This was a relatively humorous article about what would happen if certain phrases that we use were literally true.  I enjoyed this one (slightly summarized):

“A watched pot never boils.

The generic “watched pot” will become the most destructive force in the history of mankind. It is unlikely that civilization could withstand it.

If the act of watching a pot of water prevented its actually boiling, here’s the scenario: By continually watching a pot of water on the stove or having teams of people – all enemies of freedom – taking turns watching it sequentially the water would never evaporate. It would simply continue to store more and more energy.

This is not me speaking; it is professor Richard Berg of the University of Maryland physics department. That pot, he said, could become so filled with potential energy that it would far surpass any diabolical source of destructive power devised to date. That pot – continuously watched – could be loaded onto a plane and dropped into an ocean. Watched by the bombardier all the way down, the pot would keep its hellish payload until it disappeared beneath the waves. At that point, suddenly unwatched, it would release enough energy to create a tsunami of devastating strength. Imagine, if you dare, the effect of coordinated pot-bomb attacks on America’s Eastern Seaboard.”