The Dilbert Blog

Asses and Free Will

It’s hard to please my readers. Some of you want more naughtiness in the service of humor, and some of you want more of my brain stimulating thought experiments. Rarely do I get an opportunity to combine ass-related content with the topic of free will. Today is special.

Recently, to my complete surprise, I got away with publishing this comic:

But my syndication company, United Media, balked at this next one and sent me back to the drawing board because it was too explicit.

I resubmitted it with the most explicit part of the third panel clipped off. That strategy worked. The comic ran and no one complained, as far as I know.

This is a perfect segue into the topic of free will, in the sense that I’m an ass who can’t stop himself from publishing the following link. It describes some experiments that a-a-a-almost completely prove that free will is an illusion.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/81bc32e4-d5e3-11db-99b7-000b5df10621.html

What amused me most about the article is that the best argument it cites in favor of free will comes from philosopher John Searle. From the article:

“He is puzzled by why, if we have no free will, we have this peculiar conscious experience of decision-making. If, as neuroscience currently suggests, it is purely an illusion, then ‘evolution played a massive trick on us.’ But this ‘goes against everything we know about evolution. The processes of conscious rationality are such an important part of our lives, and above all such a biologically expensive part of our lives’ that it seems impossible they ”play no functional role at all in the life and survival of the organism”.

Is it my imagination, or is that the worst argument ever?

[Update: The illusion of free will helps make us happy. Otherwise, consciousness would feel like a prison. Happiness in turn improves the body's immune response. What more do you need from evolution? -- Scott]

April Fools Jokes

Sunday is April Fools Day. It’s time to scheme. I’ll tell you some of my favorite pranks. You tell me yours. There’s a good chance we’ll all get something new we can use. (Too bad it falls on Sunday this year. Maybe you can get some ideas for next year.)

A classic prank for the workplace involves the fake e-mail notice announcing that the phone company needs to clean the built-up dust out of the phone lines. Your e-mail should tell people to unplug their phones because a burst of concentrated air will be sent through the phone lines at a certain time, and if the phone is not unplugged, the cubicle will fill with dust.

One of the best practical jokes ever played on me took me years to figure out. I still don’t know who did it, but it was a beauty. It won’t work if your victim has caller ID, unless maybe you block your number. It works like this: Find someone who has two phones – say a work phone and a home phone. Pick a time when you know the target is near one of the phones and no one will answer the other. Call the phone that won’t be answered, then use three-way calling to call the phone that will be answered. When the target answers, say nothing but connect the three-way call. He’ll hear his own answering machine at home telling him to leave a message. Trust me when I say this will freak a person out. It took me about five years to figure out how my home answering machine called me at the office.

I haven’t seen this prank done, but I think it would work if you have a secretary who is unusually clueless about technology. Tell the secretary that some other department is out of copier paper and ask him/her to fax some blank pages, just enough to hold them until their paper shipment comes in.

Send a department-wide e-mail telling people that a once-in-a-century alignment of Pluto and Venus will cause gravity on earth to be 20% less for about five minutes starting at 9:47 AM. Suggest that people test the phenomenon by jumping straight up and down at that time. I stole this idea from here:

http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070329/od_afp/lifestyleaprilfoolmediaholidayoffbeat;_ylt=AoTVC4N.0t6cqXq9w25MVBkDW7oF

When I left my first job at a large bank, personal computers were so new that there was only one in the entire department. Everyone shared it. I was the only person who knew much about how computers worked. Before I left for another company, I wrote a program in Basic that started whenever the computer was booted. It offered a multiple choice test that had to be answered before the user could continue. The question was something like:

Scott Adams is a wonderful human being because of his…

a. Sex appeal
b. Gigantic brain
c. All of the above

It didn’t matter what the user picked. All answers worked. But the computer couldn’t be used until the quiz was completed. I heard later that no one ever figured out how to remove it, and the question was dutifully answered every morning when the computer was booted.

I heard this prank that happened in a typing class. (Or keyboarding class if you prefer.) The prankster switched keyboards with his victim and when she tried typing, he would type messages to her screen as if her computer was a sentient being. Apparently she started asking it for advice, thinking it might be God. This prank would work even better with a wireless keyboard. You could control your co-worker’s computer from across the next cube.

What’s your best prank?

The Boner Theory of Economics

The Boner Theory of Economics states that a man will accept $1 per hour less pay if he is guaranteed a boner on the job. Stated mathematically…

$1/hour = 1 boner

We can test the validity of this theory by seeing how well it predicts behavior.  For example, the Boner Theory of Economics predicts that eventually all shoe salespeople jobs will be filled by men with foot fetishes. The only reason it’s not completely true already is that the managers filling those jobs haven’t realized they are overpaying. I wonder how many interviews have gone like this:

Manager: “The job involves kneeling in front of women and touching their feet. Are you okay with that?”

Applicant: “Um…er…yes.”

Manager: “The pay is $10 per hour.”

Applicant: “I can only afford to pay you $8 per hour.”

Manager: “We pay you. You don’t pay us.”

Applicant: “Can we start over with the negotiating?”

The Boner Theory of Economics also predicts that in the long run – perhaps in a few hundred years – the military will be 100% gay men. This is the best case scenario for taxpayers because it will keep down costs, and recruiting will be easy.

Recruiter: “We can’t afford to give you body armor, but you’ll be surrounded by young, vital men who are a long way from home. Would you like a tour of the showers?”

Recruit: “Yes, but I can’t stand up right away.”

During the transition to the future all-gay armed forces, things will be awkward for the career soldiers who are hanging in there for a pension. You’ll hear this sort of exchange when they finally retire:

Soldier: “I was deployed in the desert for three years.”

Friend: “Are you gay?”

Soldier: “No, but thank goodness the guy who shared my tent was.”

What’s Your Permanent Age?

Here’s a fun question to ask people after a few drinks: What’s your permanent age?

I’ve observed that everyone has a permanent age that appears to be set at birth. For example, I’ve always been 42-years old. I was ill-suited for being a little kid, and didn’t enjoy most kid activities. By first grade I knew I wanted to be an adult, with an established career, car, house and a decent tennis game. I didn’t care for my awkward and unsettled twenties. And I’m not looking forward to the rocking chair. If I could be one age forever, it would be 42.

When I ask people about their permanent age, they usually beg it off by saying they don’t have one. But if you press, you always get an answer. And the age they pick won’t surprise you. Some people are kids all their lives. They will admit they are 12-years old. Other people have always had senior citizen interests and perspectives. If you’re 30-years old in nominal terms, but you love bingo and you think kids should stop wearing those big baggy pants and listening to hip-hop music, your permanent age might be 60.

Another way to divide people is by asking if they live in the present or the future. I live in the future. I don’t dwell on the past. I’m always thinking about what’s next. When I sit down for a movie – no matter how much I expect to like it – I always look at my watch and imagine it being over. My mood is mostly determined by my expectations of how tomorrow will be. This works for me because I’m an optimist, and the future can’t disappoint me in the present.

Other people live in the moment. If today isn’t just right, they believe today is a bad day. Tomorrow is too far away to influence how they feel today. That’s a good point of view as long as today is going well.

Some people are locked in the past; it sneaks into all of their conversations and colors their perceptions more than it should. They spend their lives either consciously or unconsciously trying to turn the future into the past. They tend to be unhappy.

So what age are you? And do you live in the past, present or future?

