I know what you mean about shitslinging being a form of fun and agree to a point, though I think the worst form of it has been damaging to the discourse and a factor in where we find ourselves. On YouTube it's all but inescapable. On an MSNBC video you expect it, but you can't be checking out an Indian music video without stumbling on the vilest racism. I spent the past three years or so researching a book about the prehistory of jazz and by the end was getting to think the progress made in the second half of the 20th century really is being reversed and we're sliding back to the times I was writing about. Doubtless this stuff has never gone away and what the internet has done is drag it into the open. But it's done more, amplifying it and giving it a spurious legitimacy (because freedom of speech). Anyway, after that little blast I'll say you don't read at all rusty to me, keep up the great work and power to your dexterous pen.