I remember the doodlebugs. Of course since I was only five or six at the time, they were just fun. Which is a tribute to my mother, I suppose.

Quakers are the fellas for silence. Have you ever noticed that, if you're in a meeting with Quakers, when it gets hairy and divided and generally acrimonious, they tend to call for a minute's silence, or maybe a bit longer - and when things start up again it tends to go a bit better.

I think we could do with something like that here sometimes - but I can't see how we'd work it. But in a sense, we've already got it built in, by the nature of the way we post. I see Max is toying with a chat room - now that I think might get a bit overaerated, and something like a silence mechanism would be needed at times.