David, I stand corrected, and with the knowledge that criticism is "the pabulum of mediocrity," I know exactly how to assess your position. But I keep hearing the still small voice of John Stuart Mill, whose "On Freedom of Expression," in _On Liberty_, admonishes us that unchallenged belief is merely superstition, and that human progress depends on correcting, through conversation, the errors individuals naturally make, no matter how great great such individuals might be. (Would that Einstein had considered his human tendency toward error when he dismissed quantum theory out of hand.) I seem to remember Mill saying that conversation in this vein is not "everybody's-opinion-is-equally-true," but that reasoned discourse clarifies truth. (Mind you, unsupported judgment uttered with Olympian certitute is not what Mill meant by discussion. He felt that such facile self-justification was really a sign of a closed mind that doesn't even know know that it's closed.) Entertaining counter-arguments is a necessary component of really knowing, even if one finds one's original position confirmed in the exercise. Such o! penness requires humility, something that even the stiff-necked Puritan Cromwell understood. When pushed to an extreme extreme by one of his colleagues, he said, "I beseech you, in the bowels of Christ, think it possible you may be mistaken." Until now, I didn't know that Mill and Cromwell were such touchy-feely lefties, so willing to follow the crowd's mediocrity, but, again, I seem to need to be corrected by a greater individual. Yours in kumbaya blather, Gregg