I'm a brand new participant, so perhaps I'm out-of-line, inappropriate, arrogant, or don't understand the true nature and function of this forum, but I am very, very disappointed that Gavriel Salomon has found it necessary to withdraw from participation because of the sheer volume of messages. If this is impertinent to someone out there who is my better, so be it. If I unfairly judge messages I have not read, I apologize, but it seems to me that we should re-examine the content of some of our messages. Is all of the casual crosstalk, sometimes valuable admittedly, really valuable enough to compensate for the loss of this very important intellectual voice? It will take a very persuasive argument to convince me that it is.