The Dilbert Blog

Oops

My favorite story recently is about the lawsuit to stop the $8 billion Large Hadron Collider out of fear that it might shrink the universe to the size of a gnat turd. And I don’t mean the plump and juicy kind.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/03/29/science/29collider.html?_r=2&hp&oref=slogin&oref=slogin

One of the reasons I like my job is that the worst mistake I can make is to offend someone, and I enjoy that too. I would never want to be a NASA engineer, for example, knowing that one wrong calculation lands the Space Shuttle on the Sun. And I really, really, really, wouldn’t want to be one of the engineers working on the Large Hadron Collider, no matter how sure I was that it was safe. There’s always that little chance of annihilating the universe, and it’s exactly the sort of mistake I would make.

On the plus side, no one would say, “I told you so.” I guess that would take some of the sting out of it.

I don’t know how you ever get comfortable with any level of risk of destroying the universe. If you were to do an expected value calculation, multiplying the tiny risk times the potential cost, it would still come out infinitely expensive.

And who exactly ran the numbers to decide it wasn’t that risky? After all, the whole point of the Large Hadron Collider is to create conditions that are not predictable. If someone already predicted what would happen using nothing but his laptop and Excel, and determined it was safe, I don’t think we’re getting our $8 billion worth.

I can’t see the management of this project spending $8 billion, realizing it was a huge boner, and then holding a press conference suggesting it be turned into a parking garage. I’ll bet a lot of people in that position would take at least a 5% risk of incinerating the galaxy versus incinerating their own careers. I know I would.

If the lawsuit succeeds, imagine trying to get another job with that project failure on your resume.

Interviewer: “So, you spent $8 billion dollars trying to build a machine that would either discover something cool or destroy the universe. Is it fair to say you are not a people person?”

Vacation Ratio

Today I am going on a two-night trip with the family. The destination promises to be lots of fun. But it takes a lot of research and planning to figure it all out. Then there is the packing and the traveling to and fro, including airports and rental cars and traffic and things that aren’t much fun.

I figure we will sacrifice about three normal days to make two of our other days extra good. Is that worth it?

A month from now I know I will remember the good times and not the sitting at the airport. So the memories will be good. I have a theory that most vacations are about memory upgrades. You become a different person after each trip, literally, as your brain takes on new shapes and chemistry from each experience. I think the selective memory phenomenon is what makes three bad days of planning and travel a worthy trade for two good days of actual vacation.

Clearly there is something wrong with me. But if you are reading this blog, you probably have it too.

Dilbert Product Idea

Someone needs to invent a Dilbert doll for the office that mirrors your mood during the day as the life force is drained from your body. I imagine the little doll sitting there looking all bright and fresh when you come in to work. Over the course of the day, he starts to slump in his chair and turn pale. Eventually he shrivels up like a dried leaf and rolls into a fetal position. That’s when you know it is time to go home.

Misery loves company, so I think people would like having a little Dilbert doll to share the pain.

I’m not sure how you would engineer a toy like that. Perhaps it would be like one of those little sponge animals that you drop in a glass of water and it expands into a much larger one. You could water the Dilbert at the start of each day, making him plump and happy to begin, and he would shrivel up as he dehydrated, eventually curling into a tight little ball.

Watering the Dilbert every day would be a hassle. A mechanical version would be easier, if you could somehow engineer him to change colors and slump and shrivel  and still sell for less than $20.

A number of years ago I worked with design company IDEO to create Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle. It had a number of fun features, including a fake flower that sensed motion and reacted when you entered or exited. When you left, it wilted. When you entered, it perked up. Our thinking was that this might be the only time during your workday that your existence was recognized. It would feel good, like being greeted by your dog, but without the drool and fleas. The Dilbert doll could do the same as the flower. He could sleep or slump when you leave, and perk up and start working when you enter. He’d be like a little friend. Wouldn't you want one of those?

