Do you have a black and white TV?

Two interesting things on the radar today.

1. thousands of people ignoring my confirmation email because the return address looked funny
and
2. a few notes complaining that ChangeThis uses PDFs. Like this one:

The point should be what\'s being said, not that is green
and has a bunch of red lines running across it. For people who print out
email before they read it, I guess this is the sort of thing they\'d like.
Always struck me as something of a minority, though.

You lose searchability - try finding a key phrase from within the text on
Google. You can\'t cut and paste excerpts in references - not without
opening multiple programs. (And if you can using Internet Explorer on
Windows, well, funny thing, not everyone lives in the monoculture...)

I see already how you are having to handle people not understanding why
they can\'t just read the darn things. Why add that extra layer of
complexity? Isn\'t it the message that matters most?
-----------------------

I refuse to enter the "is PDF bad" debate, but the one thing we all have to agree on is this: OF COURSE it matters what it looks like.

We judge books and blogs and tv shows and even people "by their covers" every single day.

Acknowledging that makes it easier to spread your ideas, and it alerts you to the fact that you might be embracing some ideas (like who to vote for) based on cues that have nothing to do with logical, rational reality. Abe Lincoln would come in fourth in a three way election if it were held today.