From crisica@idt.net Sun Oct 31 03:43:19 1999 Received: from mxu1.u.washington.edu (mxu1.u.washington.edu [140.142.32.8]) by lists.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.09) with ESMTP id DAA21662 for ; Sun, 31 Oct 1999 03:43:18 -0800 Received: from u1.farm.idt.net (root@u1.farm.idt.net [169.132.8.10]) by mxu1.u.washington.edu (8.9.3+UW99.09/8.9.3+UW99.08) with ESMTP id DAA05274 for ; Sun, 31 Oct 1999 03:43:18 -0800 Received: from 18spd (ppp-40.ts-3-bay.nyc.idt.net [169.132.216.136]) by u1.farm.idt.net (8.9.3/8.9.2) with SMTP id GAA20875 for ; Sun, 31 Oct 1999 06:43:16 -0500 (EST) Reply-To: From: "Christopher Robbins" To: Subject: RE: "Classics from a Christian Perspective" Date: Sun, 31 Oct 1999 06:54:31 -0500 Message-ID: MIME-Version: 1.0 Content-Type: text/plain; charset="iso-8859-1" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit X-Priority: 3 (Normal) X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook IMO, Build 9.0.2416 (9.0.2910.0) In-Reply-To: X-MimeOLE: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 In re the above subject and the 10/30/99, 5:40 PM, posting which extended the colloquy of BMc and DL (inter alia) on the homeschooling component thereof: I would suggest that there are no surveys, no polls, no sampling procedures, no election results, no means whatsoever of attempting to determine "what people want" that is as consistently accurate and as overwhelmingly rooted in empirical foundation as the market communication mechanism. That it has flaws is obvious, but it is also relentlessly self-correcting over time (be that for better or worse). One would likely be better served to take the offerings of the outlets and channels of the homeschooler trade for that which in fact it is: a partially flawed but nonetheless so fundamentally accurate an expression of what the homeschooler consumer market really "wants" that no other method of indication even compares to it, least of all one individual's seat-of-the-pants opinion or his or her hopeful self-projection. Christopher Robbins New York City crisica@idt.net .