Posted April 11th, 2016 @ 7:18am
Candidates for President of the United States talk about taxes and budgets and social services. But no one ever talks about lowering the cost of living. And that could be a big omission because American society has no way to take care of all the under-employed, unemployed, and retired people of tomorrow. There are simply too many of them and we can’t tax our way to a solution. The math just doesn’t work.
0 CommentsPosted April 7th, 2016 @ 8:48am in #Trump
I’ve said a few times in this blog, and elsewhere, that my political views don’t match up with Donald Trump’s views, or anyone else’s.
How’s that possible, you ask? Let me give you a taste of it.
0 CommentsPosted April 5th, 2016 @ 4:56pm in #pixar #dreamworks #cgi animation
See Update at Bottom.
Years ago, Jeffrey Katzenberg invited me to Dreamworks to brainstorm some non-Dilbert movie ideas that would work well with CGI animation. By then the world already had CGI movies about toys, cars, bugs, robots, fish, aliens, animals, birds, monsters, and most of the other non-human entities.
That was the problem. The animation industry was running out of fresh fields to plow. They needed more creature types.
I didn’t have any ideas that day. It’s harder than it looks. All the easy ones are already done.
My creative failing at that meeting with Katzenberg has bugged me for years. I’m usually the person in the room with the commercially viable idea. That’s sort of what I do. But I failed that day. I had absolutely nothing.
But… I’m not a quitter. I have chewed on that problem for years without having so much as a whiff of an idea. Then one day last week, for no particular reason, and while thinking of something unrelated, a solution came to me. It had all the elements. It was born whole. I tested it on a few friends and their jaws dropped.
It’s not just a good idea. It’s sort of amazing, if I do say so myself. And easy to animate. When you see the movie (and someday you will) you will laugh at how obvious it was.
Too bad I can’t tell you the idea. That would ruin its commercial value. So what I’m going to ask instead is that if any of you work for one of the big animation studios, send me an email at dilbertcartoonist@gmail.com. Or use Twitter @ScottAdamsSays to contact me. I’ll use Skype to pitch the idea to the first big studio that gets to me. It will only take ten minutes.
Update: No direct studio contacts yet, as of 7 AM Wednesday. This will be interesting. I predict contact by the evening. I’ll let you know how the Skype pitch goes.
Update: 9:10 AM. DreamWorks reached out to me. Pitch made. My contacts like it enough to take it to the boss.
For context, few ideas make it from “good idea” to movie. Ideas don’t have an economic value on their own.
Update: 2:00 PM A DreamWorks employee just mentioned this post to Jeffrey Katzenberg in the employee cafeteria. That happened in less than 24 hours.
I also heard from Sony Animation. They are next to hear the idea if DreamWorks passes. No word from Pixar, but I understand they like their ideas to be internally generated.
This was a fun experiment in connectivity. Thanks everyone!
0 CommentsPosted April 5th, 2016 @ 9:12am in #trump
I don’t expect this to happen. So consider it a thought experiment in persuasion.
Let’s say Donald Trump promises that when he gets elected President he will pardon Hillary Clinton of any future convictions regarding her email server situation. I’m sure he could come up with a plausible reason for the promise, such as healing and uniting the country and whatnot. And let’s say he makes the promise often and convincingly, so you start to think he means it. Maybe he even puts it in writing and has it notarized. That gives him a piece of paper to wave around when he talks about it. Trump likes to keep his persuasion visual, as in “The wall,” because visual persuasion (including imagined images) is the strongest.
0 CommentsPosted April 4th, 2016 @ 10:35am in #Trump
Donald Trump has made some big mistakes lately. On top of that, his opponents improved their game. As a result, he finds himself in an enormous hole of disapproval, especially with women. If you have been reading my Master Persuader series, you might be interested in why Trump’s persuasion suddenly stopped working.
It’s more interesting than you think.
0 CommentsPosted April 1st, 2016 @ 8:47am
Most civilized people agree that so-called “fat-shaming” has no place in our modern world. The unwritten rules of polite society say that a person’s appearance is out of bounds for criticism. That feels right to me.
0 CommentsPosted March 31st, 2016 @ 10:10am in #Trump
I’ll start by reminding readers that my policy preferences don’t align with Donald Trump’s policies, or with anyone else’s except in some minor cases that are mostly coincidence. In the case of abortion rights, I defer to the better-informed views of women. I like having the right to vote on every issue, but as a practical matter, men add nothing to the abortion discussion unless those men are doctors, scientists or philosophers. Women have this issue covered. So I support whatever the female majority wants to do with abortion.
I tell you my non-opinion on abortion because the messenger is always part of the message. You wouldn’t be able to appreciate the rest of this post without knowing my starting position.
0 CommentsPosted March 29th, 2016 @ 10:00am in #Trump
Persuasion is a learned skill. It involves a well-understood set of science-tested tools. For whatever reason, Donald Trump is bristling with talent for persuasion and Hillary Clinton has none (that I can detect) except for basic political skills and her gender identity. Persuasion is not the only talent you want in a president, so I won’t try to oversell it. But let’s see what kinds of issues are susceptible to a president’s powers of persuasion.
0 CommentsPosted March 27th, 2016 @ 8:13pm in #Trump
This is a thought experiment.
Imagine that the tiny nation of Elbonia suffers a Zombie Virus outbreak. Luckily, the virus does not spread easily, but prolonged personal contact with an infected zombie increases the odds of transmission. Once infected, the Elbonian becomes a zombie killer. As it turns out, most people are immune to the virus. Over 99% of the public have no risk of catching it. But 1% is far too many zombie killers.
0 CommentsPosted March 25th, 2016 @ 7:34am in #Trump
This post won’t mean much to you unless you have been following my Master Persuader series. Today I will teach you to spot The Sarcasm Tell. When you see the tell it means you won the argument. But it won’t feel that way to you because cognitive dissonance will cause your opponent to reinterpret the world in some bizarre new way in order to avoid the appearance of being dumb. The form of the tell is this:
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