In a nutshell: how to display entries by last posted NOT by creation date.
I created a blog as an educational outreach for a group of historic interpreters. The blog is actually a fictional "journal" based on several historically-based and fictional personas. One (real live) author creates the entries. The entries are categorized by persona and the "authored on" date is edited to reflect the (fictional) date of the persona's journal entry. (ie. 1771-04-26, 1774-10-17, etc.) Because the entries are posted non-chronologically, I need them to be displayed on the blog in the order they are posted rather than by the MT's default "authored on" (entry_created_on) date. I considered numerous configurations, googled, sweated and googled some more and finally (hallelujah!) came across Brad Choate's MTSQL Plugin. With a little further searching I found Andy C's blog entry with a query that worked for my needs.
Here's how the new tag and query look in my Main Index Template:
<MTSQLEntries query="SELECT entry_id FROM mt_entry LEFT JOIN mt_placement ON placement_entry_id = entry_id WHERE entry_blog_id = X AND entry_status = 2 ORDER BY entry_modified_on DESC LIMIT Z">
</MTSQLEntries>
Above where X is obviously your blog id and Z is the number of posts to be displayed. Entry status 2 displays only published entries. Keep in mind that the