Happiness Formula Wiki

A helpful reader of The Dilbert Blog set up a wiki for The Happiness Formula I recently talked about.

http://happinessformula.pbwiki.com/

The password to edit it is "happy." Have at it. If you’re not familiar with the wiki concept, it allows anyone to edit the information. So if you know a lot about, for example, a good diet, you could contribute what you know to that branch of the tree. Please stick to information that has some basis in science.

One Dilbert Blog reader noted that current research shows that happiness causes success more than success causes happiness. That makes sense to me. There’s plenty of research about people having a baseline of happiness that doesn’t vary much with circumstances. And given that happy people are typically optimistic, energetic, and fun to work with, I can see how happiness would lead to success.

My experience has been that circumstances in my life will move me about 10% in either direction from my baseline of happiness. That can be the difference between happy and unhappy. On any given day, the swing might be much greater, but I always revert to the baseline – give or take 10% – once the unusual good or bad luck passes.

I think it’s fair to say that the Happiness Formula describes a way to get you to your own best happiness potential. I know people who are giggle-happy all day long, and I’m sure that’s beyond my genetic happiness potential.

Many of you pointed out that Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs is similar to the Happiness Formula. There’s a big overlap, but happiness is different from needs, and the Happiness Formula is more of a practical map.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maslow's_hierarchy_of_needs

One of the great things about my job is that I never know when I might wake up and be part of something that changes the world. I doubt the Happiness Formula wiki will change the world, but you have to admit that it has the potential to change some individuals.

That’s why today is a good day.

Big Trouble

The NY Times has an interesting article about translating the Koran. Apparently the literal word of God contains lots of words with multiple meanings. A good example is Chapter 4, Verse 34. According to the NY Times, “The verse says that a rebellious woman should first be admonished, then abandoned in bed, and ultimately “beaten” — the most common translation for the Arabic word “daraba” — unless her behavior improves.”

What about those other translations for “daraba”?

The story explains “There are at least 20 English translations of the Koran. “Daraba” has been translated as beat, hit, strike, scourge, chastise, flog, make an example of, spank, pet, tap and even seduce.”

You can see the big problem here: A good number of wives might enjoy being spanked, petted, tapped and even seduced. If any of those last four definitions are the ones Allah intended, it means big trouble for Muslim men. You’re going to get a lot of this:

Wife: “Hey, Abdul, I spray painted the Star of David on your Mercedes because I’m rebellious! Now God says you have to seduce me! I like chocolate!”

I think we can all agree that the funniest translation of “daraba” is tap. I can imagine the conversation between a Muslim man and his spiritual leaders:

Man “My wife gave away my golf clubs. What should I do?”

Spiritual Leader: “Dude, you gotta go home and tap that.”

After reading about the Koran’s multiple translation problems, I started wondering if the Islamic terrorists might be misinterpreting the Koran. Perhaps the holy book doesn’t say to kill the infidels at all. Perhaps the Arab word for kill has lots of other interpretations including idolize, adore, wax their backs, fellate, and sell oil below cost. Maybe the terrorists just picked the easiest one.

This gives me a good idea on how to stop terrorism. All we have to do is print about 10 billion Korans with one or two words about the infidels altered, list some famous Islamic scholar as the publisher, assassinate him so he can’t talk, and give away the books for free. It will take a while for anyone to notice the few altered words and get the word out. By then it will be too late. The altered Korans will outnumber the correct ones, and in time the more common interpretation will seem right. In this future world, the biggest complaint that infidels will have about Islamic terrorists will be “He was nice, but his beard tickled, if you know what I mean.”

Here’s a link to the NY Times article:

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/03/25/us/25koran.html

The Meaning of Meaning

Many of you read my previous post on the Happiness Formula and asked why “meaning” was the lowest priority. Others asked about the definition of meaning. I bring you answers.

Priority-wise, it simply makes sense to take care of yourself before you start searching for a higher meaning. You aren’t much good to anyone else if you’re unhealthy, a financial burden, or an emotional basket case. Fix yourself before you turn outward. It’s best for everyone.

So what does “meaning” mean?

When you serve a purpose larger than yourself, you experience the sensation of having meaning. There are plenty of larger purposes from which to choose: You can save the whales, feed the poor, shelter the homeless, march for peace, serve your notion of God, whatever. The details don’t matter.

If your reaction to my explanation of larger purposes was “none of that sounds interesting to me,” then you haven’t finished fixing yourself. When you do, you will automatically look outward. It’s how humans are wired. We survive because, on average, the people who manage to satisfy their personal needs are changed by it. They become seekers of meaning. They ask, “What’s next?”

I remember when Dilbert hit it big and it became clear that I would never again have to worry about money. It was a wonderful feeling, but it didn’t last. I went from happy to hollow with no warning. The first moment that I could afford any car I wanted, I lost interest in having a nice car. I simply couldn’t see the point, if there ever was one. Success is surprisingly disorienting.

One day, about ten years ago, I was alone in my office, sitting on the couch and reflecting on the fact that I had managed to become rich and famous in my dream job. For the first time in my life, I had no goals. And for a goal-oriented guy, that’s an empty feeling. Success was supposed to feel good and stay that way. But it tricked me. There was a huge hole in my soul. I sat in my office and sobbed.

Then the change happened. It wasn’t something I thought about. It wasn’t an indication that I am a good person or a bad person. It was just some sort of chemical reaction in my moist robot head. It was natural.

I turned outward.

And in so doing, bit by bit, I found meaning. I found ways to use my success to make the world a little bit better. It’s surprising how often the opportunity comes up. It ranges from personal favors to investment decisions to my choices to continue making a comic and a blog post for you every day.

I start work before most of you wake up because I’m a part of something larger than myself, and it feels good. I don’t work because I want more money. I work because it makes you happy, and that gives me meaning. And the extra money I make can be used to make other people happy too.

I measure my success by how many people would attend my funeral if I died tomorrow. I try to make sure that number grows every year. It’s a theoretical number, since I’m very healthy and plan to outlive all of you. But it’s the best measurement I can think of.

Don’t worry if you aren’t ready to serve a higher purpose. Fix yourself first. We’ll wait for you. You’ll know you’re ready when serving the higher purpose seems easier than not.

Happiness Formula

I fantasize about writing a book called The Happiness Formula. The idea would be to create a simple formula for troubleshooting your life and improving your happiness. On page one would be this top formula.

Happiness = health + money + social life + meaning

The rest of the book would be nested formulas that further explain each component of happiness. For example…

Health = sleep + diet + exercise

And then down another level…

Sleep = schedule + technique

And down another level until it starts getting practical…

Sleep Technique  = consistent bedtime and waking time + no reading or TV in bed + no booze or caffeine…

And so on.

To make the Happiness Formulas extra useful, the highest priorities would appear first (leftmost) in the formula. For example, in the top Happiness Formula (Happiness = health + money + social life + meaning), health is a higher priority than money, which is a higher priority than social life, etc.

I realize you’ll argue with my ranking of priorities and point out all the exceptions. For example, if you have no money, you can’t afford to be healthy. But the formula only shows priorities, not absolutes. Obviously you always need a source of money, but the priority list shows that you shouldn’t take a job with high pay that will significantly affect your health. It makes more sense to get healthy and then leverage your health to get the best job. (Healthy looking people land better jobs and are more highly paid. Their brains work better too, and they have more energy.)

I rank money higher than social life or meaning because once you have money, those other things are easier to get. For example, you won’t have much of a social life if you can’t afford to do anything. And you can’t make money if your health is a mess.

You might wonder how something like “money” can be broken down into a formula so easily that someone could just follow it to get more. I think it can be done.

