The Dilbert Blog

Define Evil

Suppose a stranger starts beating you with a stick for no reason other than his own entertainment. He’s got you cornered, and no one is around to help. Luckily for you, he loses his grip on the stick, and drops it. You grab his stick, and without it the stranger can’t stop you from escaping.

Are you evil for ruining his fun and stealing his stick for your own selfish happiness?

It seems like a stupid question, but based on the comments to yesterday’s blog, many of you think the stick stealer is evil and has oppressed the assailant who was minding his own business beating you to death.

For example, several people said cigarette smokers are being oppressed by non-smokers, presumably for banning smoking in public places, and that this oppression qualifies as evil. Clearly the non-smokers are taking away rights from smokers, for their own selfish purposes, just like the guy who stole the stick. But is protecting your health evil?

Even if you believe that exposure to second-hand smoke isn’t dangerous, banning it for health reasons wouldn’t be evil, just scientifically unjustified. To qualify as evil, I think you need some evil intent.

Polygamy was a good answer to yesterday’s question. The majority does oppress the minority’s right to multiple spouses. One could argue that given the roughly equal number of young men and women, polygamy denies many men the option of marriage and reproduction. So banning it increases fairness in society. Even if the reasons for banning polygamy seem ridiculous to you, the net effect on society is more fairness. That doesn’t seem evil to me.

Atheists were often mentioned as a minority that is oppressed by the majority. But that oppression is not government sponsored, so it doesn’t count in the context of my question about setting public policy by majority opinion.

Gay marriage was mentioned often. The majority of Americans support gay civil unions, with all the rights of marriage. But the majority is against calling it marriage. To many of you, that seems evil.

To the majority of Americans, the issue boils down to “Please don’t take our special word for God’s holy bond between a man and a woman.” Religions are supposed to discriminate between what they consider right and wrong. To deny that right, within reason, is to deny freedom of religion.

Personally, I favor gay marriage because I think the law should be gender neutral whenever it is practical. And I’m not superstitious; to me, a word is just a word. But is it evil for the majority to protect certain combinations of letters that have deep meaning to them? It seems more silly than evil.

I understand how gays would gain something intangible and important by use of the word marriage. But if the majority of religious people feel they would be losing something just as important to them, then letting the majority win is the fairest solution for society, and therefore not evil.

I might be missing the nuances of the gay marriage debate. If so, let me know what I’m missing.

Keep an eye on the comment count today. This should be interesting.

Majority Rule

In a recent post I said that if elected president I would support the majority view for social issues. Readers jumped all over that as a recipe for oppressing minorities.

Would that oppression happen?

Most Americans are not gay, but the majority supports gay rights. Most Americans don’t want to kill themselves, but the majority favors legal euthanasia. Most Americans don’t use drugs, but still favor legalizing or decriminalizing drugs. Most Americans are religious, but favor the separation of church and state.

Leading contenders for the job of president of the United States include a woman, an African-American, and a Mormon. It took a few hundred years, but the country has finally wised up to the fact that we’re all minorities in some way or form.

Help me think through this question by giving me some CURRENT examples in which the majority in the United States would suppress a particular minority in some way that is clearly evil.

I’m willing to change my mind on this issue if you have some good examples where majority rule in the modern United States would be evil. Seriously. But the only oppression that comes to mind for me involves one minority in the United States (usually a religious minority) using the government to oppress other minorities (for example gays).

So when would the majority choose to oppress a minority? Exclude in your examples anything involving economics or national defense. Those areas would be guided by experts in my hypothetical administration.

She Amazed Me – the Music Video

Several blog posts ago, I observed that many popular songs have nonsense lyrics. So I asked readers to submit random lyrics that could be strung together to create a hit song that means absolutely nothing.

German band RIVO DREI took it one step further by putting the best random lyrics together, writing the music, and performing it.

