I think that's a very sensible approach, leeneia. I find that things generally work out somewhere in between the wild extremes of "the very best" and "the absolute worst" possible scenarios.

Well, lunch was great! And now I have song circle to look forward to.

Ebbie - Scientific fact-finders? Yeah, I have a reasonable amount of confidence in those people...up to a point. But they have sometimes proven to be in error, and they have sometimes been found to have been serving a hidden agenda themselves...usually one driven by their political leaders or their bosses or their primary funding sources...or just the general blind spots of their own culture and time. Rigid thinkers and maintain-the-status-quo aficionados are found among scientists too. Thus, although I have great respect for their expertise, I know darned well that they are not infallible nor are they totally dependable. I pay close attention to what they say, but I don't take it as gospel, no more than I would take any other supposedly authoritative source as unquestionable gospel.

I just give them fair consideration, as I would any other authoritative source. Everyone's got their own notions about what is an authoritative source, but that's one hell of a big subject, so I'm not even going to get into it. Not today, anyway.