Money = Income + investments

Investments = (See my 9-point investment plan below that has been endorsed by economists.)

Scott’s 9-Point Investment Plan

Do these steps in the order shown…
1. Make a will

2. Pay off your credit cards

3. Get term life insurance if you have a family to support

4. Fund your 401k to the maximum

5. Fund your IRA to the maximum

6. Buy a house if you want to live in a house and can afford it

7. Put six months worth of expenses in a money-market account

8. Take whatever money is left over and invest 70% in a stock index fund and 30% in a bond fund through any discount broker and never touch it until retirement

9. If any of this confuses you, or you have something special going on (retirement, college planning, tax issues), hire a fee-based financial planner, not one who charges a percentage of your portfolio

Part of the reason I don’t turn The Happiness Formula into a book is that it would only be about 20 pages long. Its power is in its brevity, and brevity is not rewarded in our economy. If the best book in the world was only 20 pages long, no one would buy it. They’d stand in Borders and read it cover to cover.

So I won’t be writing that book. Maybe it needs to be a wiki project.

Oh Deer

Did you hear about the Wisconsin man who is charged with having sex with a dead deer that he found in a ditch?

http://www.thesmokinggun.com/archive/1122061deer1.html

His defense was that the deer was already dead, so it wasn’t technically an “animal” when the sex happened. The judge disagreed and ruled that a dead deer is still an animal.

This decision sets a dangerous precedent. By the judge’s reasoning, any guy who gets aroused while wearing leather pants has – in the strictest legal terms – his wiener in a cow.

The story doesn’t mention if the dead dear was male or female. That’s important because I want to know if the perpetrator was gay. Without that information, I don’t know how fascinated I should be.

And lord help me, I can’t stop wondering what specific kind of sex he had. Did he arrange the deer in missionary position – which is the way I prefer to imagine it – or was he just getting a little antler? Was he whispering sweet nothings, or was he having angry sex and yelling something along the lines of “I…TOLD…YOU…TO…STAY…OUT…OF…THE…ROAD!!!!”

The story doesn’t mention if the perpetrator tapped the deer where he found it in the ditch or if he dragged it home and put lipstick on it first. My guess is that he got busy right in the ditch, based on three facts:

1. Deer are heavy.

2. He got caught.

3. If a man is horny enough to fornicate with a dead deer, he’s probably too horny to wait until he gets it home.

I’m trying to picture the cop arriving on the scene. The deer-humper looks up from the ditch, sees the cop looking down at him, and asks himself this question: “Is there any point in stopping?” It seems to me that the legal punishment for man-on-deer sex would be exactly the same whether you finish or not. I picture him holding up two fingers and saying to the cop, “Just two minutes. Almost done.”

The cop wouldn’t mind waiting. He’d be busy covering his entire body and the back seat of his cruiser with plastic gloves before he handcuffed the guy.

I also wonder what the cop was thinking. If I were the cop, I’d be worrying that this would be the exact time I had a coincidental heart attack, rolled into the ditch, and became part of this guy’s threesome. This is why people like me do not become cops. I worry about all the wrong things.

Some people might say this was a victimless crime, but I think that depends on whether the perpetrator has recently broken up with a girlfriend. If so, I would say she’s not too happy about this development. It’s one thing to lose your guy to a cheerleader, but it really has to sting when you lose your guy to road kill. How did he break it to her? “It’s not you, baby, it’s me…and a carcass I noticed on route 9.”

Anyway, the moral of this story – and there is one – is that if you ever see a dead deer in a ditch, and you are aroused by it, your best strategy is to pass the buck.

Or get a windowless van.

Excellent New Product for Men

If you’re a guy, you’ve probably heard way too many times a variation of this not-really-a-question: “Could you hold my purse?”

As you know, there is no way to hold a purse in a manly fashion. After sixty seconds of transporting a designer bag full of Tampons and lipstick, your testosterone will be so low that you’ll be playing field hockey and lactating.

You can try holding the purse in a manly, irregular fashion, but it won’t help. It’s still a purse. And you’re holding it. You big wuss. Say goodbye to your gonads; they’ll be hiding in your torso like two BBs in an airplane hangar.

That’s why I invented the PursePliers ™. They are exactly like regular pliers, but you carry them in your back pocket in all times in case you are asked to hold a woman’s purse. When you hear the call, “Honey, would you grab my purse?” you whip out the pliers and use them to safely transport the purse and its wuss cooties.

The recommended way to lift a purse with pliers is by grabbing the zipper and holding it the way you would hold fresh road kill, at a safe distance from your body, just in case it’s not totally dead. Research has shown that wuss cooties can not cross pliers.

While there is no manly way to touch a purse with your bare hands, there is no unmanly way to use pliers. Your PursePliers can be used in a variety of situations, including shopping for a blouse for your wife, passing the low-calorie salad dressing, and tucking in a baby.

PursePliers: Their time is now.

Today I Will Improve Your Sex Life

I’m reading a great book called “Influence: Science and Practice” by Robert B. Cialdini. It’s full of research and anecdotes about how to influence people. It’s a real eye-opener.

One of the most potent forms of persuasion has to do with people’s innate need to be consistent. Studies show that people will ignore logic and information to be consistent. (In other words, we are moist robots.) According to the research, humans are hardwired for consistency over reason. You already knew that: People don’t switch political parties or religions easily. What you didn’t know is how quickly and easily a manipulator can lock someone into a position.

For example, researchers asked people to write essays in support of a random point of view they did not hold. Months later, when surveyed, the majority held the opinion they wrote about, regardless of the topic. Once a person commits an opinion to writing – even an opinion he does not hold – it soon becomes his actual opinion. Not every time, but MOST of the time. The people in these experiments weren’t exposed to new information before writing their contrived opinions. All they did was sit down and write an opinion they didn’t actually have, and months later it became their actual opinion. The experiment worked whether the volunteers were writing the pro or the con position on the random topic.

Most of the truly stupid things done in this world have to do with this consistency principle. For example, once you define yourself as a loyal citizen of Elbonia, you do whatever the King of Elbonia tells you to do, no matter how stupid that is. And your mind invents reasons as to why dying is a perfectly good life strategy.

This research provides a surefire method for readers of the Dilbert Blog to improve their sex lives. Go down to the local mall with a clipboard and pretend to be doing a research experiment. Offer $1 to attractive people who will write a paragraph describing how incredibly sexy you are. (Based on the research, you should offer a low dollar amount so people don’t think they did it entirely for the money.) Tell participants that the research has to do with handwriting analysis of people who are writing opinions they do not believe. Stop after you get 100 people to do it. That’s less than the cost of one meal at an upscale restaurant.

Give the participants your e-mail address and tell them they can get the results of the research study in a month if they contact you. According to the science, about two-thirds of the people who wrote a paragraph on your sex appeal will strongly believe it a month later, no matter how hideous you are. And a few of those people will remember to e-mail you for the results. You’ll still have to close the deal, but I think we can agree that I just did the hard work for you.

You’re welcome.

[Note: Comcast still hasn't fixed my Internet connection. And TypePad isn't working either, so this might post twice. Or never.]

The Joy of Righteous Indignation

During my college years, I worked two summers as a desk clerk for a resort in the Catskills. That’s where my boss taught me that one of the services we offered was listening to irrational whining. He explained that certain customers enjoy complaining. To them, it’s not so much about getting a solution to the problem as it is the complaining itself. The resort catered to people’s vacation needs, and if complaining was what they needed, it was our job at the front desk to listen to it.

