The Dilbert Blog

Evolution DMD

Let’s stipulate for this conversation that everything the experts say about evolution is true. Creatures that are the most successful at reproducing pass their traits to the next generation, and so on.

But I have another hypothesis that I think is testable. What if there is another influence that also contributes?

I wonder if a creature’s aspirations can somehow have an impact on what her genes pass to the next generation. We know that thoughts are associated with feelings, and feelings are associated with body chemistry. It’s not impossible that wanting something in your lifetime can make it more likely the child achieves it.

Recently I read that certain environmental conditions can increase the odds that women will give birth to boys. So we know that external conditions can influence body chemistry which in turn can influence the genetic makeup of the kid.

So I wonder about the giraffe with its long neck, to pick an easy example. The classic explanation is that giraffes with longer necks could reach leaves higher in trees, and had a survival advantage when food was scarce. That seems reasonable enough. But I wonder if the giraffes that strained and wished they had longer necks experienced some sort of stress, and giraffe-style wishfulness, that released any chemicals that could influence the odds of producing a long-necked child. In other words, do creatures guide their own evolutionary path through their desires?

It seems hugely unlikely that such a complicated and specific system could exist in a creature. But everything about creatures with brains is ridiculously complicated and specific and unlikely. It seems to me entirely plausible that creatures with brains evolved a heretofore undiscovered ability to translate their aspirations in this life to physical traits in their children.

You could test this in female rats. One group is the control, and the other is kept frustratingly a half inch from some delicious cheese. Both rats are fed enough to guarantee equal survival, so the normal mechanism for evolution is turned off. Would the rat who aspired to have a longer snout to reach the cheese produce, on average, longer snouted offspring?

Someone probably tested that already in fruit flies or something.

[Update: Lamark didn't deal with a person's aspirations. He was all about the traits you acquire during life, whether you wanted them or not. -- Scott]

President McCain

Last night I saw some pundits on the news discussing the results of a poll. When Americans were asked if they would vote for an African-American for president, more than 9 out of 10 people said yes. But when asked if they knew anyone who would not vote for an African-American, about half said they know such a person.

One inference you might make from these results, and the one drawn by the pundits on the show, is that people are secretly racists. They tell pollsters they are not bigots, but once inside the voting booth they are.

The other inference is something I call math. If there are ten friends, and only one is a racist, then it is true that 90 percent are not racists while everyone knows someone who is. It’s that one guy.

Here’s the way I think the election is going to go down. Obama will get nominated, and polls will start to show he will get 95% of the African-American vote. This will frighten all the racists who hadn’t planned to vote, and get them to the polling places, thus handing the election to John McCain, even if he is only being kept alive by machines at that point.

Here’s a little unscientific survey question of my own:

1. Do you personally know anyone who thinks Obama is a Muslim?

2. Do you personally know anyone who suspects Obama might secretly hate America and is running for President to destroy it from within?

I know registered voters in both of those categories. That's why your next president will be named McCain. That's just a prediction, not a preference.

America’s Favorite Pastime

Yesterday I went to a Giants baseball game. It was Little League Day, so there were about ten thousand young boys running wild in the stands. It was also free bat day, courtesy Bank of America.

I will pause while you digest this concept.

Do you know what happens when you hand an 8-year old boy a new bat, sit him behind the exposed heads of several adults, and ask him to sit patiently for four hours while nothing much happens on the big field in front of him? Do you think he fiddles with that bat?

Apparently Bank of America figured there was some theoretical amount of head injuries that would make the public forget that they lent a trillion of your dollars to hobos.

My memory of the afternoon goes something like this: “TREVOR, PUT DOWN THAT BAT! YOU ALREADY HIT THAT LADY ONCE! I SAID, PUT IT DOWN! I MEAN IT! I WILL NOT TELL YOU FOUR HUNDRED MORE TIMES!” This was followed by the sound of wood making solid contact with skull, cursing, repeat.

My wife took a solid blow to the shoulder. Later, one of the tykes kicked some guy’s beer out of the back seat holder, so we sat in a puddle of beer, while the sun cooked us. I was one pinch of salt from being a recipe.

