation on your taxes, and count the deprecation discount toward the original 'cost'? Does 'cost' include travel allowance for vehicle repair if you drove to the place where you would buy it, the 'cost' of the food you ate and the medical care you received to be functional enough to walk from your car (midwife, etc...). The simple riddle question brings up a whole lot more questions, nevermind the implication if they PAY you $5 to take the ball. And what if you have a 10% coupon for one item but not both and everything in the store is marked down 25% from the sticker price!?

What would be interesting would be a catalyst that could use brownian motion or something to split hydrogens off oxygens in water ... the energy of the motion would automagically slow down the ambient motion of the other molecules, so you'd have an "over-cooling" problem where the water kept freezing around the catalyst if it was very efficient. I'm not sure if that's how these things work, but all you'd need would be something that could efficiently turn heat into hydrogen splitoffs then there you go (could use the earth's heat, maybe slow down global warming, who knows.)

Language probably has magical thinking built into it already. The words, idiomatic expressions, habits of where to find different forms of transitivity, or implications of or the ability to omit subjects or objects of various types, all have habits of the way people have thought about the world already built in to a great degree, so whenever you use words you are involuntarily conforming to the thought processes of those who have come before you and shaped the language you are using.

So in the year 2042 when we're on FF version 28 running on programmable viruses with neuronal neutrino-wave links between people's brains I sure hope all the addons get updated automatically .... especially the in-mind popup prevention addons.

Can't we all just stop counting at 1 and call it a day ?