Here’s a link to Dilbert’s Ultimate Cubicle. It doesn’t mention the cool flower feature.

http://www.ideo.com/dilbert/index.htm

Researchers Discover Cause of Voting

Researchers have discovered that people who are incompetent generally lack the knowledge that they are incompetent.

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/chronicle/archive/2000/01/18/MN73840.DTL

This lack of self-awareness is the glue that holds democracy together. As long as people feel capable of evaluating complex economic and geopolitical policies, they will keep voting. And as long as people vote, they will feel vested in the system and support it.

As regular readers know, voting is one of the few areas where I recognize my incompetence. That’s why I stay home on election day. In my case, voting would be irrational.

One of the ways I recognize my own political incompetence is by observing how my opinions keep changing. That shouldn’t be happening. For example, a month ago I would have said Obama was the best choice for president because he is an inspirational leader, less divisive than Clinton, and he would bring our troops home from Iraq sooner than McCain. Plus McCain is too old for the job. It all seemed so simple.

Then I read an article that explained how much Obama would tax the people in my bracket compared to McCain’s plan. Ouch. And I started thinking that over time, our all-volunteer army results in fighters who know they will end up in Iraq when they volunteer. That wasn’t the case when the war began, but it becomes that way if we stay indefinitely. Who am I to tell another citizen that he or she should not take that risk for some benefit to the country that he or she perceives?

The war is expensive, but at least McCain would take that money from the middle class majority, and being the majority, they are the ones who would need to elect McCain in the first place. Why would I want to deny the majority the option of voting to pay more taxes than they need to so that I can pay less? They should have that freedom.

If I believed that Obama would pull 100% of our troops out of Iraq, and that Al-Qaeda would surrender because of it, then McCain’s plan of perpetual occupation would look foolish. But as long as Al-Qaeda wants to kill me, no matter what my country does, I’m willing to let volunteers try to shoot them first, as long as other people are paying for the bullets.

The war is bad for Iraqi civilians, but no one knows for sure if they would be worse off without the occupation, given the likelihood of greater civil war. As important as that question is, you have to leave it out of the calculation because it is unknowable.

So I ask myself, isn’t the world better off if I just vote for McCain, buy stock in companies that profit from war, and let everyone else exercise their freedom of choice even if makes them poorer and/or dead?

See why I don’t vote?

Elevator Power and Whatnot

Imagine a 200-pound human traveling by elevator from the 5th floor to the lobby. That is a lot of energy potential that isn’t getting captured. Your descent should be turning a generator or compressing gas or doing something else to power the grid.

How hard could that be?

I also wonder why homes in California aren’t designed to make better use of the stable temperature ten feet beneath the house. It’s always cooler down there during the hot summer. It’s like sitting on a free air conditioner and not using it.

Suppose you dig a ten foot hole, with a ten foot diameter, and fill the hole with a thermal mass that absorbs the surrounding temperature and bleeds it into the thermal mass of the home’s flooring. Wouldn’t that keep the home a lot cooler?

There might be times you wanted to turn off the effect, so I suppose you could engineer it so an insulating layer is applied when needed.

I realize geothermal heating systems are used in cold climates. They just aren’t economical in California because we don’t have the cold extremes.

I remember going into a house in California years ago on a hot summer day and being surprised that the homeowners didn’t need any air conditioning. They had a large attic fan that was drawing out the hot air. Since then I have noticed in a few places I lived that a fan is unnecessary if you have a window in the top floor open and one on the ground floor. The “chimney effect” brings warm air up and out so efficiently the fan is redundant. The only problem is that you don’t want to go to bed with a downstairs window open. That’s why I invented the Jailer Screen Window. It’s a ground floor window you can open, but still has jailer bars to keep out humans, and a screen to keep out bugs. Open that bad boy before bedtime, along with the windows upstairs, and you won’t need AC in the evening.

Okay, I didn't invent the Jailer Screen Window. But I did give it a cool name.

