So. I wanted to devote more time to the blog this year. I even made a post that a couple of you responded to. Then I got sick in February: 21 days in bed. Then I got bogged down, trying to catch up on all the work of the semester that I could only half do while sick. Bleh. It’s been a crap year so far. But, I’m starting to catch up. Just got back from Vancouver ASECS, and it was good: academically and socially rewarding, in the best of all possible ways. Thank you, Canuckialand, for helping me celebrate a return to health and leisure time.

Then I found this interesting bit, from The Eclectic Magazine, Nov. 1848:

Dr. Vilmar denounces, in strong terms, the self-conceit so characteristic of modern taste and modern criticism, which consigns so much of the past, and especially in the earlier history of nations, to oblivion, as necessarily unworthy of study.

Those of you who have ever talked to me on the subject can see that I haven’t changed my views in over 160 years. I hold firm to these principles, and will continue to hold firm to them. Indeed, this just goes to show you that a couple of months blog hiatus isn’t at all an indication of a change of direction, in the grand scheme of his evident immortality.