Most of the ideas here were brewed at that great incubator of the lumpentechnocracy, Berkeley International House, in conversation with some of the most intelligent and imaginative people I have ever known. For their friendship and knowledge I am especially grateful to Moira Dowell, Scott ``Fuzzy'' Elsworth, David Greenebaum, Tony Lin, Simon Marchant, Eric Olander, Bruce Paul, Tyler Pike, Bob Shore, Doug Stahl, Barbara Stephensen, Noam Tene, Steve Tivol, and (at a remove of some thirty years) Zmarak Shalizi. Mr. Mitchell Porter of Brisbane will also recognize his influence; an earlier version of this essay was distributed over the Net through the ``Aleph'' mailing list. Jon ``Nd.'' Fetter read this in LaTeX manuscript, and proved more lucid at 3 a.m. than I was on paper. The current disasterous state of the cover is all my fault, but it would be even worse without the help of Jutta Degener. Last but not least, a Department of Education fellowship administerated by the phenomenology group of the UW-Madison physics department supported me --- for quite different reasons --- while writing.
None of them is to blame for any of this.
Cosma Rohilla Shalizi
Madison, Wisconsin - Berkeley, California - Madison again