Scott Adams's Blog, page 363

Measuring Fairness

I think we all agree that men and women have legitimate concerns about how they are treated by the legal system and the job market. And there are a variety of other concerns about dignity, health, safety, and government funding that get added to the mix. The result is that both men and women have baskets of concerns about how their gender is treated, and the baskets are different.

So who has a bigger basket of concerns?

In a perfect world, it shouldn't matter who has the biggest basket of issues because all of the items in each basket are worthy of our attention, including but not limited to finding out if the data really says what you think it says. But in our imperfect world, advocacy is about marketing, and packaging, and appearance. And the most powerful way to package some types of issues is by gender, especially if the statistics appear to line up that way. If you were to combine the Men's Rights issues and Women's Rights issues into one large basket, you couldn't even name it. It's hard to attract attention and resources to combat the institutionalized scourge of miscellaneous. And if you did get attention for your Miscellaneous Rights movement, how would you rank the individual issues so the most important ones get attention first?

I suppose things were clearer in the old days when you had an issue such as a women's right to vote. It was a yes/no question with clear lines of victimhood and a specific fix. It made perfect sense to view this as a gender issue. But what happens if you start seeing the world primarily through the filter of gender?

Take the question of equal pay for equal work. If you see it as a gender issue, aren't you leaving out a few dimensions that are also important? I saw an interview the other day with the woman who is the lead plaintiff for the class action suit against WalMart. Her complaint is that WalMart discriminated against her for being a woman. The thing that fascinated me is that somehow she managed to discern that the discrimination she experienced was because of her gender and not the fact that she's also obese, unattractive, and African-American. Based on the interview, she also seems to have a sketchy command of grammar. I couldn't judge her height or personality, but those are two more factors that have a big impact on career advancement.

I make this observation as a short, hair-challenged, nearsighted, unattractive, over-the-hill individual who was pushed out of two different careers (banking and the phone company) explicitly for being male and white. In my case, my bosses explained it to me directly, as in "You're our most qualified candidate for promotion, but we can't promote a white male in the foreseeable future." This happened in the context of finishing my MBA at night so I could overcome discrimination against me based on the reputation of my school. I'm not complaining. It's just context. We live in a world with so many triggers for bias that it seems simplistic to divide things along gender lines.

So I propose a simple test to determine if you, individually, are a victim of gender unfairness. If a genie gave you the chance to magically switch your gender, and become a member of the other sex, would you do it? And let's say the new you would be about the same as now on the scale of attractiveness, intelligence, ethnicity, circumstance, and health. The only real change would be gender. Do you take the offer?

If your answer is no, then maybe fairness isn't what you really want. Maybe what you want is all the advantages you have now plus the good stuff that other people have. I totally understand. I want the same thing.

I apologize to anyone who was offended by this post.

Life and Comics

A reader sent me this note today:

 

"The day after you published this strip the UK free newspaper Metro published this."

And another pointed to this.

 

And more intersection of comics and life today: I coined the word frienditute in this comic in December. Now a website is poised to monetize the concept.

 

 

Salon Unibators

Over at Salon.com, the poorly informed are in full unibation mode over their shared hallucinations of my Men's Rights post. I trotted over to set things right, intending to have my usual fun, but their registration system is either broken or for some other reason failing to send me an email to finish the process. (No, it's not in my spam.)

If any of you have a Salon account, could you do me a favor and head over to the articles by these binarian unibators and provide a link to my explanation of the Men's Rights controversy in its proper context? I think it would be funny.

Unibator1

Unibator2

Unibator3


The link to my explanation is at: http://dilbert.com/blog/entry/im_a_what/

Thanks!

New Words Needed

There's no derogatory label for people who label others. This creates an imbalance in the linguistic arsenal. Example:

    Person 1: "If you don't watch sports, you're a racist."

    Person 2: "Oh yeah? Well, you're...a...person who assigns labels that are not sensible!"

See what I mean? It's like being in a stick fight and not having a stick. But we can fix that by concocting a...wait for it...label for labelers. I suggest that such a person be called a labelass. Example:

Person 1: "If you don't watch sports, you're a racist."

Person 2: "You're a labelass."

Person 1: "What just happened here?"