I often think the energy crisis is a failure of imagination.

[As usual with my posts, I get two types of comments: 1) It will never work, and 2) It is already being done. -- Scott]

Hypnotist thief

A man in Italy is allegedly hypnotizing store and bank clerks to give him all of their money.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/europe/7309947.stm

I’m a trained hypnotist myself, so my first reaction was skepticism. You can’t hypnotize someone that quickly and reliably. But then I put on my criminal mastermind hat and tried to figure out how this crime could be committed as described.

The trick is to hypnotize the targets well ahead of the actual day of the robbery, perhaps several times, and weed out the people who don’t instantly return to the so-called trance state upon suggestion. Then on robbing day, a simple suggestion at the store or bank can produce the instant results you need. The subjects have been pre-trained.

The hard part of this scheme is finding a way to get the right people to agree to hypnosis ahead of time. I imagine he advertised in a local publication, offering to help people quit smoking or lose weight. When people called for an appointment he would ask what sounded like standard questions, including age and occupation. If someone had the right sort of job, he set up an appointment and started the process. On any given day, he could hypnotize several new clients while testing for the most susceptible subjects who also handle money.

The next part would be a bit tricky. You can’t get a hypnotized person to do something that would violate his basic sense of right and wrong, or to put himself in danger. The brain has some sort of safety mechanism to prevent that.

In the surveillance video on the web, the hypnotist is seen taking the money from the register himself while the clerk seemed to be watching. This might be part of his workaround. The clerk wasn’t committing the crime so much as observing it. And perhaps the hypnotist said he was borrowing the money, or the manager had asked him to bring it to him in the parking lot, or some other story that obscured the ethical boundaries.

It could work. He’d need to be an excellent hypnotist, but that isn’t so rare.

Hospital Mistake

You readers are sick people. Many of you forwarded me the article about a German woman went to the hospital for a leg operation and got an anus operation instead, as if I would make light of such a thing.

http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,339270,00.html

When the woman complained to the hospital CEO that she was given a new anus, did the CEO say, “I’ll look into it”?

I think the woman should act as her own attorney. After she gives her closing argument she can sit down and say, “I rest my case.”

Add your own jokes. The ones I already got by e-mail include “She got a bum deal,” and “The doctors tore her a new one.”

Iraq’s Path to Democracy

I’m no historian, but it seems to me the path to democracy always goes through a warlord stage. The warlords have different names in different places. In the United States we had the robber barons, media barons, unions, and organized crime who effectively controlled the government. In England they had land barons foisting the Magna Carta on the king. In modern Russia it looks as if the billionaire criminals are running the country.

It seems to me that Iraq is right on track. The country is organizing itself around warlords and clerics, and they will eventually work out truces with each other. In the long run, those warlords or their successors will find their own greatest self-interest in supporting some form of national government while maintaining local control.

As the national government grows through taxation, it eventually becomes more powerful than any individual warlord and can start picking them off one at a time, just as the government of the United States targeted the Mafia.

Is Iraq on the only realistic path that can get it to a functional democracy?

Natural Meat Eaters

As a vegetarian, I often find myself drawn into debates about whether humans are natural meat-eaters. I’d have to say “almost.”

Clearly meat is nutritious for humans, our teeth can handle the job, and most meat-eaters love a well-cooked steak. But to say we are natural meat-eaters, I would think two things would have to be true:

1. Eating lots of meat wouldn’t increase your health risks.
2. Seeing a cow would make you salivate if you were hungry.

For now, I will ignore the first point because experience tells me that meat-eaters will argue to the death (literally) that eating meat has no health risks.

The interesting point, to me, is why so-called natural meat eaters feel the need to disguise their food by cutting it into steaks, cooking it, and covering it with barbecue sauce. If eating meat is natural, you would expect it to make you hungry in its natural condition. Looking at a cow should make you salivate when you are hungry.

Am I wrong?

