Uh, speaking of off-topic subjects. Well I don't understand economic mechanisms very much at all. I found the popular book, _Critical Mass_ (Stephen Ball) to be most helpful. It is not actually very political, but really helpful to theorize events - especially information-based events that do relate to topics on the AIR_L list. Stephen Ball was quite a bit more helpful to me after I read the popular blockbuster, _Freakonomics_ which was fun to read but short on both philosophical and operational aspects. Cheers, Denise Denise N. Rall, PhD thesis in revision, School of Environ. Science, Southern Cross University, Lismore NSW 2480 AUSTRALIA Tuesdays: Room T2.17, +61 (0)2 6620 3577 or Mobile 0427 245 497 http://www.scu.edu.au/schools/rsm/staff/pages/drall/index.html Virtual member, Cybermetrics Group, University of Wolverhampton, UK http://cybermetrics.wlv.ac.uk/index.html __________________________________________________ Do You Yahoo!? Tired of spam? Yahoo! Mail has the best spam protection around http://mail.yahoo.com