when you tell people things they don't want to hear, for their own good, you need to _expect_ that they will react badly. it simply comes with the territory. and if you persist, their reaction will likely persist. the best you can hope for, in some situations, is that everyone comes to learn something from the process. it is with some sadness, then, that i must now admit something i have actually known for quite some time. i rarely learn much of anything at all from jim adcock, and he seemingly never learns a thing from me either. for a while it was ok, because i turned it pedagogical, but nobody else is learning anything any more either, because jim never brings anything new to the table... so although i always take such action with reluctance, it's time for me to concede that the proper course now is for me to put jim in my kill-filter. sorry about that. such action is a last resort. but at times it's necessary. what it means for everyone else is that i will no longer respond to any points that jim makes, because i simply won't see them. so if jim makes some point that _you_ would like to see me respond to, you'll have to rephrase the point in your own words and point it at me directly. it won't work to simply copy-and-paste jim's message, because his "points" are usually so dull that they must be sharpened first, and they are usually so fuzzy that they could be sharpened in any one of a dozen ways, and my already-too-long posts become unbearable... besides, it's tedious to take one vague sentence and polish it into a dozen possible interpretations only to see _each_ of those interpretations defeated by logic. most of us are too busy for such a pointless exercise. so boil it down to a good question, and i assure you i _will_ have an answer. jim's never stumped me yet. except on the question of "what is this guy thinking?" i can never figure that out. so it's time to stop trying. -bowerbird