Without further ado, then, I'd like to introduce my brand-spanking-new Humor section. As a moderately geeky guy with three e-mail accounts, I get a fair amount of mail. Typically, a large portion of that mail is of the humorous variety. Being an unreconstructed packrat, the volume of e-mail I toss out of my life on a daily basis is almost frightening (I am not one of those people who has 200 messages in my inbox, 150 of them read, and a trash bin with all of the mail I've received in 1997 sitting in it). A few funny things I've saved for posterity, but having these files sitting fallow on my hard drive seemed somewhat silly to me. So, in a fit of inspiration, I've decided to put them up here, to allow you, if nothing else, to see if we share a sense of humor. In particular, I'll point at a biblical piece assembled by Richard Lederer, of whom I'm rapidly becoming a huge fan. At any rate, with all the heavy-duty writing I've put up, I thought I'd make a contribution to day-brightening, as well.

The other big addition to the pages here is The Hero in History, which is a piece that falls somewhere between a book review (of Pierre Goubert's Louis XIV and Twenty Million Frenchmen) and an analysis of how much history is the story of heroes, rather than of the rest of us.

Aside from that, you should find, again, that things are a bit prettier around here. Well, there are more graphics, at least; I'm so aesthetically challenged that I'm not actually sure if I've made things better. And, in a step I wish more folks would take, I've also done a little maintainence on the site, particularly where the links are concerned. As always, feedback is encouraged, particularly if I've done something wrong.