Month: November 2007

No matter what I’m doing, I can’t help wondering if there is a better way. For example, I noticed yesterday in Las Vegas that many of the casinos have ATMs amongst thousands of slot machines. The casinos hopes you will take your money out of one machine, carry it several…

When I woke up yesterday morning, I had no idea that it would be the day I experienced the best lunch ever. Let me tell you, I have had many lunches. Some of them were darned good. But there can be only one Best Lunch Ever, and I’m sure I…

I’m in Las Vegas this morning, to give a speech a to a few thousand technology workers. Last night, I did an AV check and tried to get back to my room without losing all the money in my wallet. I started optimistically, but it was all downhill after that….

I’ve decided to blog less. I posted daily (mostly) for two years, with the theory that my efforts would be compensated in four ways. 1. Advertising dollars2. Compiling the best posts into a book.3. Growing the audience for Dilbert4. Artistic satisfaction. Readership of The Dilbert Blog is growing rapidly, but…

Suppose you lived in a place with an unusually high population of compulsive gamblers, the type who will keep gambling until they are poor. And suppose you had the resources to open a casino. Would it be ethical to do so? All the gamblers have a choice of resisting, assuming…

Based on the highly unscientific sample of responses to yesterday’s post, free downloads of music appear to have a huge impact on creating an audience for unknown musicians. The next logical question is how much money are those unknown musicians making? That’s not rhetorical. I wonder if they are making…

The emerging wisdom on file sharing of music is that successful musical artists don’t gain anything in terms of publicity, since they are already well known, and they lose in terms of album sales. While many citizens will happily pay a dollar to download a song, plenty will prefer free….

On the local news last night there was a report on some research with marijuana and cancer. It turns out that the active ingredient in marijuana might stop cancer. The story seems to be an update to this one: http://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2007/04/070417193338.htm Add that information to a 2006 report that showed no…

Last month I ran a contest on this blog, to see who could write the most humorous book blurb for my new book, STICK TO DRAWING COMICS, MONKEY-BRAIN! The winners are in. First, I give you the Amazon.com link to the book, in case you would like to do your…

Researchers have found more evidence that people are moist robots. Apparently the initials in your name can influence your fate. For example, baseball players with last names that start with K, which denotes a strike-out in baseball, actually strike out more often. People who have a last name beginning with…

How many people hallucinated about the content of my post yesterday and argued against that hallucination? That’s 90% of what you need to know about the world. The rest is just spelling and math.

In life, there are some situations that beg for an apology, but there is no easy way to do it. For example, suppose you are a senior citizen attending a funeral for a friend of the family. You lean over the open casket and your false teeth plop out and…

The troop surge in Iraq is starting to look as if it is working. I know, I know. It’s probably a temporary lull. And it’s far from peaceful in Iraq. And yes, we could have done things differently and gotten to this place sooner. And the Iraqi government isn’t being…

I know I’ve been typecast because a hundred people sent me a story about a man in India who married a dog to atone for his past mistakes. http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20071113/ap_on_fe_st/india_man_weds_dog [no longer available] A number of things struck me about this wedding. I shall start with the most obvious jokes first….