It will take some work to make labelass a real word and imbue it with the king-of-kings argumentative superpower it needs. Let's start that journey by giving it a proper definition.

                Labelass: A special kind of idiot who uses labels as a substitute for comprehension.

We also need a name for people who believes that everyone who has a different point of view has the same opinion as everyone else who also has a different point of view. Example:

Person 1: "I don't think we should bomb Elbonia just because someone said they have a giant slingshot."

Person 2: "Typical liberal."

Let's call a person who believes there are only two viewpoints for every topic a binarian. And don't worry that using the word will make you a labelass. A labelass is one who uses a label as a substitute for comprehension. If someone is indeed being a total binarian, the label fits.

                Binarian: A special kind of idiot who believes that all people who hold a different view
                                  from oneself have the same views as each other.

And we need a new word for people who misunderstand another person's point of view and proceed to debate that misunderstanding as if it were the real point of view. I think we should call that person a masturdebator.

                 Masturdebator: One who takes pleasure in furiously debating viewpoints that only
                                                exist in the imagination.

Example:

Person 1: "It's clear from your statement about this year's corn crop that you deny the Holocaust."

Person 2: "What do you do with the other hand, masturdebator?"

I'm a What?

This weekend the top twitter meme in the solar system, at least for a few hours, involved Feminist blogs calling me an ignorant, misogynist asshole. Meanwhile, over on the Men's Rights blogs, I'm being called a wussy, asshole, douche bag.

There is still some debate on those sites as to whether Dilbert has never been funny or it used to be funny and now it isn't. I hope someone gets all of this sorted out before I write an autobiography. These are exactly the kind of facts I need to include.

Regular readers of this blog already know what the commotion is about. I posted, and later removed, a piece that mocked the Men's Rights Movement.

I'm embarrassed to admit it, but I was enjoying all of the negative attention on Twitter and wondered how I could keep it going. So I left some comments on several Feminist blogs, mostly questioning the reading comprehension of people who believed I had insulted them. That kept things frothy for about a day. Now things are starting to settle down. It's time for some DMD.

First, some background. A few weeks ago I asked readers of this blog to suggest a topic they would like to see me write about. The topic that got the most up votes, by a landslide, was something called Men's Rights. Obviously the fix was in. Activists had mobilized their minions to trick me into giving their cause some free publicity. In retrospect, the Men's Rights activists probably should have done some homework on me before hatching this scheme.

I'll reprint the original offending post at the end of this post. This would be a good time to skip down and read it before we continue. I'll wait.

Waiting....waiting...waiting...

Okay, you're back. As you can see, I thought it would be funny to embrace the Men's Rights viewpoint in the beginning of the piece and get those guys all lathered up before dismissing their entire membership as a "bunch of pussies." To be fair, they have some gripes worthy of discussion, especially on legal issues. But I'm been experiencing a wicked case of "whiner fatigue." It feels as if everyone in the world is whining about one damn thing or another.  In normal times, I can tune it out. But lately the backdrop has been world class problems on the order of financial meltdowns, tsunamis, nuclear radiation, and bloody revolutions. THOSE are problems. Your thing: Not so much.

So why'd I pull down the post? That question is more interesting than you might think. And there's a fascinating lesson in all of this about the power of context.

The short answer is that I write material for a specific sort of audience. And when the piece on Men's Rights drew too much attention from outside my normal reading circle, it changed the meaning. Communication becomes distorted when you take it out of context, even if you don't change a word of the text. I image that you are dubious about this. It's hard to believe this sort of thing if you don't write for a living and see how often it happens. I'll explain.

Regular readers of my blog know that the goal of my writing is to be interesting and nothing else. I'm not trying to change anyone's opinion, largely because I don't believe humans can be influenced by exposure to better arguments, even if I had some. But I do think people benefit by exposure to ideas that are different from whatever they are hearing, even when the ideas are worse. That's my niche: something different. That approach springs from my observation that brains are like investment portfolios, where diversification is generally a good strategy. I'm not trying to move you to my point of view; I'm trying to add diversity to your portfolio of thoughts. In the short term, I hope it's stimulating enough to be entertaining. Long term, the best ideas probably come from people who have the broadest exposure to different views.