I tried to use the restroom at the stadium. This is no place for the shy. Unlike most public men’s rooms, where there might be a small privacy shield between urinals, this place was designed to handle high volume, shoulder-to-shoulder peeing. I saw an opening where I could poke my penis between a bearded guy and a guy with a fanny pack, just over the left ear of a Little Leaguer, but before I could make my move, someone filled the slot. I decided I could wait another three or four hours.

Conditions were difficult, but at least the game was exciting well into the first half of the first inning when the Reds scored six runs and put it out of reach. Technically, there was still hope, since many of the Giants have batting averages that round to one hundred, and some are able to catch a fly ball nearly half the time. But yesterday was not their day. There were many boos from the stands. I felt bad for the players until I realized they couldn’t hear the boos over the screams of the bat victims.

I wish someone would invent a device that allowed you to watch sporting events from your home. I think that would be popular.

Dilbert.com Redesign

Recently we redesigned the Dilbert.com web site and added a ton of features, such as animation, deeper archives, mash ups, and more. The reaction from readers has been fascinating.

www.dilbert.com

Let me get this out of the way: I realize the Beta version of the web site has lots of issues. It’s overloaded with Flash, slower than it needs to be, and the navigation is confusing. We’re fixing most of that over the next few weeks. I apologize for the inconvenience.

The fascinating thing about the responses is that it revealed three distinct types of Dilbert readers:

The first group is the ultra-techies who have an almost romantic relationship with technology. For them, the new site felt like getting dumped by a lover. Their high-end technology (generally Linux) and security settings made much of the site inconvenient. Moreover, the use of Flash offended them on some deep emotional level.

The second group objected to the new level of color and complexity, and the associated slowness. They like their Dilbert comics simple, fast, and in two colors. Anything more is like putting pants on a cat.

The third group uses technology as nothing more than a tool, and subscribes to the philosophy that more free stuff is better than less free stuff. That group has embraced the new features on the site and spiked the traffic stats.

For you first two groups, if you promise to keep it to yourselves, we created a stripped-down Dilbert page with just the comic, some text navigation, and the archive: www.dilbert.com/fast. This alternate site is a minor secret, mentioned only here and in the text footnote to the regular site as “Linux/Unix.”

The main site will be getting a Flash diet that will make it speedier soon, so check back in a few weeks. That’s where all the fun will be.

Enjoy.

Penis Thefts

In Congo there is a wave of penis thefts.

http://au.news.yahoo.com/080422/15/16ktt.html

Well, add that to the list of reasons for not visiting Congo.

My first reaction to the story was to dismiss it as a bunch of superstitious simpletons caught in a wave of mass hysteria. Then I realized I’ve worked with a few penis shrinking sorcerers myself. I don’t think they do it intentionally. But anyone who can turn a banana into an acorn in five seconds is obviously a witch.

I assume the victims in Congo don’t have access to the Internet. If they did, they’d get hundreds of offers a day for pills that can cure their problem so thoroughly that photographers would try to affix cameras to their heads. Maybe the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation can get those folks together.

This would be a bad time to be a Congo police officer. The first five or six times you have to evaluate the scene of the crime it might seem amusing. After that, you’re just gay. And not impressed.

And what the hell happens when the police dust for prints? The phrase the police inspectors must hear more than any other is “Never mind.”

Gone With the Wind

Did you hear about the priest who tried to set a record for balloon powered flight? This might come as a huge surprise to you: He’s missing.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/7360416.stm

When I first heard about the incident I figured it was some sort of fund raising stunt to feed the poor. That would have been noble albeit dangerous. But apparently there was no fund raising involved. The priest just wanted to hold the record for balloon riding.

This got me wondering what sort or world record attempt by a priest would piss off God the most. From The Almighty’s perspective, any diversion from the core mission of saving souls is probably time poorly spent. But some types of record attempts have to be worse than others. For example, you don’t want to see your priest winning any kind of pie eating contest. And you don’t want a man of the cloth to hold any titles involving nudity, tequila, or self-gratification, just to name a few. The best a priest could hope for in those cases is that God is busy and doesn’t notice.

But a balloon ride, way up there next to heaven? That’s total smite bait.

