Wednesday, April 21, 2004

For some reason, the number of visitors to the site has been substantially increasing as of late. I also feel that I need to explain this to non-US visitors: I have been sharing my hate mail with readers of the site. But it is only fair to say that I get far more messages of support and encouragement from Americans. That is really true. I have received more than a dozen just today. But modesty--regardless whether real or fake--prevents me from sharing any of them. Also, several new visitors to this site have written to me expressing their astonishment at the comments' section. Some have shared ideas about "moderating" the section. As the old timers of the site knows (this site is now only a few months old--when did we start Neal?), the comments are published as is, which explains what you are getting. But that is fine. Finally, I need to take every opportunity, especially as many new visitors have joined, to express my gratitude and thanks to my former student Neal (who is now at Bristol U in UK), who took it upon himself to conceive, design, and launch the site. As some of you know, I used to have a list of 160 odd members, to whom I would send a selection of articles and commentaries. Neal kept urging me to turn it into a site, and I kept resisting. I feared that it looked narcissistic to have one's own personal site. He ignored my rejections, and went ahead with it, and I got convinced. So Neal deserves the praise, and I deserve the blame for this site.