Contrast my style of blogging to the most common styles, which include advocacy for some interest group or another, punditry, advice, and information. Now imagine moving my writing from the context of this blog to the context of an advocacy blog. You can see the problem. Men thought I was attacking men, and women thought I was attacking women. The message changed when the context changed. I saw that developing, so I took down the post.

Yes, I do know that nothing can be deleted from the Internet. Yes, I knew that taking down the post would increase curiosity about it. This isn't my first rodeo. It's not even the first time I've taken down a post and others reposted it. But I didn't anticipate how much the context would change when it got reposted on Feminist websites and Men's Rights sites. I should have.

A few people appreciated the meta-joke of removing the post.  If you didn't get it, read the deleted post, consider the feminist backlash, then think about the fact that I took down my post and ran away.

And to those of you who triumphantly scrounged up a copy of the deleted piece from Google's cache, republished it, and crowed that I don't understand how the Internet worked, I would politely suggest that perhaps I do.

But I didn't take down the piece just because I thought doing so would be funny, or because I wanted attention. Those were bonuses. The main reason is that when a lot of drive-by readers saw the piece, and they didn't know the context of this blog, it changed the message of the post to something unintended. As a writer, unintended messages are unbearable.

I confess that I misjudged the degree of excitement this would generate. Indeed, the big fuss didn't happen for over three weeks. I also didn't predict that critics would reprint the post one component at a time so they could dissect it, which has the fascinating effect of changing the humorous tone to something hideous. Humor requires flow and timing. A frog isn't much of a frog after you dissect it.

Then the secondary effect kicked in, like the famous game of telephone. The second wave of critics got their meaning partly from the dissected post and partly by reading the wildly misleading paraphrasing of other critics. By this point the thing gained a whole new meaning.

Next came the labeling. Once the piece had been reprinted on feminist blogs, the "with us or against us" instinct took over. I clearly wasn't supporting every element of the Feminist movement, and therefore I was presumed an enemy and labeled a misogynist. I was also labeled an asshole, which I have come to understand is a synonym for male.

Emotions about the piece were running high. When humans get emotional (yes, including men), our critical thinking skills shut down. In this case, the original post on Men's Rights became literally incomprehensible to anyone who had a dog in the fight.

I know from experience that trying to clarify my opinion always turns into "He's trying to backpedal because we caught him! Ha!" People don't change opinions just because new information comes in. They interpret the new information as confirmation of their existing opinion.

But perhaps I can summarize my viewpoint so you can understand why I'm such a misogynist asshole douche bag. Here's my view in brief:

You can't expect to have a rational discussion on any topic that has an emotional charge. Emotion pushes out reason. That is true for all humans, including children, men, women, and people in every range of mental ability. The path of least resistance is to walk away from that sort of fight. Men generally prefer the path of least resistance. The exception is when men irrationally debate with other men. That's a type of sport. No one expects opinions to be changed as a result.

Are women more emotional than men? I'm not sure how you measure that sort of thing. On the emotional scoreboard, does one person's anger equal another person's excitement?  All I know for sure is that the Men's Rights group I poked with a stick has some irritable dudes.

To the best of my knowledge, no one who understood the original post and its context was offended by it. But to the women who were offended by their own or someone else's interpretation of what I wrote, I apologize. To the men who were offended by my mocking of Men's Rights, you're still a big bunch of pussies. But your criticisms of the legal system are worthy of attention. Even Feminists agree on that point.

Thank you for making my week so interesting.

---------- original post reprinted below -------------

Men’s Rights

The topic my readers most want me to address is something called men’s rights. (See previous post.) This is a surprisingly good topic. It’s dangerous. It’s relevant. It isn’t overdone. And apparently you care.

Let’s start with the laundry list.

According to my readers, examples of unfair treatment of men include many elements of the legal system, the military draft in some cases, the lower life expectancies of men, the higher suicide rates for men, circumcision, and the growing number of government agencies that are primarily for women.

You might add to this list the entire area of manners. We take for granted that men should hold doors for women, and women should be served first in restaurants. Can you even imagine that situation in reverse?

Generally speaking, society discourages male behavior whereas female behavior is celebrated. Exceptions are the fields of sports, humor, and war. Men are allowed to do what they want in those areas.

Add to our list of inequities the fact that women have overtaken men in college attendance. If the situation were reversed it would be considered a national emergency.