[Update: To answer your rhetorical questions, yes, I do salivate when seeing raw vegetables and fruit. An orange or banana would make most people salivate if they were hungry. But I also like raw peas in a pod, even raw potatoes.]

Achievable Goals

The key to happiness is setting achievable goals. For example, I think a bad goal is trying to find enlightenment, or becoming one with the universe. That has hard work written all over it. I was thinking about this recently because of the story in the news about the 35-year old woman who stayed in her bathroom until her skin fused with the molecules in the toilet seat.

http://edition.cnn.com/2008/US/03/13/woman.in.bathroom.ap/index.html

While it might be hard to become one with the universe, apparently it is easier to become one with your own toilet. All you need is a boyfriend who is willing to slip pizzas under the door.

While we’re on the topic of the boyfriend, I also think he did a good job of setting his goals low in terms of girlfriends. If you’ve ever had a high maintenance relationship, I think you can appreciate the subtle beauty of his arrangement. This fellow found a girlfriend who never complained. Can you top that?

I see this woman as a pioneer in the evolution of humankind. Her life might sound boring to you, but imagine if she had a laptop in there, with a wireless Internet connection. Suddenly a bad idea starts to look rather brilliant. For most of us, moving from place to place is usually about seeking food, bathroom breaks, employment, conversation, sexual stimulation, and returning to the computer. That’s a lot of time wasted moving around. A laptop and a toilet can satisfy all of those needs. You can even order food online. I’m not ready to make that sort of commitment yet myself, but I’d be lying if I told you I didn’t give it some serious thought.

Hay-Soos

This week’s series in Dilbert caused quite a stir. It featured a new guy in the office whose name is pronounced hay-soos and spelled Jesus. I drew those strips a few months ago, and in my typical careless way I didn’t realize they would be running around Easter time. Oops.

You can see the series at www.dilbert.com while they are still in the archive.

As you might imagine, I got a lot of e-mail about this strip. Comments were about evenly divided between people who are deeply offended and people who think it was my best work yet. Interestingly, the people most amused often described themselves as religious, and those offended often noted that they were not especially religious.

My favorite rhetorical question, which I received an alarming number of times, was “Why don’t you mock Mohammed next? Huh? Why not?”

Well, aside from the blindingly obvious reason that I prefer life over death, I didn’t realize I was making fun of Christianity this week. It’s a standard cartoon practice to take well-known historical or fictional stories and put other characters in those roles. I did the same thing with The Wizard of Oz, and no one thought I was insulting Dorothy.

Anyway, I had to answer a lot of angry e-mail. Here’s a typical letter I received, with my pithy answer at the bottom.

In a message dated 3/11/2008 9:54:25 P.M. Pacific Daylight Time, (address deleted) writes:

Hello! Mr. Adams,
Mr. Adams I just want to tell you that I don’t really appreciate you making a mockery of my faith. I used to think that your comic strip was funny, now I think it is very disgusting and not funny at all. I have found your last comics strips in reference to my Lord and Savior Jesus Christ very offensive. There is a place for everything and there is a place for humor and humor has its limits, especially when it comes to those things and issues that some of us hold as sacred. I will pray for you and that some day you may come to know Jesus as your Lord and Savior. Otherwise you will find Him some day as your judge, and He will justly judge you for your sins and whether or not you believe in Hell that day you will believe and you will repent when you see Him face to face, but then it will be too late. Repent from your wicked ways and stop making fun of my Savior.

Thanks for your time.

Pastor (name deleted).
California

My response…

Thank you for taking time out from feeding the poor to complain about comic strips. I know Jesus would have played it the same way.

Scott

Dr. Kervorkian runs for Congress

Dr. Kervorkian, the 79-year old doctor who helped 130 people die is running for congress in Michigan.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20080312/ap_on_el_ho/kevorkian_congress

Obviously he has no chance of being elected because he believes in personal freedom. And he’s so old he probably carries his own little suicide kit around in a lunch pail just in case he needs it. But I love the fact that he’s running. This should make the race interesting.

