Good news! You can protect your business from disruption with an all-in-one platform!

According to the Web site of a company called Liferay, this will help you do more with less.

What exactly can you do with Liferay? You can create the solutions you need without sacrificing speed, flexibility, or budget. You can focus on critical projects while accelerating time-to-market. You can leverage Liferay’s flexible platform.

“Since 2004, Liferay has been helping our customers, employees, partners, and community reach their full potential to serve others.”

Now, you probably think that our puzzle for today is to decipher what exactly this company does sell. You are mistaken. Here is our puzzle for today. Let us suppose you have succeeded in decoding the marketing copy on this page, and you have determined that the company’s mission is to make the very best hatpins in the world. You need those hatpins. In which of the following menus in the navigation bar at the top of the page will you find the information you need to buy a carload of them?

Once you have decoded the Liferay site, you may wish to try your hand at the Voynich Manuscript.

Dear Dr. Boli: Why does the United States spend more on defense than China, India, the UK, Russia, France, Germany, Saudi Arabia, Japan, and South Korea put together? It seems a little excessive to me. —Sincerely, Lloyd J. Austin III.

Dear Sir: It is a general rule among nations that one should spend at least as much on defense as one’s enemies do. Since the ambition of the United States is to make enemies of the entire world, it follows that the defense budget must correspond to that ambition.

Dear Dr. Boli: Why are there still monarchies in the world? Isn’t it long past time those countries jettisoned their relics of medievalism and joined the twenty-first century? —Sincerely, Citizen Louis Capet.

Dear Sir: Here is a list of the ten “happiest countries in the world,” as compiled by one of the think tanks that compile lists of happy countries. The lists differ somewhat, but they all come to similar conclusions.

Finland
Denmark
Iceland
Switzerland
Netherlands
Luxembourg
Sweden
Norway
Israel
New Zealand

You may come back and ask the same question once you have contemplated this list for a while.

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You can read the whole report here (PDF). Trigger warning: “Includes bibliographical references.”

From the President’s Message on a company site:

Each year, together we set goals to appreciably advance the company in its 8 key business areas: Firm Structure, Finance, Operations, People, Culture, Marketing, Production, and Design.

Q. What comes dead last on the list of key business areas for this firm?

A. Design.

Q. What is this firm trying to sell?

A. Architecture.

Dear Dr. Boli: You’ve tried to explain American religion several times before, but those essays are, like, dozens or even hundreds of words long. Could you distill that information into a portable form for the busy executive on the go? —Sincerely, Francis, Vatican City.

Dear Sir: Everything there is to know about the religious attitudes of the American people is summed up in the words of a bumper sticker that has been popular on pickup trucks for a generation or more:

I’d rather PUSH a Ford
than drive a Chevy

Sometimes the brands are reversed, but the religious sentiment is the same. Remember the words of that bumper sticker, and you will know what religion means to Americans and in what gods they place their faith.