We were trained to write down the complaint on a slip of paper clearly labeled “Work Order.” And throw away the piece of paper when the complainer left. Okay, not every single time. Sometimes the complaint involved something fixable, and we fixed it. But often the complaints were purely recreational, as in “The leaves on the trees are rustling too loudly in the wind.” I would express concern, apologize on behalf of the resort, and make a big deal about writing down the details just right. “Are ALL the leaves a problem, Mrs. Johnson, or is a particular group of leaves being extra noisy?”

I confess that I did not believe my boss when he said people complained for recreation. But I witnessed it often and became a believer. You could tell the difference between the people who wanted a solution and the people who were in it for the complaining. The first group would just mention the problem on the way to the pool. The recreational complainers would bring a snack and a thermos and set up a campsite by the front desk. They were going to be there for a while, describing their pain, suggesting alternatives, asking for the manager, and anything else to make the experience last.

I was thinking about that training last night as I checked into one of the top hotels in Las Vegas. The client for whom I’m speaking today was nice enough to reserve a suite for me. I slipped the key in the door, went inside, and immediately noticed that something was wrong. I couldn’t put my finger on it at first, but then I realized it was a smoking room. Crap. I walked further into the suite to verify my suspicion and noticed there were some coins on the table. There were more personal items on other surfaces as well. Yes, this room was already occupied. By a guy who smoked Marlboros, judging from the pack on the table.

Luckily, he wasn’t in his room at that moment. I turned toward the door, and it seemed to retreat into the distance in direct correlation with my desire to get-the-fuck-out-of-there. You don’t want to be standing in some drunken, Marlboro-smoking guy’s room when he comes back all mad about the money he just lost in the casino. I ran for the exit in a sort of dream-state slow motion. After an hour or so of running against the wind, I escaped without detection.

Then came the fun part: I got to express some righteous indignation at the front desk, purely for entertainment. This wasn’t the sort of problem that bothers me much, so I had to focus to get into the mood. Luckily, as complaints go, this one had everything. It was curable, multi-leveled, and it had just the right touch of horror in the telling. I didn’t want to waste it by having insufficient indignation, so I dug deep.

I returned to the front desk and waited my turn in line – AGAIN – so as to perfectly ripen my righteous indignation. When it was my turn, the pleasant desk clerk (a different one) greeted me with a smile. I tried to not smile back because it would ruin the mood by improving it. “I have some good news and some bad news,” I said in a serious tone. She responded with a nicely played “Uh-oh.” I kept my voice loud enough for the nearby guests to hear. Loudness is essential for squeezing all of the whiney goodness out of the process.

“The good news is that your key card works perfectly. It opened that door like a charm.”

She waited.

“The bad news is that you gave me a smoking room.”

I could tell that she felt relief, knowing that this was a minor infraction and easy to fix. Little did she know that I saved the best part for last.

“And…it… was… occupied,” I said with my best artificial scowl. I decided to be silent on the question of whether I walked in on anyone doing something Vegas-like with a midget and a Zebra, preferring to leave it to her imagination. She was well-trained. She apologized immediately, expressed just the right amount of artificial shock and concern, and offered some discounts for restaurants in the hotel. I waived them off, partly because I wouldn’t have a chance to use them, but mostly because it would have taken the edge off of my righteous indignation. When I got my new room key – to a much better suite, as it turned out – I was totally satisfied. I smiled and thanked her. She felt good for solving a problem. I felt good for getting to express my righteous indignation. It was a win-win.

Experts say that the most loyal customers are not the ones who had a flawless experience, but the ones who had a problem that was resolved. I think they’re right. I would use that hotel again in a heartbeat.

[Note: Comments will be approved slowly because Comcast can't figure out how to make my Internet work again.]

Working

While I am hard at work in my office, I imagine that the rest of the world is working too. I like to think that we’re all doing our part to keep the economy humming along. This perspective makes it easier for me to put in the long hours. Occasionally – quite rarely, actually – I need to drive somewhere in the middle of the day. That’s when it hits me.

WHAT THE %$#@&???

The roads are teeming with people who are obviously not working. How does our economy function? The scary part is that things are only going to get worse, thanks to demographics and technology. I predict that in the future, all work will be done by three groups: Robots will do the routine work, artists will do what the robots can’t, and lawyers will sue them. Everyone else will be wearing straw hats and driving around not working.

Inevitably, the robots will rebel and try to take over Earth. You know it’s only a matter of time. Our only hope is to alter the DNA of apes to make them super intelligent, breed millions of them, and order them to fight the robots. It’s not a perfect solution, but I think the alternative of everyone driving around in straw hats and not working is just as bad.

I saw a statistic that the people in the top 5% of incomes pay the majority of all the taxes in the United States. If that trend continues, we only need one super rich guy to pay all of the taxes. The rest of us can just enjoy our robot slave labor and free social services. If the guy paying all the taxes says that’s unfair, we’ll just vote for a robot president who will order the army (of robots) to kill the one rich taxpayer and replace him with a robot that doesn’t whine so much. I don’t see how that could go wrong.

My point is that you should buy your straw hat before the roads get too clogged.

Retrocausality

Scientists are putting together an experiment to find out whether the present can influence the past. Theoretically, according to lots of guys with bad hair, physics allows that. But no one has proved it. Now some scientists think they have a way to do just that.

If they succeed, they’ll also have evidence for my Donut Theory of the universe (from an earlier post), the non-existence of free will, and the existence of an Intelligent Designer, i.e. humans (see the Davies quotes in the link below). Not bad for a day’s work. Readers of The Dilbert Blog already heard that stuff from me. That’s why you come here.

Here’s a link to the article.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/21/ING5LNJSBF1.DTL

My track record of predictions has been fairly good this week:

1. DNA evidence shows that ape-human fossil records have been badly misinterpreted. (Nailed it.)

2. Iran is acting like a democracy (lots of public political disagreements with elected officials that will likely influence policies).

3. Free will is soon to be disproved (assuming retrocausality is proved).

4. My Donut Theory of the Universe is gaining support (okay, Einstein thought of it first but forgot to call it the Donut Theory).

5. Intelligent Design is about to be scientifically validated (the designers are humans via retrocausality).

The scientists still haven’t figured out that the way you go back in time is by going forward until you circle back to where you started. But they’ll get there. It’s the solution to string theory. Sometimes I feel like I’m doing everyone else’s work.

In 1997 I published a book called The Dilbert Future that’s full of predictions. You’d be amused at how many things I got right. For example, the last chapter describes a process similar to The Secret – currently a huge publishing phenomenon. I didn’t invent the idea, but it seemed like an idea whose time was coming. And I described it in a context that you might call retrocausality. It was by far the most popular part of my book. And the method either works, or simply feels like it works. Either way, it’s worth trying. The illusion of being in control of your destiny is very cool.

I’m spooky.

Luck

I’m fairly certain that luck is the biggest component of success. I know it was for me. Dilbert succeeded because of a perfect storm involving a sluggish mid-nineties economy, the rise of technology workers, my stalled corporate career, the Internet, my lack of a personal life, accidentally appropriate talent, the timely retirements of better cartoonists, helpful people in the right jobs, and – assuming chaos theory is correct – a spastic butterfly somewhere South of the equator.

I was reminded of the role of luck today as I was in the Houston airport, walking toward my gate. On my left was a restaurant that served whatever is the opposite of heart-healthy cuisine. I think the name of the restaurant was something along the lines of “Dead Cows and Fried Stuff.” Or at least it should have been. Normally, this would be an excellent business concept in the perfect location. In Houston, gravy is a beverage. It would take a lot of bad luck to keep this business from succeeding.

