Yep, we are saying the same thing -- perhaps in different accents, but basically the same thing. At least the way you interpret the Things is the way I meant to explain them. As far as interfaces go, I'm not sure if I agree with the uber-dynmaticity of it all, but that's the way classes in Ruby work...you test to see if something responds to a particular function, rather than seeing if an object is_a particular thing. Again, I'm not sure I totally buy it, but it's an interesting idea.