New Movie Reviews

Recently I got tricked into seeing a movie that won the Oscar for Best Picture. It left me feeling confused, anxious, and pissed off. By the closing credits I hated everyone involved with it. I actually paid good money for that experience.

As a rule, the quality of a movie is inversely correlated with how long it takes to explain the entire plot. That’s why I stay away from movies with titles like Volcano, Inferno, Titanic, and Snakes on a Plane. I feel I have a sense of where those plots are heading.

The award-winning film I just watched could be described as “A bad guy chases another bad guy and kills him.” There were other elements of the movie, but I’m pretty sure they were irrelevant. Admittedly, there was great artistry in this movie, on many levels. But I don’t think it is fair that no one warned me how it would make me feel. That’s why I think movie reviews should have more elements.

For example, I want to know if a movie has a happy ending, even at the risk of ruining the surprise. Is the arc of happiness something that starts high, dips for dramatic impact then ends on a high note? Or does it start high and just keep dropping until the movie ends and you want to swallow a bottle of sleeping pills? So I recommend an arc description, such as this example:

Arc: High – Low – High

I also want to know the star power. Recently I watched I Am Legend with Will Smith. I enjoyed it only because Will Smith has star power. Even some unknowns have star power. So show me the star power rating, maybe like this:

Star Power: 9

Next, I need to know the mumbling quotient. How many times do you have to turn to the person next to you and ask “What did he say?”

Mumbling Quotient: 7

And how long is this movie? Can my bladder make it all the way or is this a two-pisser?

Bladder: 8

Artistry is important too. How’s the writing, acting, directing, and so forth?

Artistry: 8

I don’t mind violence per se. I can watch hundreds of zombies or henchman get mowed down and still enjoy my popcorn. What I object to is any scene where someone enjoys torturing someone else.

Sadism: 8

A good story is important. Mostly the story needs to be original and make sense. I don’t care about much else.

Originality: 6

I have a hard time with any movie with a plot so complicated I can’t understand it. I have a right to know ahead of time whether I will be able to decipher the story I am paying to see.

Incomprensibility: 4

You also need rankings for humor, scariness, and suspense.

Humor: 7

Scariness: 8

Suspense: 3

That’s all I want to know. Don’t tell me a movie is some particular actor’s best work yet, or the director is at the peak of his powers. That gives me nothing.

APR for Houses

One of the great banking laws in this country is the mandatory APR for loans. That’s a calculation that allows consumers to easily compare loans that have different fees, terms, and rates, making it all apples to apples.

We need the same type of law for home buying. The formula should show the total cost of the home including energy use, water, and maintenance, under some standard set of assumptions.

That sort of number would be a big help to consumers. But more important, it would give home builders an incentive to exceed minimum energy efficiency standards, and make maintenance cheap. At the moment, energy efficiency is somewhat invisible to the buyer. Buyers aren’t willing to pay more for a vague concept. But they might pay more for a home that costs them less in the long run, if they trusted the calculation.

That's my world-saving idea for today. If that doesn't save the world, I will come up with something else tomorrow.

Draft Dodging

This is a hypothetical question to see if our notions of patriotism have changed since I was a kid.

Suppose the draft is reinstituted because there aren’t enough volunteers to fight a hypothetical unpopular war that doesn’t seem to directly threaten the homeland.

Now suppose an individual gets drafted, and his profile is such that the odds of being in combat on the ground are very high. And imagine that this kid is a sensitive type of person who knows that an experience like that will likely give him mental problems for the rest of his life even if he is not wounded.

Some people think, correctly, that they are mentally strong and could come through a war okay if they don’t get physically injured. But others know with a high degree of certainty that experiencing the horrors of war would mentally cripple them for life.

So here’s the question. If a person is relatively certain that going to war will end his ability to enjoy the rest of his life, one way or another, and the war does not present a plausible threat to the homeland, is such a person unpatriotic for dodging the draft to save himself?

The obvious answer is yes, he is unpatriotic. If your country calls on you, you need to go. End of story.

On the other hand, what is the point of a being patriotic to a country that intends to kill you for its own marginal benefit? Such a country would be your natural enemy, not your friend, so any question of patriotism would be nonsense in this particular situation.

Is the draft dodger in this hypothetical situation unpatriotic or simply sensible?