My hope is that he gets elected, serves for a few years then runs for president when he’s in his late eighties. That’s the sort of race that makes the choice of vice president extra interesting. All he’d need to do is name Oprah as his vice presidential running mate, whether she agrees or not, and promise to whack himself after a week in office. He’d win in a landslide.

I wonder if Dr. Kervorkian has trouble entertaining guests at home. I can imagine this scene playing itself out a lot:

Dr. Kervorkian: “Carl, you look tired. Can I get you a beverage?”

Carl: “NO! Nothing! I’m good!”

Expanding Earth Theory

I love hearing about science conspiracy theories. My new favorite, that I stumbled across the other day, is that Earth is increasing in size, and that expansion is the only plausible explanation for what looks like the continental drift.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VjgidAICoQI&feature=related

This interests me because years ago I proposed a thought experiment about gravity, where I noted that if all matter in the universe were expanding, you would appear to be attracted to other objects when all that was happening is that those objects were growing and closing the space gaps between them.

Naturally there are many holes in this theory, including the lack of evidence that planets are getting larger. But now I discover this theory that the earth has indeed grown. And it must be true because it is on Youtube!

My theory of gravity held that if you and the earth were the only things in existence, and you both grew at the same time, you wouldn’t notice the growth because all the reference points are growing too.

One of the big criticisms to this theory is that mass would increase if size increased. Originally, I waved my hand at that problem and just said the theory includes an ongoing shift of the laws of physics to keep everything in balance, such as orbits and the relative strength of structures.

But isn’t the mass of earth increasing? People are being born and new trees are growing every day. Perhaps that increase in mass is borrowed from other places, such as dust landing here from space, but clearly some objects are gaining mass, as the expanding matter theory of gravity requires, and the source of that gain is not obvious to the eye.

For the expanding matter theory of gravity to be true, you’d expect some things to expand at different rates than others. That’s consistent with the youtube video on how the earth expanded while the land mass didn’t change much. It’s also consistent with the universe itself expanding, which we observe.

The expanding matter theory of gravity isn’t a serious one. It’s just a fun mental detour. And like all fringe theories, you can always find clues that make it seem as though it all fits together, so long as you don’t know too much about science.

[Question: Photons have mass. What happens when all those photons from the sun hit Earth? Does the mass stay here?]

Henry Hoover

In the news, a building contractor was caught seducing a shop vacuum. The vacuum has two large cartoon eyes and a hose that represents its nose. The model is called a Henry Hoover.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2008/03/03/nhoover103.xml

This story raises many questions. Was this a spontaneous act, or did the contractor see Henry Hoover on day one and think “I’d hit that”?

What disturbs me most is that little Henry’s hose was involved in the sex act. That’s his NOSE, dammit! How is Henry supposed to enjoy nasal sex? That contractor is a selfish lover, and I can’t forgive that.

The contractor’s alibi is that he was using Henry to vacuum his underpants, which he says is common practice back in Poland. The key learning is that maybe you should practice your alibi before getting caught and not say the first thing that springs to mind.

If I were that contractor, I would have claimed I was a member of a cult and I mistakenly thought Henry Hoover was my god. I’d say I cast off all of my possessions and knelt before him to receive his blessing. I’d tell the security guard “If you don’t like how Lord Hoover bestows his blessings, perhaps you should be less of a bigot.” I’d probably take the offensive and say something like “You probably kneel in front of a priest and get a cracker. How’s this different?”

It pays to be prepared.

Try This at Home

Let me try a little test with you. I’ll ask you a question, and you answer within 5 seconds. The point is to see how different your first reaction is to the answer you eventually settle on.

Here’s the setup. Imagine a baby born today, who ends up living to the age of 100. Now think about the course of that baby’s hundred years on earth, and answer the following question in five seconds. No cheating. Five seconds.

