God help those who do not help themselves.

Wilson Mizner

A few Jeffersonian quotes for this morning…

At the establishment of our constitutions, the judiciary bodies were supposed to be the most helpless and harmless members of the government. Experience, however, soon showed in what way they were to become the most dangerous; that the insufficiency of the means provided for their removal gave them a freehold and irresponsibility in office; that their decisions, seeming to concern individual suitors only, pass silent and unheeded by the public at large; that these decisions, nevertheless, become law by precedent, sapping, by little and little, the foundations of the constitution, and working its change by construction, before any one has perceived that that invisible and helpless worm has been busily employed in consuming its substance. In truth, man is not made to be trusted for life, if secured against all liability to account.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Monsieur A. Coray, Oct 31, 1823

A strong body makes the mind strong. As to the species of exercises, I advise the gun. While this gives moderate exercise to the body, it gives boldness, enterprise and independence to the mind. Games played with the ball, and others of that nature, are too violent for the body and stamp no character on the mind. Let your gun therefore be your constant companion of your walks.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Peter Carr, August 19, 1785

All eyes are opened, or opening, to the rights of man. The general spread of the light of science has already laid open to every view the palpable truth, that the mass of mankind has not been born with saddles on their backs, nor a favored few booted and spurred, ready to ride legitimately, by the grace of God.

Thomas Jefferson, letter to Roger C. Weightman, June 24, 1826

Today’s Rant

You Can’t Spell “Bad” Without Spelling “Ad”

There are plenty of great mysteries of human nature. Why we desire somebody more if they play hard-to-get. Why we think “$3.99” is a vastly better deal that “$4.00.” Why we believe that that nice Nigerian man wants to split $80 million with us by e-mail.

But I’ll tell you the one that gets me: why marketers think that annoying us online is an effective means of advertising.

I’m referring, first of all, to those excruciatingly maddening *blinking* ads, of the sort that (unfortunately) always appear, among other places, on the nytimes.com home page. Blinking is not a way to get me to want your product. Blinking, in fact, ticks me off. It distracts me from what I came to the site to do—read. If anything, it makes me notice who the jerky advertiser is, make a mental note to avoid buying that product, and finally to install an ad blocker that ensures I won’t see any more ads at all.

I’m also referring to spam that uses deceptive subject lines like “About last night” or “I think I love you.” OK, great, so you fool us into opening the message, whereupon we read about your herbal supplements or whatever. You really think you’ve earned my trust and goodwill at this point? You think I’d order from you in a million years?

Or how about the spam that misspells product names like V1Ag*Ra or C1-Ali$ in order to get past our e-mail program’s spam filters. Dudes: if we WANTED erection drugs, would we have gone to the trouble of setting up filters to screen them out?

Maybe these advertisers are expecting that, in some kind of perverse reverse psychology, angering us will make us more likely to click.

But I’m guessing that they’re actually just idiotic, and somehow miss the entire point of advertising.

Pogue

The sleeping fox catches no poultry

Benjamin Franklin