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I really love the way everyone's (I mean everyone's, mine included) voices go all squeaky soaring up into the pomposphere as we get into the Big Ones, the What's It All About threads, with abstractions tumbling over each other like sheep in a flock. It reminds me of the brief period in the early '70s when librarians got terribly worried about their "role" and their "image" (it was just after the Smirnoff advert - decadent party animal under caption "I Was The Mainstay of the Public Library until I Discovered Smirnoff" - which was deemed to be an affront to "our" professional dignity...) and set up groups like "Librarians For Social Change" and went all generalising and theoretical about what is, essentially, a very practical job. And the rows we had! Never a hint of respect for differences... So-an-so's analysis is essentially revisionist, out with them! Wassname's response to the response to the planning document needs its i's and t's fixing up! Don't dig it there, dig it elsewhere, you're digging it round and it ought to be square! Heady stuff - not to much purpose perhaps, but didn't we have fun, fiddling while the various parts of our several estates burned? Don't get me wrong, I like a bit of ethics as well as anyone, wouldn't miss it for the world - but at the end of the day there's a job to be done, and in its realities - I believe - are our individual and collective salvations, poetry or librarianship, sorry, Information Science as it became known out of all that agony... Yup, the IT world is, I'm told, pretty largely built on the work of the police (who developed interface for obvious reasons - evening officer!) and the military (internet). Makes you think eh? There's a couple of good purposive professions where everyone stands in line with a unified intent... RC %%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%%