A WORD TO THE READERS: As some of you may have noticed, the following two posts are repeats, dug up out of the archives to give you something vaguely new to read. I apologize for the paucity of new posts, especially the long ones; I have a major work project going on that requires most of the spare time and all of the attention I would usually spend blogging, and I haven't had the time to really start something new, but I think the thing will end this week, God willing and the river don't rise, and there's a couple of ideas that I am mulling over on that I hope will produce something worth reading.