Just yesterday the postman secreted a bundle of mail at our stoop, and lying in its midst was a jewel of rare quality: The New Yorker Advertisement Issue. If you subscribe to, or are otherwise imposed upon by the New Yorker, you know that a regular issue is thin, stapled at the side. Special issues are wide, glued, with print on the spine – real keepers, don’t you know. The Advertisement Issue, as the name suggests, was fat with ads, including: a folded and (regrettably) empty milk carton (automobile ad), a personalizeable bumper sticker (credit card ad), 4 cardstock bits that, in a blaze of anticlimax, did nothing (mp3 player ad), and a pamphlet entitled ‘Life 101: A Modern Spin on Some Ancient Wisdom’ (insurance and financial services advert). By the time we’d stripped our New Yorker of these blessings, our magazine torn and thin, the bin bulging and the brow sweaty, we were ready for the bedtime floss and the nighty-night. It seemed unwise to bin Ancient Wisdom with such a wild indifference, so we paused to dip in to ‘Life 101’. It turns out that ‘Life 101’ lifts it’s weight from a “book” by a “Jesuit priest” in “1637.” As you know, few institutions can spin a Jesuit like an insurance company, so we have wisdom like “#2 – Make people depend on you” and “#16 – Never be upset” and “#74 -Leave something to wish for” and “#96 – Set difficult tasks for those under you”. Also good are "#32 – Get used to the failings of those around you” and “#36 – Do not take payment in politeness.” Eat your heart out, Mr. Deming. The Jesuit/Insurance Industrial Complex was way ahead of you.