Style adjustments

After asking my friends for comments on this blog, I noticed that with fair frequency the complaints fell mostly to "length". That is, the posts are too long. Thus, for this post, I will try to characterize the essence of my mission without giving you 2100 words.

"Things are probably more complicated than you imagine them to be, and your answers show a disrespect for the questions, which always have far more gravity than you are comfortable with."

However, I do have to apologize for the fact that the post a posteriori to this post will actually be longer than the previous post by a substantial amount (even though it could probably be divided into 2-4 posts). I feel that as a whole, it has some benefit in being presented as one, so as to reinforce the relationships in the text. In the future, I hope I can think of shorter topics (see above, this may not be possible).

... We now return to our regularly scheduled programming.