Scott Adams's Blog, page 392

Prediction Wrong

Last week I predicted in this blog that the Iranian leadership would look into allegations of vote rigging, announce that problems had been found, and a new election would be held.

Wrong.

But interestingly, the Guardian Council announced that there were indeed irregularities in 50 of 170 districts, including cases where there were more votes than people. I will accept partial credit for that part of my prediction, and I think most people were surprised that the Iranian leadership admitted that mu

Iran Conspiracy Theory

It's obvious that the election in Iran was rigged. Yet Iranian Supreme Leader Khamenei denies it was rigged and asks an interesting question: How could one rig 11 million votes?

You might also wonder WHY anyone would rig an election by such a large margin when it is so obvious that rigging it for a smaller victory would have been more clever.

I'm here to answer those questions.

But first, let's discuss what I call liar talk. It's a minor hobby of mine to detect lies by the way people choose their w

Technology That Gives You Goose Bumps

This might be a shocker, but I'm a bit of a nerd. I get the same sort of visceral thrill from a cool new technology that a wine lover gets from a great wine, or an artist gets from seeing great art. This morning I saw some technology that literally made me shiver. I'm talking actual goose bumps.

A young company called Neurosky. (www.neurosky.com) is marketing a headset that reads your brainwaves. Understandably, toy and game companies are scrambling to make games that you can control just by the

Addition by Subtraction

If someone told you that you had to give up one of your five senses, which one would you let go? My vote is smell.

Recently I lost my sense of smell thanks to, I assume, some allergy meds I've been snorting. I assume it's temporary. I never would have noticed I couldn't smell except my wife, Shelly, kept asking versions of the question "Do you smell that? It's awful!" But I never smelled that.

Over time I have come to realize that the ratio of stinky smells to delicious smells is very high. If the

Future Gym

For years I've belonged to a big health club that has rows of exercise contraptions. I use them regularly, and while I do, I wonder how you could make that sort of mindless exercise more interesting.

One idea is to have some sort of RFID device on your gym ID card, and keep it with you when you work out. Each exercise machine would automatically recognize your presence and access your history. You could do a lot of interesting things with that technology, but the idea that interests me most is a

I like Pie

I was looking for information on how much energy my different appliances use, on average, and came across a great bar graph. Unfortunately I can't find it again. It showed a huge bar for heating that was about as large as all the other appliances put together. Obviously the graph was for a typical home where you have serious winters. I already knew that heating and cooling were the major culprits in energy use, but seeing it on the graph gave it context and perspective that I will always remembe

Iranian Election

I'm fascinated by the Iranian election results. On the surface it appears that the vote was rigged by the guys in power. That's the way these things usually go. But this is a bit more interesting.

First, remember that in Iran the Supreme Leader, Khomeini, decides who gets to run for President. So in theory, whoever wins is okay with Khomeini, even if one candidate is somewhat preferred. That's not a situation where the Supreme Leader has a strong need to rig an election, especially given the risk

Pearls Before Swine Video

Here's a funny video you might enjoy, from the creator of Pearls Before Swine, Stephan Pastis. He's raising the bar on what cartoonists need to do to promote their books.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SCrtCHRYEdA

House Checklist

If you have stairs in your home, you probably do what I do, namely leave little piles of crap at the bottom of the stairs that needs to go upstairs on your next trip. I hate those little piles. But I hate making trips upstairs for trivial reasons too.

In the house that we're building now we'll have little cubby holes in the walls near the top and bottom of the stairs - call them niches if you must, to hold the crap that needs to travel on the next trip. It won't look attractive, but it will get o

Benefits of Pet Ownership

One of my mental hobbies is concocting hypotheses that I hope someone else will test. Today's hypothesis involves the health benefits of pet ownership.

It is common wisdom that owning a pet makes you healthier.  Interestingly, the group that does NOT get health benefits from pet ownership is older people "in a community," according to one study.

My hypothesis is that the reason younger people get health benefits from pets, while old people "in a community" do not, is that the younger people spend