Well I for one do tend to stray from topics, but I have found over the long run (in my life at least) that it's turned out to be vastly more fertile in terms of spurring new thought, odd connection and productive invention, to treat certain 'barriers' as elastic.
Yes I do feel a little guilty from time to time, but usually people are more forgiving.
As for this particular thread, the further derailment of discussing how we discuss it is a little like derailing an argument to argue about how it's being argued... it rarely produces anything substantive or constructive, and in this case it appears to have further caused the retraction or withdrawal of some absolute gems of information. -Far from increasing the concentration of 'value', or improving the 'signal-to-noise' ratio, it seems to have added yet more fluff to wade through, and pulled most of the meat from the bones. -Counterproductive, I'd say.
I have -over the course of my short life thus far- probably met and delighted in the company of more interesting people who stray from subject to subject for which they feel a passion, than people who stick stringently to the matter at hand. "Delight" is a very carefully chosen word in this instance.
Peter, I'll send you a PM, if you're interested.
Keith
