Considering that there's no "earlier" or "later", no "before" or "after" in cyberspace, and chances are at least fair that nobody will even click on the link that brings them "back" toward the bottom of this column's main page (and in so doing miss out on lots of almost purposeless rambling), "later" in this context is highly relative. Then again, I have to admit to a certain discomfort in taking the reins into my own hands and determining a certain order when throughout the history of this project I've tried again and again to at least suggest that those reins are in the hands of the reader.

Often the problem, if it is one, arises when I've already written the majority of a Boidem column and then find that a thread that I'm developing (or at least "thinking through") on an internal page brings me to an issue that I've developed in that same column somewhere down the line. It's at times like these that I think to myself that allowing the "thoughts" in a column to jump around, to wreak havoc on linearity, isn't only legitimate but even desirable. And then I wonder to myself why this doesn't happen more often.