"Dilbert" Creator Gets Voice Back

Scott Adams lost his voice 18 months ago to a disorder called Spasmodic Dysphonia. One day, it returned. He is apparently the first person in history to recover from this malady. Read his account. It is inspirational. I can't find any other word for it.

ffs

Stop using the Enlightenment icon for unrelated stories, kdawson. I don't think it means what you think it means.

Re:ffs

Gah, beat me to it. Ah well, here's what I was going to post (slightly more polite):

KDawson, I just thought you'd like to know that the Enlightenment category is for the X11 Window Manager [enlightenment.org] by that name, and not "enlightening" topics. Unfortunately, Slashdot doesn't really have an "Inspirational" category. About the best you can do is "Entertainment" and "Links". Since this is the third time [slashdot.org] you've been in want of an inspirational category, you might consider talking with Taco about remedying the situation.

Elaborate ruse? Maybe not...

Fellow Dilbertites,

It seems the great overloard Adams was in fact inflicted by the great malady. [nih.gov] Rejoice at his miraculous recovery!

PS - I was quite confused at first as to the authenticity of this until I got goog-learned [google.com]. It seems it really does exist [emedicine.com], he very well may have had it [typepad.com], and if he recovered was indeed a miracle. However, it could also be an elaborate ruse, as I would expect from a satirist of his pedigree. :)

He recovered!

That leaves me speechless.

Sorry...

I met a guy with that once

I met a guy with that condition once. Actually, I hired him to teach a course. Before I learned of his condition.

While teaching the course his voice was like a hoarse whisper. He characterised it as having "forgotten" how to speak. But while telling the class about his voice, he said he could sing. And suddenly as singing his voice was loud and strong.

I wished he did that for the whole course.

Congrats!

Congratulations to Mr. Adams. Everyone is glad to hear that you can speak again.

Good one.

I can't find any other word for it.

Hah! So hilarious... Truly, I am speechless.

What does this have to do with Enlightenment?

What does this story have to do with the Enlightenment Window Manager [enlightenment.org]?

Good thing!

He's my hero! I read his comics every day. He deserves his voice :)

Spasmodic Dysphonia

Wikipedia [wikipedia.org] has a nice article on Spasmodic Dysphonia.

As the blog indicates, this is thought to be a neurological condition. When I was studying AI as an undergrad, we learned a lot about neural networks [wikipedia.org]. This seems like the sort of thing that could happen if the brain's speech area's neurons somehow became trained to stop delivering impulses for "normal" speech. In this case, it would be theoretically possible to train the network back to normal levels. Of course, it could be something completely different.

Here's wishing Scott the best.

[insert witty title here]

Screw itsatrap tags, try itsamiracle tags instead!

His first words

Thank fuck for that - I thought I was deaf.

scott adams

Mr Adams is extremely good at thinking creatively at problems. In the back of one of his books ( i can't remember which ) he talks about his experimentation with affirmations. It was extremely interesting to read about his testing and just the way he thinks. I envy his ability to reason through and logically deciefer things he doesn't initially understand.
 
Nice to hear you got your voice back.. now get back to drawing funny stuff!
 

Re:Dilbert is a one-trick pony

whats bad is if YOUR OFFICE actually tries some of the boneheaded stuff found on Dilbert.

It kind of like Lincoln during the civl war he read joke books just so he wouldn't waste time weeping.

Re:Dilbert is a one-trick pony

Maybe you should trying sending in some ideas as that's where most of Scott's storylines come from these days. OTOH, better still, try *your* hand at a 10year comic strip, see if you can run the distance. Good luck with that.