Why?

Le nez de Cléopâtre: s’il eût étè plus court, toute la face de la terre aurait changé.

This was the tag line I used for the previous and first incarnation of Counterfactually Speaking, the only record of which I have is the partial one saved from electronic death by the Way Back Machine. From that great repository comes forth the words that ring now oddly:

Preamble

There can be real, physical phenomena that are caused not by