Question: During that baby’s 100 years of life, how many people will die?

Go.

Don’t read on until you have your answer.

I’ll bet your answer was somewhere in the millions.

There are 6 billion people on earth right now, and virtually all of them will die in the next hundred years. Add to that the several billion who will be born during the baby’s life and not be so lucky to live to old age. I think an estimate of 10 billion deaths is entirely reasonable. And that’s if things go well. The worst case is probably 20 billion people.

Is that mind-boggling?

Thoughtful Gift

Are you looking for a gift for a loved one, and want to achieve a high thoughtfulness to cost ratio? I have the solution. I call it the Dilbert Car Kit. For Christmas, I made two for my wife: One for her car and one for mine when she is a passenger in it.

The idea is that you take notice of all the things he or she routinely wishes was in the car on trips. Then you find a generic storage case and fill it with just those items, to keep beneath the seat of the car. It’s nerdily delicious.

Here’s a picture of the one I put together.

My kit has the following items:

Pen
Notepad
Contact lens case
Contact lens liquid
Lint roller
Advil
First aid kit
Tic Tacs
Tissues
Chapstick

As time goes by, I wish I had added a few more things:

Sun block
Sunglasses
Snack (protein bar)
Wet Napkin packet

Your kit will differ, but the key to making it a good gift is picking the items that are customized to the recipient.

Now some of you will say, “That’s what a glove compartment is for,” or “It’s called a purse.” But we all know that glove compartments are nothing but a practical joke involving crap that falls out when you open the door. And you can never find what you need with the front-load design no matter how long you paw around in there.

Women often change purses, or leave them behind. The car kit fills the gaps.

Now go forth and be thoughtful.

Right Up My Alley

A reader sent me a link to a story about a Japanese woman who was accused of kicking a hole in some guy’s door, crawling through the hole, and destroying his property. She was acquitted when the court realized that her breasts were too big to allow her to fit through the hole.

http://mdn.mainichi.jp/national/news/20080304p2a00m0na028000c.html

In other words, if the tit doesn’t fit, you must acquit.

The funniest thing about this story is the visual it puts in your head. The accused turned out to be innocent. But she had to sit in court while a room full of strangers, and later the press, imagined her trying to crawl through a hole in a door and getting snagged by her knockers. It is all the funnier because the hole is in a door. Somehow that is just more amusing.

Apparently there was an extensive courtroom discussion about the physics involved in getting a torso and two melons through a smallish hole. I immediately started solving the puzzle in my head, wondering if you could poke your head through then flop one boob through, then an arm…no, it wouldn’t work. But you can’t tell me you didn’t have the same thought.

If I were the prosecutor, and I saw that the defense was winning its case, I would demand that the accused put butter on her breasts and try to fit them, and optionally her head, through a smallish hole in front of the jury. It wouldn’t help win the case, but it would make the afternoon go a lot faster.

[Update: Okay, this just gets better. Blog reader Aaron wonders if she could have reached through the hole in the door and just unlocked it. I am laughing because I got so carried away thinking about how to get those boobs through the hole that I never once considered just reaching in and unlocking the door. That is hilarious.]

Muscle Car

The following line of thought started with my observation of how efficient the human body is at converting food into energy. A marathon runner can eat a pork chop and run 26 miles. Your car can’t do that.

Then I thought about how scientists created a heart out of human cells grown in a lab. It’s a muscle that actually works. So how much of a leap is it to imagine vehicles powered by lab-grown muscles, with artificial digestion systems, powered by your leftovers from dinner? All it would take is a small electrical stimulation to make the muscle contract in time to pedal a generator attached to a motor.

We probably wouldn’t want to use human cells to create those muscle cars. Other creatures have more efficient muscles. Maybe a huge muscle made from an ant’s leg would be good. Those tiny bastards can lift many times their own weight. I want my car powered by giant ant muscles.