Now the final piece falls into place. Dilbert Blog reader Jem8472, who wishes to be otherwise anonymous, has created the music video and posted it to youtube.

http://uk.youtube.com/watch?v=TiH9dbAsAp0

The funniest thing about this whole exercise is that it works. You can convince yourself the lyrics mean something to someone, they sound great put to music, and the music video is completely entertaining.

If you know any musicians, send them a copy so they can see how it is done.

How to Get Elected President

I wouldn’t want to be president. I worry enough about being assassinated for what I write on this blog. There’s no point in making it worse. But that doesn’t stop me from thinking about how I would run my campaign.

If I ran for president, I’d have to get past the country’s distaste for atheists. That’s a big problem. I would handle it by manipulating the media with a sound bite so catchy the pundits would have no choice but to repeat it until it started to sound sensible. I’d hold a press conference and say that ONLY an atheist should be president, in the same way you want a eunuch to guard your harem. (That’s the sound bite. It’s like catnip for pundits.)

I would suggest that a truly religious president might try to convert your children to his religion, either overtly or by example. In this election alone, you have a Mormon, a Baptist or two, and if Bloomberg enters, a Jew. Moreover, a scary percentage of the South believes Obama is a Muslim. I’d play the fear card.

After my eunuch sound bite got everyone’s attention, I would soften the message to “Only an atheist can guarantee religious freedom for all by favoring none.” That argument makes no sense whatsoever, but it would be persuasive nonetheless.

Next, I would promise to maintain all social benefits for anyone who is already over sixty. That would guarantee me the senior citizen vote. Obviously it is not a campaign promise I would have much chance of keeping, but that’s a problem for later. And I would portray all the other candidates as a risk to senior citizens.

Younger voters might have a problem with my complete lack of political experience. I would deal with that by announcing in advance my picks for cabinet, Vice President, Chief of Staff, and other key positions. I would simply pick the most popular and/or qualified people in the world, such as Oprah, Colin Powell, and Warren Buffet. All of those people would immediately denounce me and deny interest in the jobs, obviously. But I would tell the voters they are only saying that because I am not yet the president. When the president asks someone to serve the country, they tend to say yes. And if any of them do eventually say no, for now they are a good example of who I would pick for those sorts of jobs. I would point out that the other candidates will be appointing worthless political cronies, as always.

I would promise that my approach to social issues would mirror the majority opinion. Unlike the other candidates, I would not try to hold your family hostage to my personal views. I would argue that a president’s role in social issues is to guarantee the minority doesn’t oppress the majority, not to impose my own biases. If someone has a pet social issue, I would tell them to convince the majority of the country, not me.

For international issues, I would promise to follow the advice of the most qualified experts in each field. And I would dismiss any specific policy questions as “hypothetical questions” that only an idiot would answer. I would portray the other candidates as either liars or reckless for not naming their future advisors in advance, and not committing to listening to people who know more than they do.

Do I have your vote?

Scientists Disprove Evolution

That got your attention, didn’t it?

Scientists haven’t disproved evolution. But I found it interesting that some cosmologists are putting a lot of effort into doing just that, albeit indirectly.

To be fair, in this context, the cosmologists can’t prove a negative. They can’t demonstrate that evolution didn’t happen. They can only show that evolution is infinitely unlikely compared to an alternative explanation.

That potentially better explanation, subject to much dispute, is the idea that your existence and consciousness is far more likely to be a free-floating brain created instantly by random fluctuations of the universe, and imbued with false memories of your past.

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/01/15/science/15brain.html?_r=1&oref=slogin

I don’t think the free-floating brain theory will ever replace the standard concept of time or evolution. But it’s fascinating that scientists are working on it.

So here is my question of the day for people who accept evolution as a fact: If cosmologists someday reached a consensus that free-floating brains are infinitely more likely than our current notion of reality, would you agree with the following statement:

“The theory of evolution is false.”

Your Job When You Grow Up

When I was a kid growing up in a small town, and I imagined my future, I could think of maybe fifty types of careers. They were all the obvious ones: lawyer, doctor, veterinarian, banker, store clerk, mailman, cartoonist, etc.

