It turns out, the boffins* tell us, that the Tribune Company’s blogs were under a sustained spam attack yesterday. That is what paralyzed the system and denied access to posters and commenters alike. At some point the comment function was suspended to prevent further attacks, and I haven’t had word yet whether it has been restored.

Comments that some of you attempted to make yesterday during the difficulty apparently made it through; I’ve deleted duplicates that were made as you struggled with the CAPTCHA function.

I hope to be hearing from you again soon.

*Boffins, the term coined in Britain during the Second World War, are people doing scientific or technical research, or who have arcane skills. It was the boffins at Bletchley Park who broke the German Enigma code.