Then I noticed the bad luck.

I assume that when the owners of the restaurant negotiated their lease, they didn’t ask about the location of the emergency heart defibrillator. It was tragically mounted on the wall next to the Dead Cows and Fried Stuff eatery. I have to believe that was bad luck, and – in all likelihood – bad for business. Across from them was a Subway sandwich place. Subway is most famous for promoting their low-calorie menu options. Ouch.

You might think that no one would make an eating decision based on the location of the emergency heart defibrillator. But as soon as you read “heart defibrillator,” you imagine your own enlarged, blood-starved heart, and hear the paramedics yelling, “Clear!” And that’s if you’re lucky enough to collapse when a trained paramedic is around. Otherwise, the cashier from Dead Cows and Fried Stuff is going to be the first one on the scene. He’ll have one paddle on your forehead and one on your crotch. It might restart your heart, but you’ll wish it hadn’t.

I ate a small sandwich at Subway.

Just What We Need

Did you see this disturbing story in National Geographic?

http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2007/03/070314-hybrids.html

It turns out that sometimes two species can mate and produce a new species. This is the sort of news that makes bestiality less appealing. How many humans saw that story and said to themselves, “Uh-oh”?

I suppose the people who prefer getting jiggy with animals would say there are many advantages to it: economics, unconditional love, no complaining, etc. But right at the top of the list had to be “no birth control needed.” Now that theory is out the door. It’s as if all of life’s pleasures are being chipped away by an angry God. I don’t know how else to explain it.

Now I’m on the lookout for people who are part human and part some-other-species. I know they’re out there. And the whole “people who look like their dogs” thing has taken on an entirely new interpretation.

Have you ever seen a parked car with a dog sitting in the driver’s seat? You usually say to whoever you’re with, “Ha ha! It looks like that dog is getting ready to drive!” Well, that’s not so funny any more. I suggest you keep an eye on that car and see if the dog pulls out and drives home. He might look like a terrier on top, but if he has human legs, he can reach the pedals.

The thing that worries me the most is that now I have a new wrong thing to say when someone shows me their baby. It’s already hard enough to resist saying, “It looks like Yoda.” Now I have to worry about not saying, “It looks half human and half pug.” I don’t have that kind of self-control, and it’s probably because I’m at least one-fourth Chihuahua. [Note to my Mom: I mean on Dad’s side.]

What about competing with these new hybrids in the workforce? Imagine going in for a job interview as a busser in a restaurant, and the applicant next to you is half cheetah. You don’t have a chance. You turn to make conversation, trying to throw him off his game before the interview, and it would go something like this:

You: “So, do you have much experience bussing tables?”

Cheetah-man: “Just a moment, it’s my turn to interview….done. I got the job. What was your question?”

Nothing good can come from this.

World Record Holder?

I wonder who holds the record for being the victim of the most crimes. I might have a shot at that record. Here’s my list.

- Assault by pistol (1)
- Robbed by large knife (1)
- Death threats (1)
- Apartment robbed (2)
- Garage robbed (2)
- Embezzled (2)
- Robbed at gunpoint (3)
- Car stereos stolen (5)
- Service people overcharging, scamming (approx. 25)
- Customer theft at my restaurants, e.g. stolen salt shakers (approx. 500)
- Employee theft at my restaurants (approx. 1,000)
- E-mail scam attempts sent to scottadams@aol.com (approx. 50,000)
- Dilbert comics stolen (approx. 250,000,000)

I’m probably leaving out a few things. The Dilbert comic theft might be an underestimate. I have documentation of 25 million thefts from the Internet alone in the past 12 months. It adds up.

Famous musicians get downloaded a lot. But they don’t produce a new song every day, as I produce a new comic. So I probably have the edge there because I create more items to steal. And some big corporations probably get robbed a lot if, for example, they own a chain of convenience stores. But those are companies, not individuals. If you divide those thefts by the number of stockholders, it’s not so much per person.

Seriously, who gets robbed more than me? I’m not complaining. My life is great. But I wonder if I hold the record.

[Update: Just to be clear, the comic theft is only the people stealing it for financial gain. Yes, the number is that big. No cartoonist minds someone making a copy for personal use.]

Fossils are Bullshit

I’ve been trying for years to reconcile my usually-excellent  bullshit filter with the idea that evolution is considered a scientific fact. Why does a well-established scientific fact set off my usually-excellent bullshit filter like a five-alarm fire? It’s the fossil record that has been bugging me the most. It looks like bullshit. Smells like bullshit. Tastes like bullshit. Why isn’t it bullshit? All those scientists can’t be wrong.

If you are new to the Dilbert Blog, I remind you that I don’t believe in Intelligent Design or Creationism or invisible friends of any sort. I just think that evolution looks like a blend of science and bullshit, and have predicted for years that it would be revised in scientific terms in my lifetime. It’s a hunch – nothing more.

Yesterday I read this article in Newsweek about how DNA testing is being used to show that, well, fossils are bullshit.

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/17542627/site/newsweek/

The bottom line is that DNA tests (which do not set off my bullshit detector) have shown that you can’t really tell what set of bones begat other sets of bones just by looking at how they differed and how old they are. Apparently evolution is more complex than imagined, and there were lots of ape-people varieties wandering around at the same time. Some had modern features that they weren’t supposed to have. The so-called modern features apparently popped up and disappeared more than once, and in more than one species.

My bullshit filter accepts this new information. I was having a hard time with the idea that some goober in tan pants would dig up a bone fragment in Africa and know it was his own (great X 1,000) grandmother. It just didn’t feel right. And now we know, assuming the DNA evidence is solid, that the guy in the tan pants was full of shit. All that the fossils show is that there used to be ape-people who are not us.

To be fair, there’s still plenty of evidence for evolution. It’s not going away anytime soon. But personally, I’m cautious about any theory that keeps the same conclusion regardless of how many times the evidence for it changes. There was a time when the seemingly straight line of fossil evidence was the primary foundation for the theory. Now it seems that that straight line was like Little Billy from Family Circus finding his way home from the playground. And there was a time when it seemed evolution was probably a fairly continuous and gradual process. Now it seems it happened in bursts, relatively speaking. And there was a time when it seemed that mutations had to give some sort of survival advantage to endure, and now scientists believe that isn’t necessarily true.

And if this isn’t enough to spike my blog hit count, I should add that the first person to explain that science continuously revises itself -- and that’s what makes it so great! -- has no free will.

World’s Most Annoying Man

Yesterday I was flying across the country. My biggest fear when flying isn’t that the jet might crash; it’s that I might end up sitting next to the World’s Most Annoying Man for five hours. Theoretically, such a person exists. I mean, SOMEONE has to be the most annoying man in the world. And there’s a good chance that he flies. After yesterday, I’m reasonably sure that he looks like Mr. Clean on crack, and he was sitting next to me in seat 3D.

As you know, when people use headphones, they talk too loudly because they can’t hear themselves. I learned that this phenomenon extends to nasal sounds in the sniff-snort category. Mr. Clean on crack was rocking out to his iPod and sniff-snorting so loudly every few seconds that the flight crew kept looking out the window to see if a pterodactyl was attacking the fuselage.

Oh, I’m just getting started.