Time Management

Let’s say you have a typical life and try to live it in the healthiest way. You might allocate your 24-hour weekday this way:

Sleep: 8 hours
Exercise: 1 hour
Work: 8 hours
Eating: 2 hours (leisurely)
Hygiene: 1 hour
Travel: 1 (Commute, errands)

That leaves you three hours for family time, sex, shopping, food preparation, chores, household repair, volunteering in the school, and so on. If you have a dentist appointment, or your talkative relative calls, or American Idol has a two-hour special, you’re tapped out.

It’s a challenge to live a happy life if you aren’t giving enough attention to all of those categories, yet doing so is nearly impossible.

One time management strategy is to be independently wealthy, freeing up eight hours a day. But that option isn’t available to many. And apparently it isn’t fulfilling because most rich people continue to work full schedules.

Another strategy is to ignore the fact that you are slowly killing yourself by not sleeping and exercising enough. That frees up several hours a day. The only downside is that you get fat and die.

A third path is to work less than you could, live economically, enjoy each day as it comes, and try not to think about living on cat food when you retire.

Which strategy have you picked?

Brains Versus Character

I notice that our presidential elections always seem to boil down to cartoon characterizations of the main candidates. The Republican is generally characterized by the media as the person of principle and character, albeit a bit dim-witted. (Reagan, George Bush junior, McCain)

The Democrat is generally characterized as whip-smart but with a suspect character. (Clinton, Kerry, Clinton again, Obama)

This got me wondering which sort of candidate is a more dangerous leader. Would you prefer a brilliant person with a suspicious character or a dumb person with high character?

If I HAD to choose from among those two bad options, I'd go with the smart person with suspicious character. If that President is lining his pockets and playing nude Twister in the oval office, it doesn't have that much impact on me. But if he does something stupid with the defense or economy, that hurts me.

What's your choice? (Please stick to the hypothetical and don't argue about whether individual candidates fit the stereotype because that would be tedious.)

Monte Hall Problem

Have you heard of the famous Monte Hall problem in statistics? It’s freaky. And I believe it offers the best evidence that our reality is subjective.

The set up is this. Game show host Monte Hall offers you three doors. One has a car behind it, which will be your prize if you guess that door. The other two doors have goats. In other words, you have a 1/3 chance of getting the car.

You pick a door, but before it is opened to reveal what is behind it, Monte opens one of the doors you did NOT choose, which he knows has a goat behind it. And he asks if you want to stick with your first choice or move to the other closed door. One of those two doors has a car behind it. Monte knows which one but you don’t.

The trick here is that most people assume it makes no difference if they stick with their original choice or move to the other door. They believe the odds are 50% either way, since there are only two choices and you don’t know anything about either choice. But mathematicians say that is wrong. You substantially increase your odds by switching doors.

That is interesting enough on its own. (I’ll give a link later that explains the math of it.) But here is the freaky part. You only improve your odds by switching doors if Monte Hall knows what is behind each door. If he simply got lucky and opened a door with a goat behind it, your odds are unchanged. In other words, your odds are changed by Monte’s knowledge, and your knowledge that Monte has that knowledge.

If reality were objective, statistics wouldn’t be influenced by knowledge. That means your world is either partly created by your mind, or you are a hologram created by some other mind, and there are a few bugs in the software.

Here’s a link to more than you want to know about the Monte Hall problem.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Monty_Hall_problem

You see the same sort of thing happen in the classic double-slit experiment in physics. The result of the experiment changes if the observer has additional information about what slit a photon passes through. Again, knowledge changes the real world. That can’t happen in the world you imagine you are living in. It has to be a bug in the hologram program. At the very least it shows that your reality is subjective.

Here’s more on the double-slit experiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Double-slit_experiment

DMD

Free Will Debunked

Science continues to discover what I have long considered obvious:

http://www.wired.com/science/discoveries/news/2008/04/mind_decision

Good News!!!

Over the weekend I learned that all of my current and future problems have been solved. For example, I was worried about the cost of energy, but scientists recently figured out how to make gasoline out of plants. Problem solved.

http://www.chemistrytimes.com/research/Money_Doesnt_Grow_on_Trees_But_Gasoline_Might.asp

With the energy problem solved, America will soon be able to leave the Middle East alone. Cheap domestic energy will heal our aching economy and end any reason for International terrorism. As a nifty side effect, this plant-to-gas technology has no carbon footprint. So say goodbye to global warming.