The great thing about a muscle car is that the more you use it, the stronger it gets from the exercise. The downside is that you’d have to keep the muscle warm enough so it didn’t freeze, and not so hot it died. But I think science could figure that out. Maybe the muscle would be part ant and part polar bear.

The artificial digestion system would be optimized for whatever food you have in your area. If you modeled it after a cow’s guts, it could run on anything from lawn clippings to licorice. You could stop at McDonalds and order a Big Mac for yourself and a milkshake for your car.

This feels somewhat inevitable to me.

Name that Baby

In the news, a pregnant woman on a train accidentally gave birth while using the toilet.

http://news.yahoo.com/nphotos/Ahmedabad-New-born-baby-girl/photo//080228/ids_photos_en/r4196414790.jpg/;_ylt=Am2TfGdPCYQAinQPPgCh8g5paP0E

Question of the day: What should the parents name this child?

Winnie the Poo?

Cure for Volleyball

There are few things in life less fun than a pickup game of volleyball. It always seems like a good idea at the time. You imagine yourself and a few athletic friends passing, spiking, and diving to dig out great shots, as the ball almost magically never hits the ground. What actually happens looks like something from a movie where a virus has turned everyone on earth into spastic zombies. You watch in horror as grandma on her motorized scooter joins your side, along with two toddlers, a drunk, and a woman whose hands are apparently made of bubble wrap. And your team is the good one. What follows is a whole lot of people acting surprised they can’t punch an inflated ball in any directions but downward and backwards. Meanwhile your youth slowly drains away.

I found myself in that situation yesterday, with my wife, two small kids, a volleyball net, and a rubber playground ball. In this example, the woman with hands apparently made of bubble wrap was me. When I became a cartoonist, I swore off all sports that can damage fingers because my understudy is the cat, and I don’t want anyone knowing she is the better artist. Anyway, I foolishly took one punch at the big rubber ball and realized that continued play was not a good career move. So I watched as the three remaining enthusiasts tried their best to sport on. They soon discovered it is nearly impossible to play volleyball with a big rubber playground ball.

That’s when inspiration hit. I imagined a new and improved game, which we soon put into motion to the delight of all. Spectators stopped to watch. I named this wonderful new game Scottyball.

I know, I know. Nine hundred of you will tell me you also invented this game and have been playing it since the middle ages. I wish you had told me sooner. Maybe we could have named it after you.

Anyway, here are the rules of Scottyball:

1. The ball is to be caught and thrown over the net, not punched.
2. Any number of people can play. You just adjust the court depth until it is competitive. (Our court was about 10 feet deep on each side for two-on-two play with kids.)
3. You get one point if the ball touches the ground on the opponent’s side.
4. The first team to 21 wins.
5. No spiking. The ball must go up before it crosses the net.
6. You can pass once to a team member.
7. When you catch the ball, you can’t move from that general spot until after you throw.
8. Anyone can serve from any position.
9. A ball that lands out of bounds is no one’s point.
10. It is your serve if the other team got a point or hit out of bounds.
11. If you hit the net on your serve, and it goes over, it is a let (do over).
12. If your serve doesn’t go over the net, the other team serves.
13. If you hit the net during regular play, and it goes over, that’s okay. Continue play.
14. You can pass to yourself or a teammate off the net, but it counts as your one pass.

Your first impression might be that this game is too easy. With such a small court, and no spiking, you might think no one would ever drop the ball. But you’d be surprised how you can fake, pass, quickly catch and throw to extreme angles, get the other side out of position, and hit the gap.

The best part is that every point lasts a good long time, is totally aerobic, and players of all levels can compete effectively. On grass, you end up with lots of diving catches.

You can adjust the court size until it is compatible with the quality of your players. For better athletes, just make the field size bigger.

So the next time you find yourself stuck playing volleyball with a cartoonist, grandma on her scooter, and several spastic zombies, confidently suggest a round of Scottyball instead. Then act surprised that no one else has heard of this craze that has taken the world by storm.