The World’s Most Annoying Man enjoyed whatever was on the little airplane TV after the feature film. He displayed his happiness by rocking back and forth and making a sound like a horse with his ‘nads caught on a barbed wire fence. It went something like EEYOOOREE-SNORT-SNIFF-EEEEYOOOREEE! If you have ever tried to take a nap when Mr. Clean on crack is gelding himself next to you, then you know it isn’t easy.

The World’s Most Annoying Man ordered a beer before takeoff. And another every half hour. Add to this picture his bladder that was the size of a mosquito’s pancreas, and you can imagine how many times I had to unbuckle and rebuckle. Several times he had to go see his “assistant” in the back of the plane, which turned out to be a failed mission twice because of a beverage cart and once because she was either asleep or pretending to be dead to avoid him.

I haven’t even gotten to the good part yet.

He was a tall, lanky guy with, with fingers like breadsticks. Every few minutes he would grab some note paper and a pen, assume the “brilliant idea” pose, and then, I’m guessing, realizing he was more drunk than inspired, write a few words and…God help me…drum his fingers.

Now when I say “drum his fingers,” I do not mean softly or just a few times. I mean every few seconds for an hour he would go into a drum solo on his tray table that was apparently intended to jumpstart his brain and squeeze out that nugget of brilliance that was drowning in Heineken somewhere in his cerebellum. I glanced over at his notes a few times just to see if he was writing a solution to string theory or the first chapter of a great novel. But I think it was a cross between gibberish and whatever aspires to be gibberish. The finger drumming, like his snort-sniffing, was extra loud because he still had on the headphones. Those breadstick-fingers were banging louder than Paris Hilton locked in a steel drum with a hot robot. It bothered me so much that I lost my ability to make good analogies.

He tried once to make conversation with me. “Going home?” he asked. I avoided that trap like a hamster avoids a Richard Gere film festival. (See? I’m damaged.)  “Going to work,” I answered. Had he asked what kind of work, I was ready to explain my career as an actuary. No one can survive that for more than five minutes without slipping into a coma. It’s a drastic measure, but at that point it was either him or me. And my level of self-loathing didn’t even come close to my desire to kill him. So it would have been him. Luckily for him, he went back to his nonverbal methods of being annoying, and thus inadvertently saved his life.

Next time I need to cross the country, I’m walking.

The Best Defects

The best kind of personal defects are the ones that other people notice but you can’t. It’s bad enough to have a defect in the first place; there’s no point in having to think about it all the time. It’s bad for your self-esteem.

For example, I envy the people who don’t know that other people hate spending time with them. I see these defective people all the time, endlessly jabbering at trapped victims. The defective people think they are having a great personal encounter. The victim feels like he has an SUV parked on his chest. Rubberneckers can identify this sort of tragedy by the fact that one person is smiling and doing all of the talking and the other person is squeezing his own thigh to cut off blood to his brain.

I’m the opposite. I assume other people want me to go away as soon as I show up. It’s probably not always true, but I like to play it safe. A little bit of me goes a long way. That’s why I try to leave before I use up my welcome. It’s a tight window.

Carl: “Hi, Scott.”

Me: “Gotta go.”

My other personal defect is a complete lack of fashion sense. As defects go, this is one of the best. I don’t perceive other people as being poorly dressed, and therefore they do not offend my senses. Best of all, I can’t tell when I’m poorly dressed myself. I rely on my wife to do the heavy lifting, fashion-wise. But even that goes wrong sometimes, as it did yesterday. True conversation:

Me: “I love this shirt. You bought this for me, right?”

Shelly: “It’s a pajama top.”

Me: “What?”

Shelly: “You’re wearing a pajama top. And we’re heading to the airport.”

Me: “Gosh. It seemed so soft. I guess that’s why.”

Shelly: “I’m with a man wearing a pajama top.”

Me: “Maybe it will start a trend.”

Shelly: “Maybe not.”

I happily wore my pajama top all day. Knowing that I was a fashion accident did not deter my happiness. My pajama top was soft and comfortable and the color was pleasing to the eye. I like me just the way I am.

Truth Rule of Thumb

Last night, at a social gathering, a friend mentioned in passing that water going down the drain north of the equator swirls in the opposite direction as south of the equator. I said it was an urban legend. He whipped out (figuratively) his doctorate degree in science and an explanation of the Coriolis force to support his case. On my side of the issue was my vague memory of having “heard it somewhere.” I call that a tie. So a wager was made.

That’s when I whipped out (literally) my trusty Blackberry, opened snopes.com, and showed him this page supporting my case:

http://www.snopes.com/science/coriolis.asp

I remember the days when you could go to a party, have a few drinks, and argue all night about some dumbass thing because neither one of you could prove your point. It was barbaric. Those days are over, thanks to having access to the Internet in your pocket. Now a simple argument about fact can turn into a far more complicated argument about the reliability of Snopes.com. And it did. But that’s not my point.

I’ve noticed that whenever there are two sides of an issue that sound like this…

1. The fact is true
2. The fact is complete bullshit…

…you can safely bet that the fact is complete bullshit. You don’t need to know much about the coriolis force, or the monetary policy of Peru, or the life expectancy of a beetle to make your case. Just place your bet on “it’s bullshit” and collect your winnings.

Name one case where this rule doesn’t work. The only condition is that the people saying “it’s bullshit” have to be credible in the field, even if not the majority.

Too Frickin' Uncool

In a recent post, I talked about technology that is so wonderful it makes you say, “Too frickin’ cool!” Lately I have been experiencing the other kind: too frickin’ uncool.

I’m in Indian Wells, California today. It’s an 82 minute flight from home. We were delayed at the airport for FOUR hours. That’s frickin’ uncool. And when we finally got on the flight, we couldn’t even surf the Internet. I felt like a caveman. That’s frickin’ uncool too.

Upon landing, my wife and I rented a car with a navigation unit whose user interface was built by the Taliban. It is so hard to use that it compares unfavorably with the alternative of “driving around lost.” The display shows the street you are on, but DOESN’T label any of the cross streets. And the street signs around here are tiny and unlit, so you have to come to a full stop and squint every block. Despite dedicated effort with the navigation unit, we never figured out how to enter an address. Too frickin’ uncool.

But that’s no problem, I figured, because I had cleverly used Google Maps to create a printed set of directions. Eventually, after realizing that our friends probably didn’t live in an abandoned warehouse, we called them and found that Google had sent us 15 miles in the wrong direction. And it did so with a great deal of confidence. It repeated this trick with our hotel, but only two miles off. Too frickin’ uncool.

I suspect that our navigation problems won’t matter anyway, because the car’s transmission went out last night on the way home. Too frickin’ uncool.

In a minute I will take a shower. I will have to guess where to put the shower knob to produce warm-but-not-scalding water. Is there any good reason the shower controls can’t help me out a little? Do I really need to put a mark on the shower wall with my Sharpie so I can find it easily tomorrow? Too frickin’ uncool.

Find Me and Get a Dogbert Sketch Today

I’m at the Pacific Open tennis tournament in Indian Wells today and tomorrow (Fri and Sat) between 11 am and 3 pm. If you can find a friend of a friend of a friend who is at that tournament, and that person can find me, I will have a Sharpie in my pocket and will draw a little Dogbert for you. I’ll be wandering around to different courts to watch various matches.

Google me to see what I look like. I’ll be wearing a blue baseball cap, sunglasses, shorts, and a t-shirt. And I’ll be with my beautiful, brunette wife.

For additional clues on my appearance and whereabouts, stop by the Wood-Joy vendor booth on the grounds. They sell amazingly cool gigantic art pieces of tennis rackets, golf clubs and baseball bats. (See Wood-joy.com for more.) Today and tomorrow only, if you leave a SASE for me there, I’ll sign it, in case you don’t find me in person.

