Matthew Hunter writes: Actually, tradition is useful in precisely those situations where we do not understand its genesis or the context in which it originated. That is, tradition is the force that argues for continuing to do things the way that *is known to work* (at least, for evolutionary values of "work") rather than changing something that we think we understand as being safe to change... but are not necessarily correct. A scientific people would prefer to understand why things are done a certain way, not necessarily to change it, but to see if there is room for improvement. You'll never see me argue with results, and i do lots of things by tradition at work (one example is the classic "sync && sync && reboot"), but i'd rather understand what's going on behind it. You should try to understand the root causes of a particular tradition before advocating it be tossed out, but that understanding is not required in order for the tradition to be useful; in fact, the tradition is most useful in the absence of understanding. You're almost implying, it seems, that once you understand the process behind a tradition, you destroy the tradition, much in the way that explaining a joke destroys the joke. rone -- "I don't even know you. What if you're a psycho?" "Would a psycho waste the last of his triple-sec?" -- RICHH