I always wonder how different the world would be if kids knew there are a million jobs in the world to choose from, and not just fifty. Would kids start early to prepare for careers as videographers or dolphin trainers if they knew how cool those jobs were?

I was thinking of this recently while working with a Dilbert licensee. They make fluorescent light diffusers for your office ceiling, with images such as the sky with clouds, or Dilbert characters looking down at your cube. Very cool: www.skyscapes.biz

So I imagine 5-year old Timmy, when asked what he wants to do for a career, answering “When I grow up, I want to make fluorescent light diffusers with Dilbert characters. They are the perfect item for adding some visual relief to drab cubicle farms.”

Timmy would die a virgin.

If you get one of these Skyscapes, let me know how you use it in your office. Was it a reward for an employee of the month, a way to make the break room livelier, or an easier way to show people where the printer is. I’ll even post your picture in this blog as you pose beneath the Skyscape. And if you are getting paid while you do it, that’s another job you didn’t imagine when you were five.

The Hit Song You Wrote

The other day I asked you to contribute nonsense lyrics that could be combined into a hit song, under the theory that many hit songs have nonsense lyrics, so writing them can’t be that hard.

A band in Germany, called RIVO DREI (http://www.rivodrei.de/en/) picked out the best of your nonsense lyrics and strung them together to create an actual song that is a sure hit. The random lyrics sound amazingly like they might mean something deep if only you concentrated a little harder. And it’s catchy. These guys are brilliant, on a variety of levels, including marketing, obviously.

Here’s a link to the song, assuming the server doesn’t have traffic issues. The lyrics are pasted below.

http://www.rivodrei.de/musik/RivoDreiSheAmazedMe.mp3

She Amazed Me
------------------------

She had runaway eyes and marshmallow kittens.
My heart heard a dream like ten thousand mittens.

A tear in her hand
She spread deja-vu all across the land.

br:
She spinned round and round with a frog in her ear
Whispering fountains and rocks she couldn't hear

ch:
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.

Too many times I have seen the thunder
Flashes of sound, soul-rending sunder

A letter colored blue...
Now the nine bells are ringin' and singin' it too

br:
She spinned round and round with a frog in her ear
Whispering fountains and rocks she couldn't hear

ch:
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.

br:
Little did she know they were coming too soon,
Both those kittens ran off to the moon

ch:
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.
Oh, she amazed me!
With her love, she tazed me.
Oh, she amazed me!
With splendid reprisal, she took to the sky.
My tear drops asunder. No shadow. No cry.
Apple core ostriches dancing like fairies.
And it escapes me
how she outer spaced me.

Death by Media

In 1997 The Dilbert Future was published. One of my predictions was that the media would start killing celebrities just to generate new sensational headlines. I based this prediction on three inescapable truths:

1. The media can influence people’s actions
2. Death is the most interesting form of news
3. The news business is a capitalist enterprise

Therefore, it makes sense that the media would eventually start influencing the deaths of people who are in some way fascinating. There’s a huge financial incentive to do so.

An argument can be made that the media killed Princess Diana, indirectly, by influencing the reckless actions that led to her demise. That happened soon after my prediction was published. Lots of people wrote to tell me how spooky it was. Britney Spears is probably next.

Arguably, Saddam Hussein was a celebrity of sort, along with his sons. One view is that the government of the United States ordered the military to kill all three of them, and used the media as a tool to do it. Another way to look at it is that the media used the government to kill three celebrities. It wouldn’t have happened without the media’s view on WMDs and the national support it generated for the war.

While the media did not originate the idea of war in Iraq, the government is full of people with ideas on killing other people, and they don’t all happen. It is the media who selects from among the many ideas and makes some reality. If the media had ignored the calls for war with Iraq, or treated the WMD situation as crazy alarmist talk, the war in Iraq wouldn’t have happened. But war is big money for the media, especially with a celebrity dictator in the mix, so there was a tremendous incentive to help it along.

