Rambling remarks on being a generalist-- it doesn't pay, you have to want to be one. It means being interested in a number of subjects, and knowing how enormous and unknowable every subject turns out to be. As one such enormous subject, I arbitrarily talk about the history of Rome, and the Roman empire. But that is one of many enormous histories. And indeed, Rome is one of many empires that have existed. Wikipedia lists HUNDREDS of empires, each with its own enormous history. ERROR: Cicero was murdered not by Julius Caesar but by Augustus Caesar, when he was still called Octavian. As in the Shakespeare play, Mark Antony's faction (including Octavian) was an enemy of Brutus' faction. But nobody wanted democracy any more, it was too late. === The friend whose name I forgot is Michael Travers. His article on the politics of knowledge representation and ontologies-- http://www.ai.sri.com/~travers/onto-revised.pdf