Scott Adams's Blog, page 385

Hypnotized by an Audio Book

Several years ago I wrote a non-Dilbert book called God's Debris. I called it a "thought experiment" because I used hypnosis techniques in the writing to give readers a euphoric mental sensation, as if they were learning some deeper truth about reality. Evidently it worked. Many people tell me they have reread God's Debris four or five times just for the buzz.

For others, God's Debris is like eating an onion. People who are on the outer fringes of either dogmatism or skepticism find it hard...

Halloween

I'm trying to come up with a good Halloween costume. I prefer something topical and funny. I don't want to be the guy who shows up at the party wearing sweat pants and says he's a baseball player. Maybe you can help.

One idea is to wear a Barack Obama name tag with my regular clothes. Then I'll wait for someone to say, "Barack Obama? How's that Barack Obama? I had such high expectations for your costume and all you did was...oh, wait. I get it."

Do you have a better idea? (Dressing as a Dilbe...

Sponsor a Predator

The other day I was reading some first-hand accounts of the war in Afghanistan, in Newsweek, as told by several Taliban fighters. Throughout their stories they would refer to various Taliban leaders, and Newsweek would parenthetically point out that said leaders had been killed by Predator missiles. And today I read somewhere that 14 out of 20 Al Quaeda leaders in that neck of the woods have been taken out by Predators.

This made me wonder about the future of the war. Let's assume the confli...

Top MBA Schools

I was delighted to learn that The Economist ranked the business school where I got my MBA (University of California at Berkeley - Haas School of Business) as number one in the United States.

http://www.economist.com/business-education/displayStory.cfm?story_id=14632300

This makes me proud, even though there are a few minor differences in the program compared to when I attended. For example, the classes are now held in different buildings. The coursework is different. The textbooks are ...

Weird Future

From an Article in the New York Times, here is one of the coolest theories I've ever heard that isn't already an episode for Star Trek. This quote sums it up:

"A pair of otherwise distinguished physicists have suggested that the hypothesized Higgs boson, which physicists hope to produce with the (Large Hadron) collider, might be so abhorrent to nature that its creation would ripple backward through time and stop the collider before it could make one, like a time traveler who goes back in time...

Entertainers

During the peak ratings years of The Jerry Springer Show -- an alleged reality show -- a fight would break out among the guests during almost every episode.

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

It seemed obvious to me that these fights were orchestrated by the producers. What are the odds that a fight would break out during every episode and yet no one would ever get hurt or arrested?

The surprising thing is that everyone I talked to about the show during its glory years be...

The Confusopoly Prediction

I just saw this article on the Internet about an economic prediction I made ten years before the recent financial meltdown.

http://www.ethics.org.au/ethics_forum/printer_friendly_posts.asp?FID=3&TID=3566

This got me wondering, in jest, if I am eligible to someday win the Nobel Prize for Economics. (Okay, technically it's called the Sveriges Riksbank Prize in Economic Sciences in Memory of Alfred Nobel.) The surprising answer is yes. One only needs to come up with an original and useful con...

Ratting System

Suppose you had a system at work that allowed you to evaluate the performance and effectiveness of your coworkers. You could log on at any time and leave an opinion that would only be viewable by your boss and his bosses.

And imagine that you could be as unprofessional as you liked. If you think your coworker is an obstructionist idiot with fake credentials, you can express your opinion in those words. Management in this hypothetical world wouldn't want anyone diluting strong opinions with b...

Negotiation by Brain Overload

Regular readers know that my wife Shelly and I are building a home. We were warned that we would be overwhelmed by all of the decisions. I was ready for this, I thought.

For most of my life, including my school years, I worked two or three jobs at the same time. The exception was when I was getting my MBA at night while working during the day. I thrive on complexity. How hard could it be to design a house? You pick some doorknobs, choose your favorite color for the paint, and off you go.

All...

Another Gender Generalization

Men are story tellers. Women are schedulers.

That's the sort of overgeneralization that drives people mad. I suppose that's what attracts me to writing it.

First, let's all agree that there are plenty of exceptions to this or any other generalization. Perhaps you are one of the exceptions. Obviously there are plenty of great female authors and plenty of great male project managers. But that won't stop me from generalizing.

When I find myself in a conversation with a man, he often tells a fun...