Still, I was worried I might someday die of natural causes. Apparently there was no need to worry, as I learned on 60 Minutes. A guy with some pie tins and hot dogs discovered a cure for every type of cancer. It will take a few years to perfect it, but I think I can hold on until then.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2008/04/10/60minutes/main4006951.shtml?source=RSSattr=Health_4006951

Cancer isn’t the only health problem I was worried about. I might need a new heart someday. As luck would have it, I will soon be able to grow a replacement in the lab.

http://www.cnn.com/2008/HEALTH/01/14/rat.heart.ap/index.html

You’re probably thinking you don’t want your body to live a long time if your mind isn’t going to be sharp. No problem. Scientists have an Alzeimers vaccine in the works.

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=463811&in_page_id=1770&ct=5

The other potential problem of living a long time is that the planet will get filled up with too many a-holes. Luckily we are only twenty years away from the development of the first Mars colony. I am already packing my bags.

http://www.wired.com/science/space/news/2005/07/68311

With all of this good news, I am left with only one nagging concern. What if all the good news is either exaggerated or overly optimistic?

Nah.

Proof You Don’t Exist

What does it mean to exist? When we talk about a person existing, we are referring to that person being a material object in the universe.

Concepts are also said to exist. For example, patriotism exists, but you can’t hold it in your hand. For this discussion let’s agree that we are only talking about existence in the material sense.

To be material, that generally means an object has mass. But what is mass? According to Einstein, mass has an equivalence with energy. If we understand energy, we might better understand what mass is. But what is energy?

Energy is defined as a “property of objects.” In other words, it is a concept, such as patriotism, velocity, or honesty. You can’t grab a handful of a concept and put it in your pocket.

So there you have it: To exist, you must have mass. Mass is equivalent to energy. Energy is nothing but a concept. Therefore, you are nothing but a concept, probably in a computer program designed by someone else.

Atheists say God doesn’t exist. I say atheists don’t exist.

Money or Bombs

When was the last time a relatively poor country successfully attacked and conquered a richer country? You history buffs might come up with some examples, but I think they would be strange exceptions.

I think someone smart could develop a theory that a strong economy is as good a national defense as having excellent weapons. Obviously you need a minimum baseline military deterrent. But anything beyond that might be a waste. Your international trading partners would band together to help you out if you are attacked, to protect their own economic interests.

I don’t know how many nukes the United States has pointed toward China, but one would be too many. China isn’t going to attack its biggest customer. And in the unlikely event that some other country attacks China, we’d offer military assistance in a heartbeat. There’s too much money at stake on both sides.

I wonder if you could make all war decisions on a purely economic basis and come out with the answer that protects the most lives as a side effect. For example, the United States had an economic interest in the smaller war in Afghanistan, to prevent more attacks on the homeland. But the war in Iraq was characterized from the start as “you break it, you bought it.” That’s bad economics.

This is another reason I can’t be president. Whenever a military question came up, my first question would be whether it is a positive return on investment. That would be the opposite of good leadership, but it might keep the country safer and richer.

CEO Selection

It seems to me the best way to pick a CEO would be by soliciting bids from applicants. That way you get the cheapest one that is fully qualified. And you should repeat the process every two years whether the CEO is doing a good job or not.

You might find someone equally good who works cheaper. That's capitalism. I find it hard to believe that a major company can't get a perfectly functional CEO for a million dollars a year, or that the one who is willing to work for that amount is worse than the one who needs 40 million to do the same job.

Hiring the lowest bidder CEO can't happen of course, because the boards of directors are comprised of CEOs of other companies, and supporting a bidding process would queer their own deals.

I think it would be interesting if someday a union went on strike and demanded a CEO bidding process as one small part of their agreement. They wouldn't get it, but I'll bet the CEO would be willing to settle the strike quicker to get that issue out of the public's attention.

[Update: The prior version of this post was put up during some computer problems, now resolved. -- Scott]

Building Blocks of the Universe

Ever wonder what the universe is made of?

