The Message, Albeit Sometimes Ambiguous, Is All Around Us: Take Care of the Planet

A central ingredient in most writing is lucidity, choosing and arranging words in such a way that one’s message is delivered to the reader clearly and immediately.  This, however, is not the case with things like fortune cookies and horoscopes, where the whole point is enabling the reader to interpret the message as broadly as possible.

Above is the note in the cookie I got at the end of my meal Wednesday night at a Chinese restaurant in Boston.  Great job! The author couldn’t have known that his quarry would interpret this as an appeal for environmental stewardship, but that’s precisely what happened.