If you throw yourself to the wind…,

…you’ll find you can ride it.

How Divergent Are You?

Can you think like a Divergent from the novel/movie ‘Divergent’?
Let’s see…
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There are currently over 7 billion people living on the planet right now.
How would you reduce the number of people living on Earth’s surface to at most 1 billion without killing a single one of them? (note the emphasis..)
Better yet, could you do it within the next decade? Can you keep the population under 1 billion continuously? All the resources and tech currently available to us humans is available to you, and you must respect every single person’s free-will.
*Note: Secretly bringing about a pandemic, or instigating a world war via proxy methods, or any other covert technique to compel a lot of people to die, counts as ‘killing’…
Good luck!
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As usual, responses expected, and I may post my answers in a week or more.

Are you smarter than a (1895) eighth-grader?

Proof of the dumbing-down of American education….
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Take this test, supposedly from the archives of Salina County of Kansas, that tested the knowledge of eighth-graders way back in 1895:
http://www.barefootsworld.net/1895finalexam.html
Can you do it? (no cheating by using the internet or anything like that!)
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Like with the gods post, I’ll see about posting answers in a week or so, unless no one wants to try it out…

Can you solve the World’s Hardest Logic Puzzle?

Here it is:

Imagine you are standing before three gods, labeled from left to right — A, B, and C.
One of them is only capable of speaking the truth.
Another one of them is only capable of lying.
The third is capable of answering both truthfully and falsely, and whether his response is the truth or a lie is completely up to him.
Which god is which is only known to them — not to you.
It is your task now to determine which god is which.
You have at your disposal only up to three questions, which each must be posed in such a way as to be answered with a ‘yes’ or a ‘no’.
Only one god can be addressed with a question at a time. You may ask one god more than one question (in which case one or more gods will be left alone), and more than one god can be asked the same question (but each time that one question is posed to a god, it counts as a question asked and takes away from the max of three allowed).
The god will answer the question with a ‘ba’ or a ‘ga’, but which means ‘yes’ and which means ‘no’ is also unknown to you. Basically, the gods understand your native tongue, but will only answer in theirs.

Think you can determine with at most three questions which god is which?
**Bonus — can you come up with only two questions, that will cause two of the three gods’ heads to explode upon being asked them?**

(based on ‘the Hardest Logic Puzzle Ever’, by G Boolos — DO NOT cheat and look this puzzle up on the internet or anything like that!)

>>Assuming people actually decide to comment with their questions in the comments below, I will see about posting the solutions I’ve come across in about a week’s time if it remains unanswered..