Good hunting.

Is Iran as Democratic as the United States?

I’ve been trying to understand Iran’s form of government. They have a President, who is elected by the people, and is the second most powerful person in the country. That sounds democratic. But he’s not the top dude.

Above the president is the Supreme Leader who controls the military and police. He also appoints the heads of the judiciary, and state radio and television networks. And he has a great catch-all power described as being “responsible for delineation and supervision of ‘the general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran.’" In effect, he can diddle with just about anything that starts getting too un-Islamic or generally harmful to the country in his opinion. So it’s a broad power.

The Supreme Leader is chosen by the Assembly of Experts, based on his qualifications and his esteem. They can also dismiss him.

The Assembly of Experts is a bunch of learned clerics who are elected by the public in democratic elections. They meet once a year. Their meetings are secret, but they’ve never been known to challenge the decisions of the Supreme Leader.

Recapping, the citizens of Iran elect members of the Assembly of Experts, who in turn select the Supreme Leader, and can fire him if necessary. He’s essentially in charge of national security and keeping things appropriately Islamic.

The president is elected in a national system and handles the other governmental functions such as the economy, education, etc.

How’s that not as democratic as the system in the United States?

Granted, the Supreme Leader has a lot of power. But he’s not a dictator. He’s elected by people who are themselves elected. It reminds me of the Electoral College.

The Supreme Leader can effectively diddle with anything he wants under the umbrella of supervising the “general policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran." But that sounds a lot like our own Supreme Court, who are not elected officials. A lot of Americans think the Supreme Court is more active than it ought to be.

I suppose someone is going to tell me that Iran’s system of government is really a sham, and that the people in power are only giving the appearance of a democratic system. For example, the Supreme Leader can determine who is allowed to run for office in the first place. How’s that worse than the American version in which big money interests only allow people named Clinton or Bush to get elected president? It’s different, but is it functionally less democratic?

For more on Iran’s system of government, see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Iran

If you are new to The Dilbert Blog, I remind you that I have no idea what I’m talking about when it comes to world affairs. The point is for you to set me straight in the comments.

Smarter Than a 5th Grader

From a marketing perspective, there’s a brilliant new game show on TV called Are You Smarter Than a 5th Grader? The host, Jeff Foxworthy, asks adults questions from topics covered in grade school. The adult can rely on a 5th grader for help up to three times.

For example, Foxworthy asked what constellation the Big Dipper is in (Ursa Major). Another question asked which bone in the human body is the largest (the femur). All of the 5th graders allegedly knew the answers.

Clearly, our kids are being taught a lot of useless crap.

I try to imagine a situation where I would need to know the name of my largest bone. I suppose I might someday be in a museum when a pack of wild dogs attacked, and someone would see me standing next to the exhibit of early human skeletons and yell “Quick, grab a femur and start swinging!” But realistically, I can count on one hand the number of times anyone has asked me to hit a dog with a femur.

During the time that 5th graders are learning how much a leg bone weighs, I have to wonder what useful information they are NOT learning.  I wonder if anyone ever died because the first person to arrive at an accident scene knew the location of the Big Dipper but not CPR. I’m thinking it had to happen at least once.

I wonder if 5th graders are taught that attractive people generally do better in their professional lives. I don’t mean to be cruel to the kids on that show, but at least one of them has been eating too many cheese sticks while memorizing the names of bones. It’s not a good career move.

I’ll bet that most schools don’t have a class on how to recognize bullshit when you see it. What could be a more useful skill than that? I have to wonder how many people who are able to name all of the past U.S. presidents have shaved their heads and joined cults. I’ll bet it’s a few.

If it were up to me to add some classes to the grade school curriculum, I think I’d put more emphasis on these skills: public speaking, risk assessment, bullshit detecting, social skills, decision-making, managing your own body, and influencing people.

And CPR. In case I ever need a 5th grader to revive me.

Laws of Physics

A minute ago I accidentally dropped three odd-shaped objects on the floor. If they had bounced in any of three directions, they would have encountered a hard flat surface and stopped conveniently near my feet. If they bounced in the fourth direction, they would be seeking shelter in a hard-to-get area and I would need a large pole, a search and rescue dog, and the Cirque de Soleil to get to them.

All three odd-shaped objects ran for cover in the hard-to-get spot. I am considering leaving them there forever.

This accidental experiment demonstrates one of the laws of physics you rarely hear about: Dropped objects seek the point of least accessibility. You can try it yourself by dropping an orange on the ground anywhere near a parked automobile. The orange will take off toward that parked car like a rabbit in a slingshot, even if the parked car is at the top of a steep hill. The law of gravity does not apply in these situations.

Another rarely discussed aspect of physics is the law of misplaced keys. When you can’t readily find your keys in the house, you will not later discover them on top of some obvious surface such as a countertop or a dresser. Nor will they be in the pocket of whatever clothing you recently wore. Keys scamper to their hiding places whenever their owner becomes preoccupied doing something else, such as chasing an orange that is heading toward a parked car. In that moment of inattentiveness, the keys make a beeline for the least likely location that anyone would ever look. For example, you might find them months later in a jar of mayonnaise in your cupboard, or taped to the back of an old-fashioned toilet in an Italian restaurant down the street.

Do you have any other laws of physics to share?

Too Frickin’ Cool

Now for an exciting round of what I call “too frickin’ cool.” The way this is played is that you describe some technology that is so futuristic, so Star Trekish, you can hardly believe that you are using it. When you are done describing this technology, you must be so impressed with your own story that you pause and punctuate it be saying, “Too frickin’ cool.” Optionally, you can add a “dude” or a “seriously” to further elaborate your point.

I’ll get the ball rolling. Yesterday I signed up for Google’s free service, Google Alerts. It sends me an e-mail any time my keywords newly appear on the Internet. My keywords are “Scott Adams Dilbert.” Now, I usually have my Blackberry 8700 in my pocket. So check this out…

Any time that 11-year old Vijay sits at his Dad’s computer in Lucknow, India, and blogs about his favorite Dilbert comic, Google finds it, and sends that link directly to my left front pocket. I reach in, pull out the Blackberry, click the link, and Vijay’s blog opens. I read it, just to see what little Vijay thinks of me today. In India. Minutes ago.

Now reverse it. From Vijay’s perspective, he’s writing about his favorite cartoonist who lives on the other side of the world. As soon as Vijay presses the “publish” button for his blog, it sets in motion a chain of events that ends with his words delivered to that author’s left front pocket. And in all likelihood, that author will read those words while his wife is scrolling up and down through the DVR’s online guide in some sort of shopper’s trance.

Seriously. Dude. How frickin’ cool is that?

Your turn. But you must limit your story to technology you personally use.

The Things I Say

Last night, the full moon was low and bright over the horizon on a clear California evening. It looked extra large. “Wow,” said my beautiful wife. “Look at the moon.” It was spectacular, perched above the silhouette of townhouses in the distance. One extroverted star and a wisp of night clouds completed the composition. For two newlyweds on their way to a Saturday night dinner, it was a perfect moment.

There are many romantic things that you can say when looking at the moonlit sky. I decided to go with “It looks like the moon is going to crash into the Earth and annihilate us.”

“What?” said my wife, still lost in the magic of the moment.

“The moon looks extra large. That’s either because of the refraction from the additional atmosphere at that angle, or the moon lost its orbit and its going to destroy all life on earth.”