How about the higher rates for car insurance that young men pay compared to young women? Statistics support this inequity, but I don’t think anyone believes the situation would be legal if women were charged more for car insurance, no matter what the statistics said.

Women will counter with their own list of wrongs, starting with the well-known statistic that women earn only 80 cents on the dollar, on average, compared to what men earn for the same jobs. My readers will argue that if any two groups of people act differently, on average, one group is likely to get better results. On average, men negotiate pay differently and approach risk differently than women.

Women will point out that few females are in top management jobs. Men will argue that if you ask a sample group of young men and young women if they would be willing to take the personal sacrifices needed to someday achieve such power, men are far more likely to say yes. In my personal non-scientific polling, men are about ten times more likely than women to trade family time for the highest level of career success.

Now I would like to speak directly to my male readers who feel unjustly treated by the widespread suppression of men’s rights:

Get over it, you bunch of pussies.

The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles.

How many times do we men suppress our natural instincts for sex and aggression just to get something better in the long run? It’s called a strategy. Sometimes you sacrifice a pawn to nail the queen. If you’re still crying about your pawn when you’re having your way with the queen, there’s something wrong with you and it isn’t men’s rights.

Fairness is an illusion. It’s unobtainable in the real world. I’m happy that I can open jars with my bare hands. I like being able to lift heavy objects. And I don’t mind that women get served first in restaurants because I don’t like staring at food that I can’t yet eat.

If you’re feeling unfairly treated because women outlive men, try visiting an Assisted Living facility and see how delighted the old ladies are about the extra ten years of pushing the walker around.  It makes dying look like a bargain.

I don’t like the fact that the legal system treats men more harshly than women. But part of being male is the automatic feeling of team. If someone on the team screws up, we all take the hit. Don’t kid yourself that men haven’t earned some harsh treatment from the legal system. On the plus side, if I’m trapped in a burning car someday, a man will be the one pulling me out. It’s a package deal. I like being on my team.

I realize I might take some heat for lumping women, children and the mentally handicapped in the same group. So I want to be perfectly clear. I’m not saying women are similar to either group. I’m saying that a man’s best strategy for dealing with each group is disturbingly similar. If he’s smart, he takes the path of least resistance most of the time, which involves considering the emotional realities of other people.  A man only digs in for a good fight on the few issues that matter to him, and for which he has some chance of winning. This is a strategy that men are uniquely suited for because, on average, we genuinely don’t care about 90% of what is happening around us.

I just did a little test to see if I knew what pajama bottoms I was wearing without looking. I failed.

 

 

Principled or Stupid

Suppose you're driving across a long stretch of desert and notice that your gas tank is nearly empty. A sign says, "Last gas for 100 miles." Unfortunately, the brand of gas is associated with an oil company that you consider to be unethical weasels. You have vowed to boycott their products. On principle, you drive past the gas station, run out of gas, and eventually die in the desert.

Question: Were you principled or stupid?

I ask this question because I worry that stupidity and principle are the same thing with different labels. That's a big problem because labels are the high-level symbolic programming language for humans. In effect, we have this logic:

If smart then go

If stupid then stop

Our environment is complicated, so in order to navigate it quickly, we evaluate familiar options once and then label them smart or stupid. Thereafter, we can automatically do the smart thing without having to rethink the situation. For example, sometime in your past you evaluated the idea of eating dirt and decided the option was stupid. Once labeled, you no longer need to think about it. You're correctly programmed. When you encounter dirt at the same time you're hungry, your brain's computing power can be directed toward finding food instead of reevaluating the dirt-eating option.

Unfortunately, smart and stupid aren't the only labels our brain processes. We often encounter a third label called principle.  A principle is, by definition, a rule of conduct that is independent of reason. A principle doesn't consider the advantages of its alternatives. It doesn't consider new information, or differences in context. If you ignore the moral and superstitious elements of principle, as any machine would, then principle is, in effect, the same thing as stupid. In programming terms:

Principle = stupid

If principle then go

In your daily life, your programming generally ignores principle. No one would choose dying in the desert over buying gas from an unloved oil company. But in the world of politics, principle is the dominant label. When President Obama framed the no-fly zone in Libya as a humanitarian principle, it instantly programmed many of his fellow citizens to support it. I don't believe the president ever offered a cost estimate or described other options for those military and financial resources.