Your first answer probably goes to things such as atoms and photons and maybe even the undiscovered Higgs boson particle. But what the hell are THOSE things made of? Everything is made of something else, right?

So where does the trail end? (If this question seems familiar, it’s because I wrote about it in my book God’s Debris.)

I think if you could answer that question, even at a high conceptual level, you would have the answer to whether God exists, or whether we are a hologram programmed by someone else, or if all of this is just lucky random combinations.

If you keep drilling down to find out what the smallest things are made of, would you eventually find just one thing that everything is made of, guided by some sort of universal rules of physics? That’s my guess, but only a guess. It feels right.

In a longer post I could explain that such rules of physics would qualify as God. Those rules plus the basic particles eventually created the Bible, the Ten Commandments, the Koran and the rest of the universe as we know it, while working in undeniably mysterious ways. If that isn’t the definition of God, what is?

I know some of you will say, “People wrote the Bible.” But that view would be based on the superstition of free will. The “stuff” of the universe and the rules of physics wrote all of our books. People were just an interim step we happened to label.

I can’t imagine that the universe is made of things that are made of other things and so on to infinity. That seems absurd. If it turned out to be true, I would favor the theory that we are a hologram and our creators programmed the truth of our nature to be forever beyond our grasp. I don’t get to that conclusion by logic. I feel this way because if I wrote the program myself, it’s the sort of thing I would do. The hypothetical programmers are presumably like us in some ways, so they might think the way we do. Therefore, if it looks like someone is yanking your chain, maybe someone is. Maybe someone like you, only real.

I’m watching the construction of the Large Hadron Collider with interest. If it works, we’d possibly unlock the secrets of the universe. If we really are a hologram, look for the collider to get stopped by legal action or an earthquake before the truth of our nature is revealed. Either that or the particles they discover will spell “hello.”

Minimum Standards for President

I want to know three things about a presidential candidate:

1. Who is going to advise you (including your vice president)?
2. What is your proposed budget?
3. Who would you nominate to the Supreme Court?

The current model of president picking is a lot like buying insurance. An insurance company will only give you details about what is covered in the policy AFTER you buy it. WTF?

Presidential campaigns are like that. Why do I have to wait until AFTER a candidate is nominated to find out what sort of goober he or she would pick as a running mate? Why do I have to wait until AFTER the president is elected to find out that the only way to pay for all of the campaign promises is to eliminate education? Why do I have to wait to find out who is in the cabinet, or who would be nominated to the Supreme Court?

I realize all of these choices need to be carefully vetted. I can live with some imperfection in the system if, for example, a proposed cabinet member turns down the job, or has a skeleton in the closet. But knowing the proposed choices would tell me a lot more than I know now.

As I said in an earlier post, any candidate who supports corn ethanol is unqualified to lead the country. By that standard, we don’t have any qualified candidates for president. But the bar should be higher than that. If we don’t know who will advise them, how they plan to pay the bills, and who they would nominate for the Supreme Court, they haven’t given us the minimum information needed to support them.

Tick Tock

Several years ago I bought one of those portable blood pressure monitors. Hypertension runs in the family, so it seemed wise to keep an eye on it. Sure enough, despite my unusually healthy lifestyle, the monitor said I was on the borderline of high blood pressure. Not quite enough to get pills, but enough to keep an eye on it. Damned genetics!

Since then I’ve been feeling like a time bomb. Hypertension is called the “silent killer” and it seemed as if every time I got on the tennis court it could be my last. Whenever I sprinted after a drop shot I would tell myself to enjoy it because I’d be taking a dirt nap by the end of the week. I was dead man walking.

Recently I checked my blood pressure again and was horrified to see that I had shot past the borderline of hypertension and was well within the “prepare your will” category. The end was near. Suddenly food tasted better and I was filled with extra love for others. I put together my bucket list and set up an appointment with my doctor to see how long I had to live.

Yesterday my doctor checked me out and told me that my blood pressure is completely normal and always has been. Those little blood pressure monitors are not accurate. Apparently a vegetarian diet and regular exercise actually works. My cholesterol barely registered.

The news of my perfect health was strangely disappointing. I spent half an hour arguing with my doctor that there must be something pill-worthy about me. But I left empty-handed.