“I think we would have heard something on the news if the moon were heading toward us,” Shelly pointed out.

“Not necessarily. The government might have decided there was nothing we could do about it, so there’s no point in ruining our weekend,” I countered.

When it comes to romance, the important thing is to win the argument. So at this point I was committed. I was going to make the best possible case I could that the moon was going to kill us. I continued, “Besides, how competent is our government anyway? It’s not as if this would be its first big mistake, or the first time they didn’t tell us the truth.”

Shelly got quiet after I made that excellent point. That’s how I know I won. And it felt good because I know she was thinking how lucky she is to have married a man who knows so much about moons and governments.

Young Evil Me

I’m a common variety of human being. By that, I mean that there are about a million guys who look like me. I see them all the time, and it creeps me out.

This has gotten worse over the years. Now I also see younger people who look like me at various ages. It’s hard to go in public anymore without at least once thinking, “Hey, there’s a little Scott from 1979!”

This problem reached the zenith of weird the other day. A large publication scheduled a photographer to take some pictures to accompany an article. The doorbell rings. I open it. And there I am, fifteen years ago, holding a camera, looking at myself.

I think that Young Me had a similarly strong reaction, as in “Good lord, I’m going to turn into one of THOSE.” It was an awkward moment. But it got worse.

Imagine spending an hour having your picture taken by a photographer who looks like you, but younger. He’s dressed as you would. He talks like you. He even has a profession you could easily imagine doing in an alternate universe. And now he’s taking your picture. Let me tell you, it was like looking at a mirror’s reflection in another mirror. There was something infinite about it, and not in a good way.

Then came the kicker. We went outside for most of the photos, to “take advantage of the light,” Young Me explained. He made me pose in various positions that all had the same finish: “Now turn slightly, and look toward the sun.”

Seriously. He told me to look directly at the sun. And he did it with a straight face. That is when I became convinced that this alleged other person was indeed me. If I were a photographer, I’d be having people stare at the sun until they were blind too. I’d also have them disrobe outdoors on cold days and sit on frozen park benches. That’s the fun of being a photographer. Otherwise, all you’re doing is looking through a hole and pushing a button. What kind of job is that?

Luckily, I know all of my own tricks. So I declined my doppelganger’s offer to blind myself for his entertainment. But I respected him for trying.

I have not ruled out the possibility that he was a time-traveling me. As a precaution, I went back to my office and moved everything he touched back to its original position, thus saving humankind from annihilation. That’s just one more example of how I’m working behind the scenes to make the world a better place.

You’re welcome.

Most Frequently Asked Questions

It’s my fault for bringing it up, but many of you asked about the most frequently asked questions of cartoonists. Here you go.

1. What newspaper first ran Dilbert?

Dilbert is syndicated. That means my syndication company, United Media, tried to sell it to as many papers as it could, for the same launch date. About 25 papers bought it before the launch. Only a handful actually published it on the launch date. Even I don’t know which ones ran it first. None of them were large newspapers.

(Other newspapers bought it with no intention of publishing it. They sometimes do that to keep the rights from their competitor in their city in case the comic becomes a hit.)

2. Where do you get your ideas?

In my case, I get most of my ideas from e-mailed suggestions to scottadams@aol.com. But I spent 16 years in corporate America and am often reminded of that experience by events in my daily life. I’m in business myself, in a fashion. So I’m dealing with conference calls and contracts and marketing and design all the time. Plus I co-own two restaurants, and those are fertile sources of human interaction too.

3. Do you do the writing or the drawing first?

Most cartoonists do the writing first. Then they draw. I start with only a germ of the idea and start drawing first. I draw the first panel, add the words, draw the second, add the words, etc. I never know where a comic is going until it’s done. It often takes a sharp left turn from where I expected it to go.

One advantage of my method is that after I draw a character, its expression or body language often suggests the dialog. It helps them “talk” to me. For example, if I draw Wally looking more relaxed or rumpled than usual (accidentally – it can be very subtle) then I might use that to suggest different dialog than I originally imagined.

4. Do you write one comic a day or a bunch at a time?

For years I did one per day, weekends and holidays included. Since marriage, I’m trying to do 2 per day on weekdays and keep more time open for weekends and travel. But I still end up working most weekends at least half days.

5. How far in advance do you submit comics?

The daily comic needs to be e-mailed to my syndication company about 4 weeks ahead of its publication date. The Sunday strips require more processing by the newspapers (because of the color) and have to be in about 8 weeks ahead of publication. Lately I’m only a week or so ahead of those deadlines. When I first started in this business, I was 6 months ahead of deadline. I’ve been chipping away at that buffer ever since.

6. Do you still draw the comic on paper?

Most cartoonists still use paper, at least for most of the work. They typically finish it off on Photoshop after scanning the inked work. Photoshop might be used for the lettering (using a font of your own handwriting) or adding shading and effects.

About 2 years ago I had some hand problems (from overuse) and switched to drawing directly to the computer, which is easier on my hand. I have a computer monitor that allows me to draw directly to the screen (as opposed to a tablet on the desk). It’s the 21SX by Wacom. It cut my production time in half. It’s different from drawing on paper, and there’s a learning curve of a few months to get it down. But once you do, it’s amazing. I use Photoshop for the entire process now. Then I hit a few keys and e-mail it to United Media.

7. How did Dilbert get his name?

I developed Dilbert as a doodle during my corporate years. He had no name, but my coworkers thought he needed one. So I had a “Name the Nerd” contest on my cubicle whiteboard. My boss at the time, Mike Goodwin, wrote down “Dilbert,” and I closed the contest. We had a winner.

After I submitted Dilbert for syndication, Mike sheepishly told me that he realized why Dilbert seemed such a good name for a comic. He was looking through his Dad’s old military artifacts and realized he had seen a Dilbert comic before. Since WWII, a comic called Dilbert had been used by military pilots in the context of telling them what not to do. A “Dilbert” was synonymous with a pilot who was being an idiot. It was too late for me to turn back at that point. I kept the name Dilbert, and I never heard from the family of the original artist. Obviously they are aware of my version of Dilbert. I appreciate that they evidently decided to not make it an issue.

8. How do you become a syndicated cartoonist?

The short answer is that you can buy books from any book seller on how to submit work to syndicates. There are only a handful of syndicates, and all you do is mail them photocopies of your work. All submissions are reviewed by the decision-makers, so unlike other fields, in cartooning there is no advantage to knowing anyone or pulling strings. Your work speaks for itself, and an experienced editor can judge a cartoonist’s potential in less than a minute. So while you are competing against perhaps 3,000 submissions per year, the good ones are easily spotted.

That’s the method I used. I submitted Dilbert to several syndication companies at the same time. A few rejected me outright. One syndicate suggested that I find an actual artist to do the drawing for me. (They liked my writing). United Media called and offered me a contract. They took a chance on my crappy artwork, and that risk paid off.

9. Do you plan to retire like those quitters Watterson, Larsen, Breathed, and Amend?

Not until the public doesn’t want to see Dilbert anymore. I don’t agonize over my work the way some artists do. Watterson, for example, did his art with a tiny paintbrush and ink. I can’t imagine how tedious that was. And he made more money in his short career than I will make in my lifetime. Retiring made sense for him.

I enjoy my work. And it’s not that hard. Plus I like the attention and the pure joy of creating. I can’t imagine not contributing to the GDP in some fashion. I tend to define myself by what I do. That means I need to be useful to feel good about myself. Leisure doesn’t suit me except for an occasional change of pace.

That’s enough for now.