Principle = go

The military action in Libya might turn out well. For a reasonable investment, NATO and friends might hasten the end of an unpredictable dictator and embolden other democratic revolutions in the region. If so, America's strategic interests could be served.

On the other hand, democracy might be the step that happens before the countries in that region vote to form a Muslim caliphate. This sort of thing is unpredictable. All I know for sure is that I wouldn't accept a car ride across the desert with anyone who thinks we should bomb Libya based on a humanitarian principle.

Libya

Remind me again why we're bombing Libya? Let's run through the possibilities.

Humanitarian Reasons: No one believes this is the most effective way to save lives in other countries, unless Libyan lives are somehow more valuable than, for example, other African lives.  The price for missiles alone on the first day of attacks is estimated at $100 million. For that amount of money we could buy a lot of water purifiers, food, and vaccinations. When the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation starts attacking Libya, I'll believe that bombing is a good humanitarian investment.

Getting rid of a Dangerous Dictator: Isn't Libya the country that renounced nuclear weapons and apparently meant it? Gaddafi's Western-influenced son, who doesn't seem crazy, has apparently taken an increasingly active role in government. That was a good sign for sane leadership in the future. And compared to other Muslim countries in the neighborhood, Libya is relatively good on women's rights.

Supporting Democratic Movements: Sounds good in principle, but do the member states of the Arab League, who originally supported the military action, understand that they're next? That doesn't pass the sniff test.

Oil: You can never rule out oil as a motive for war. But if the military was doing the bidding of the oil companies, we'd be attacking Saudi Arabia.

Terrorism: You don't reduce terrorism by bombing a Muslim country that didn't start a fight with you.

My theory is that the military action in Libya is the first phase of war with Iran. It sends a signal to the young people in Iran that if they organize a popular uprising against their own regime, they will get military support of the same sort they are seeing in Libya. You might argue that we're sending that same message to every dictator in the region. But remember that the Arab League supported military action in Libya, and that group includes a lot of dictators. Iran is obviously not part of the Arab League, given that being Arab is sort of a requirement for the club. My conclusion is that the no-fly zone in Libya is intended as a message for the young people in Iran. The world has a far bigger strategic interest in Iran than Libya.

Here I remind you that cartoonists don't know much about world affairs. You'll see more insightful ideas in the comments below. I'm just getting the ball rolling.

Sleep Tip

Here's tip for falling asleep. I don't think you'll see it anywhere else. It goes like this: Don't think words.

By that I mean don't imagine conversations that you plan to have, and don't replay in your head conversations you've had.

It's impossible to clear your mind of all thoughts. But I find it somewhat easy to switch off the language center of my brain. What happens after that is a flow of images, starting with ones that make some sense to my current life, quickly followed by randomness, then sleep. It usually takes less than a minute.

Let's say something is bugging you, or fascinating you, and the thought is keeping you awake. I'll bet that in those situations you're obsessed with the verbal elements of your problem. You're imagining what you will say to someone, or how you will explain yourself, or maybe what words someone else chose when annoying you.  To fall sleep, don't abandon the troublesome topic, because you probably can't. Just picture the situation in images alone. That will satisfy the part of you that can't let go of the problem while putting you on the sleep trajectory.

To be fair, I have no idea if this method will work for you. It's just something I discovered that works for me.

My wife hates my ability to sleep just about anywhere. Yesterday I dropped off for a few minutes during the new movie Paul. I would have awakened in ten minutes on my own, refreshed and ready to drive home. But that plan went off the rails when Shelly decided it would be funny to slap me in the chest and see what I would do if I woke up suddenly to a loud action sequence in the movie. I'm told it was hilarious.

Anyway, if you try my sleep tip, let me know if it works for you.

 

The Awesomeness of Convenience

One of my fascinations in life is watching how a small change in convenience for a routine transaction transforms it into something entirely new. Recently I went to my local ATM at Wells Fargo and noticed a prominent new option. I could donate money from my checking account to the American Red Cross for the benefit of Japan's earthquake victims. All I needed to do was press a button, enter my amount, and done. I was already standing in front of the ATM. I had already entered my PIN number. It couldn't have been easier. And so I gave.

