Scott Adams's Blog, page 373

The Less Feature

The other day I planned for a very simply trip from A to B. I started with Orbitz. When I finally penetrated the security system, i.e. figured out my own password, I noodled around and found many pages of flight options. Over the next several hours I tried sorting by flight time, shortest route, and price. Then I tried JetBlue's site because it's not included in Orbitz. Then I tried United Airlines' site because I didn't know if they would have extra options, and I needed to check my miles....

Chefs and Editors

There's no intellectual property protection for food recipes. And everyone has access to the same ingredients as their local restaurants, at least for the most part. You might think that the gap between great cooking and merely competent cooking would shrink over time, as the recipes and methods of the greatest chefs leak into the mainstream.  But that doesn't seem to be happening. There is enough art in cooking that you either have that skill or you don't. At the highest level, you're part...

Big Round Numbers

I'm thinking of starting my own stock fund. The fund would buy and sell the DOW index according to two simple rules.
When the DOW is exactly 300 points below a big round number such as 10,000, 11,000, 12,000, etc., the fund would buy the stocks in the DOW, weighted the same as the index.When the DOW rises above its big round number by 300 points, the fund would sell everything. To be smart, the fund would stay on the sidelines if the market was crashing for some obvious re...

Gauntlet of Death

This weekend my wife and I survived a gauntlet of death. It's called a vacation. If you have never had a vacation, allow me to explain how this works.

You select a vacation destination based on the sort of accidental death that you find most appealing. If you like being kidnapped, you might choose Mexico. If you like plunging to your death on rocks, you might try mountain climbing. For our weekend, we chose drowning, with a kicker that in most cases it would be preceded by a fall from a grea...

First Impressions

Last night my wife convinced me to watch the finale of The Bachelorette. (Spoiler alert) It's a so-called reality show in which one woman chooses a man from an initial group of 24. On the first episode, the bachelorette gave a "first impression rose" to the guy who stood out from the pack in a positive way. By the final show she had decided that the man who made the best first impression was in fact the best of the bunch. The chosen guy was clearly the most handsome of the bachelors, so it w...

Conservation of Stress

The common view is that sometimes you have stress and sometimes you don't. But where does the stress go when you don't have it?

My theory is that stress is a universal constant. If you have less of it at any given moment, then other people must be taking on more to balance things out. For example, let's say you go on vacation. While you're on the beach, your coworkers are trying to handle their own workload plus the projects you left behind. You haven't reduced stress; you've simply transfer...

Home Appraisals

When an appraiser looks at a home to determine its market value, he's looking at simple factors such as size, type of construction, number of rooms, neighborhood characteristics, and whether or not it is located near a pig farm. I'm oversimplifying, but not by much. Here's a typical home appraisal form.

http://www.howstuffworks.com/framed.htm?parent=&url=http://www.freddiemac.com/sell/forms/pdf/72.pdf

I'm fascinated by what is NOT considered when looking at a home's value:

-        View

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Catbert T-shirts

If you know someone who works in H.R., or someone who is somewhat evil for other reasons, or someone who likes cats, send them a link to the new Catbert T-shirts then demand a favor in return, because you deserve it.

It's a little-known fact that most t-shirts of this sort are purchased as gifts. It's like a greeting card that says, "The message on this shirt reminds me of you." So if your reaction to these shirts is something along the lines of "I wouldn't wear it," you're not understanding t...

Startup Country

One of the biggest problems with the world is that we're bound by so many legacy systems. For example, it's hard to deal with global warming because there are so many entrenched interests. It's problematic to get power from where it can best be generated to where people live. The tax system is a mess. Banking is a hodgepodge of regulations and products glued together. I could go on. The point is that anything that has been around for awhile is a complicated and inconvenient mess compared to...

Adams Model of Personal Interaction

My theory is that a typical human understands only three ways to interact with another person.

Pushover: I'll do whatever you want.

Negotiator: I'll do this if you do that.

Bully: Do what I want or there will be consequences

People change modes depending on circumstances. A parent, for example, can't afford to be a Pushover, or a Negotiator, with a small child. The parental role is a Bully role by definition. It's the only way it can work. "Do what I say or I will take away a toy."

One person mi...