By way of contrast, the United States didn’t send the military to Rwanda to stop genocide. Some think racism was the reason. Others say the lack of oil was the reason. Maybe the real reason is that you can’t name a single famous person in Rwanda. If O.J. Simpson got elected king of Rwanda, and trouble broke out, the media would make it a story, and the government would be influenced by the public to order the military to kill O.J.

When I read stories of Russia’s Putin controlling the media in his country, I ask myself how that compares to my country. On one hand, control of the media guarantees that the government will get away with things it shouldn’t get away with. On the other hand, it will keep the Russian media from pushing Russia into war. Is that a good trade-off?

My regular readers know I like to toss out provocative ideas and see what happens. It’s a complicated world, and no one theory explains everything people do. But it is worth asking whether the policies in a free country favor directions that would lead to a celebrity death.

Dilbert Widget Sneak Peak!

To underscore your special status as readers of The Dilbert Blog, here’s a sneak peak at the totally free and ridiculously awesome Dilbert Widget (See the post below). You can’t see this anywhere else until the end of the month.

What’s a widget?

A widget is a little application you can easily stick to your own blog page, including Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, iGoogle, TypePad, Blogger, and lots more. Think of it as a little window that is programmed to do a variety of cool things.

The Dilbert Widget allows you to see the daily Dilbert comic, for free, and ***IN COLOR FOR THE FIRST TIME***, on your own page. You can also see the Dilbert archive all the way back to January 2005, with the entire archive coming online in batches. All free, which is your favorite price.

TEST IT

I need your help testing this puppy before the larger masses get their mitts on it. Break it if you can.

SHARE

Please grab it for your own page, e-mail it to friends, and share like crazy. It is specifically designed for sharing. Part of what we want to test is how easily it can be shared with friends.

VOTE

For those of you who have opinions, and you know who you are, the Dilbert Widget lets you rank each Dilbert comic. The votes are tabulated in real time, so you can find out how odd you are compared to normal people. This might surprise you.

GRAB IT

To get the widget, simply click the “Grab It” button on the widget you see below. Or to shop for a different size, go to http://widget.dilbert.com and pick from a wider selection.

FAQ

Here are some answers to the questions I expect:

1. The daily comics on Dilbert.com will eventually be in color too.

2. Later this year we’ll have a widget that shows all three panels at once. The current panel-by-panel viewing widgets are more compatible with most web pages.

3. The entire Dilbert archive will be available via the Dilbert Widget eventually. We’re working on it in batches.

What’s a widget?

A widget is a little application you can easily stick to your own blog page, including Myspace, Friendster, Facebook, iGoogle, TypePad, Blogger, and lots more. Think of it as a little window that is programmed to do a variety of cool things.

The Dilbert Widget allows you to see the daily Dilbert comic, for free, and ***IN COLOR FOR THE FIRST TIME***, on your own page. You can also see the Dilbert archive all the way back to January 2005, with the entire archive coming online in batches. All free, which is your favorite price.

TEST IT

I need your help testing this puppy before the larger masses get their mitts on it. Break it if you can.

SHARE

Please grab it for your own page, e-mail it to friends, and share like crazy. It is specifically designed for sharing. Part of what we want to test is how easily it can be shared with friends.

VOTE

For those of you who have opinions, and you know who you are, the Dilbert Widget lets you rank each Dilbert comic. The votes are tabulated in real time, so you can find out how odd you are compared to normal people. This might surprise you.

GRAB IT

To get the widget, simply click the “Grab It” button on the widget you see below. Or to shop for a different size, go to http://widget.dilbert.com and pick from a wider selection.

FAQ

Here are some answers to the questions I expect:

1. The daily comics on Dilbert.com will eventually be in color too.

2. Later this year we’ll have a widget that shows all three panels at once. The current panel-by-panel viewing widgets are more compatible with most web pages.

3. The entire Dilbert archive will be available via the Dilbert Widget eventually. We’re working on it in batches.

Dilbert Widget Sneak Peek!

Read the post below for details.