There are lots of ways to donate money. Texting is easy, but still a level of convenience away from the ATM method. Web sites require wrestling with your credit card. I'll bet the ATM method succeeds at a higher rate than any charity process every conceived, thanks to its ease of use and the context in which it puts the user.

When you withdraw cash from an ATM, you're often thinking of some frivolous use for your money. Your serious expenses are generally paid by checks, electronic transfers, and credit cards. It's hard to withdraw your drinking money while ignoring the call to feed a starving Japanese family.

The transformative part of this ATM-giving concept goes beyond its persuasiveness. I actually came away from it with a positive feeling for my bank. The cynic in me knows that corporations do this sort of thing to improve their image. But they nailed the interface so well that I actually enjoyed giving my money to the cause. My bank literally turned a small sacrifice into a small pleasure. Nicely done.

(Disclosure: I indirectly own some Wells Fargo stock.)

Happiness Engineering

It occurred to me recently that I have developed quite a few tricks for engineering my own happiness. Allow me to share a few. Some are more obvious than others.

Food - Observe your own mood, and that of others, in the context of how recently they have eaten. If there's a hothead in your circle, notice that his anger is greatest before meals, when hunger is highest, and rarely does he explode during meals or just after. When you feel agitated, try eating some carbs. They're like a miracle drug. I suspect that anger is evolution's way of telling you to go kill something so you can eat.

Exercise - When I've exercised in the past day, almost nothing bothers me. And I sleep like a pile of moss. If you think of exercise in its usual way, as one component of health, or as a way to lose weight, it's easy to skip your hour at the gym. If you think of it as the difference between a good day and a bad day, it's easier to make it a priority.

Goals - I make it a habit to have at least one project brewing at all times that has a non-zero chance of changing the planet, or making a billion dollars, or both.  Creating Dilbert was just one out of several dozen projects of that nature. As I write this, I have plans for Dilbert.com that would uncap its potential while helping a number of other people at the same time. That's a good feeling to wake up to. I've also contracted with an Indian company to turn one of my ideas into a website prototype that could change the nature of advertising. Or not. Probably not. The point is that it feels good to know it's there. When that project doesn't work, I'll put another dream into the slot. (I don't put much time or money into the long shots.)

Meaning - If you're young and you haven't yet achieved some level of success by your own standards, by all means make yourself your own first priority. You can't help others until you first help yourself. If you reach a more comfortable level, you'll find you need to be useful to others in order to find meaning and feel right in your own skin. That doesn't mean giving everything away. It's okay to pick your spots. You don't need to suffer in the process.

Positivity - The self-help gurus will tell you it's important to have an ongoing positive dialog with yourself. Lots of books have been written on this topic. All I will add is that you might be completely unaware of how negative you are. Many people make the mistake of incorporating negativity in their humor and thinking the outcome is a net positive. That takes the form of reflexively commenting on what's wrong with, well, everything. I used to be that guy. It was a habit I picked up from my mother. I thought I was being funny. An ex did me the favor of pointing out that I was actually just being an asshole. All the time.

Luckily, this is one of the easiest habits you can ever break. Now I make it a practice to think or say something positive immediately after I let slip a negative comment. Saying positive things puts your mind into a positive state. And when you become that guy, you attract positive relationships and positive outcomes.

A Little Bit of Danger - I don't recommend taking physical risks. But you'll feel more alive if you make it a habit to try new things, even if those things scare you a bit. I'm talking about small risks, such as signing up for an activity you know you will be bad at, or joining Toastmasters International (to give speeches), or sampling the unknown in some other way.

Learn - Feed your brain. The more active your brain is, the more alive you will feel. As a bonus, learning new things can be just the distraction you need to keep your mind from focusing on whatever else in your life is bugging you.

Feel Success - Make it a habit to often do things you do well. It doesn't matter if your best skill is golf or cooking or business or being a parent. Doing one thing well gives your ego some armor to handle all of the little things that don't go quite so well during the week.

Relationships - It's hard to be happy if you don't have whatever sorts of relationships in your life that work for you.  The only advice I have in this area is that following the other tips for happiness will allow you to attract the sort of relationships you want.

That's a starter list for happiness. I don't think it contains any surprises.  But sometimes it's nice to remind yourself that your happiness can be engineered, and that luck is a product of good design.