Scott Adams: In his own words
I’m fascinated by BP’s attempts to stop the oil leak, especially today with the Top Kill operation underway. I’ve had multiple nerdgasms following the story. I mean, seriously, I’m sitting in my home office in California and watching an oil leak a mile below the surface, on a live submarine…
Read MoreInvesting is scary because the world of finance is the ultimate confusopoly. There are so many options from which to choose that many people are willing to pay perhaps 1% of their portfolios per year for experts to manage their money. And those experts might invest your money in managed…
Read MoreTwo questions I am often asked: Today I will indirectly answer both questions by talking about something else entirely. I assume you’ve all been following the story of the Apple engineer who left a prototype 4G iPhone at a beer garden. I found this story too delicious to resist, but…
Read MoreToday we will consider a model for replacing our current form of government with an insurance-based model. In step one of this hypothetical future, the government of the United States buys every insurance company in the country at estimated current values. In this imagined future, the government becomes the insurance…
Read MoreSuppose humans were born with magical buttons on their foreheads. When someone else pushes your button, it makes you very happy. But like tickling, it only works when someone else presses it. Imagine it’s easy to use. You just reach over, press it once, and the other person becomes wildly…
Read MoreYou’re reading this blog, and that means there’s a good chance that people ask you to help them solve computer problems. There are three types of users who ask for help: Runners, Watchers, and Squatters. Runners are all too happy to abandon their workstations for as long as it takes…
Read MoreCBSSports.com contacted me last week. I assume they thought of me because I’m so sporty. They have a web service that lets you watch live college basketball games, on demand, during March Madness. The web page wisely includes a Boss Button that allows viewers to switch to a business-looking screen…
Read MoreI decided to not delete all of the crazy Canadian stalker comments coming in today so you could see what I have been dealing with for about seven years. Just sit back and watch. It’s fascinating in its own way. Her comments are on the strip page as well as…
Read MoreI got a strong reaction when I criticized Gmail’s interface. A few people mentioned that you can activate hot keys so you can just press the r key to reply. Fair enough. I burrowed into the Settings and activated the hot key feature. It was a good idea, but nothing…
Read MoreToday I went on a scavenger hunt. Specifically I was trying to find the “reply” button on my Gmail interface. The damn thing keeps moving, depending on the length of the message. And it’s pretty well hidden in a forest of 40-some buttons sprinkled around the page that do all…
Read MoreToday United Media announced it might try to sell the licensing rights for Dilbert, Peanuts, and the rest of its licensing properties. http://www.cnbc.com/id/35536849 [no longer available] United Media has been handling syndication and licensing for Dilbert for over 20 years. They plan to keep the syndication part, which involves selling…
Read MoreI’ve written before about the fact that a person’s name can influence his choices. Studies show that people named Dennis become dentists at a higher rate than you would expect. People also prefer to live in places that sound like their own names. Names matter. http://www.stat.columbia.edu/~gelman/stuff_for_blog/susie.pdf I was thinking about…
Read MoreA lot of what passes as creativity is just combining things that aren’t normally combined. For example, my parents are in town this week, at the same time the iPad was launched, which made me think a lot about the physical form that products take. And because of the iPad…
Read MoreI think you can predict acceptance of a new product by what people will compare it to. For example, the iPod was compared to all of the other ways you could organize and carry your music around, and the iPod was just plain better. Then Apple introduced the iPhone. It…
Read MoreI wonder what kind of tricks the CIA is using against Al Qaeda these days.If I were in the CIA, I would try to flood the terrorist communication channels with false orders. Some of the false orders would be simple stuff, such as “Everyone gather by the big rock and…
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