I shared the good news with my parents by e-mail. Mom told me she had once rushed Dad to the hospital on a holiday because their portable blood pressure monitor indicated his blood pressure was off the chart. His turned out to be normal too.

Apparently more than hypertension runs in my family.

Man Has His Way with Picnic Table

My readers know I love a good story about a man getting frisky with an inanimate object. The recent report about a man in Ohio is my favorite so far. I won’t ruin it by giving details. Check out the link, but most important, play the video of the thick-necked policeman describing what happened. It’s a visual you will never get out of your head. Priceless.

http://www.kcci.com/news/15762329/detail.html?rss=des&psp=irresistible

I suppose the reason I like these types of stories is because I like what I call philosophical brevity. This story says more about humanity, and men in particular, than all the books in the Library of Congress.

It even one-ups one of the best and briefest jokes ever conceived:

Q: Why does a dog lick his b*lls.

A: Because he can.

If an alien landed on Earth and said he had two minutes to learn everything about human beings, you could show him the video of the Ohio man, tell the joke about the dog, and still have sixty seconds left to describe women.

People follow their strongest impulses. It’s pure luck of the genetic and environmental draw if your strongest impulses are socially acceptable. The Ohio man’s strongest impulse on several documented occasions involved the hole in the top of his picnic table. I’d call that bad luck. If his table had been stored on the porch BEHIND the house, he could have had the world’s cheapest hobby and everyone would have been happy. And that includes his wife who was tired of dressing up as a picnic table every Saturday night.

[Update: He would have approached the picnic table from the other direction but its stool was in the way.]

Doomsday Cult

A Russian cult emerged from the cave they were hiding in while waiting for the end of the world.

http://www.cbc.ca/world/story/2008/04/01/doomsday-cult.html?ref=rss

Allow me to give you some advice: If you ever decide to join a cult, the first thing you should ask about is the quality of their doomsday cave. A poorly constructed cave could kill you, and that would take most of the fun out of doomsday.

You should also look for a cult leader who has some specificity about the exact doomsday date. Otherwise you’re just sitting in a cave for an extra month for no good reason. I’d want the comet to strike earth a minute after I wiped my feet on the cave’s welcome mat. That way the people who got all of my worldly possessions wouldn’t have time to enjoy them. I wouldn’t feel so sad for someone who, just prior to being annihilated, was saying something like “HA HA HA!!! THAT IDIOT SCOTT GAVE ME HIS Wii!!!” That guy has it coming.

I think it will be hard for the cult members to explain the gaps on their resumes when they try to reenter the job market. “Well, I spent much of 2008 in a cave waiting for doomsday. It turns out that my infallible leader was more of a drooling nutbag than a prophet. Anyway, my point is that you should hire me because I have excellent judgment.”

The big problem with picking a doomsday date is that it so obvious when you are wrong. For most other decisions, you can generally make a case for why your wrongness was really right. For example, you still hear people say Saddam had WMD but he did a good job of hiding them. There’s no way to disprove that sort of assertion. But when the world doesn’t explode on Tuesday, it’s hard to make a case that it did. You have to go with something like “The comet was heading this way, but we prayed it off course. You’re welcome. Give me back my stuff.”

Reportedly, there are a number of other doomsday cults in Russia. I wonder if they have some sort of convention. I can imagine rows of vendor booths for white robes, hair clippers, and canned food. I suppose there would also be a cave realtor or two.

I wonder if the other doomsday cults were sitting in their own caves, listening to the news on their radios and thinking “Those idiots! They totally got the wrong date!” I imagine the various doomsday cults are highly competitive, always trying to recruit the nuts away from the other cults. “Our cave has a flat screen TV, and every Friday is casual.”

Cults are funny.

Minimum Requirement for President

According to Time, ethanol is very bad economics and disastrous for the environment.

http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,1725975,00.html?

The major candidates for President of the United States all support ethanol. If Time has correctly reported the consensus of expert opinions on ethanol, it seems to me that any candidate who supports it would be proved incompetent for leadership.

Is Time’s cover story wrong, or will the next leader of the United States be certifiably incompetent on day one, no matter what time the phone rings?