This electronic medium has enabled us to air their differences in the month after Powell's original article appeared - and to air them without being restricted by space. We hope that other authors will avail themselves of this possibility. Barry Powell has described his original article as a fat balloon. We believe that description best describes the sort of material that Electronic Antiquity should also carry. We all need tenure and we all need promotion post tenure - balloons may not suit all deans.
Balloons run the risk of error.
But they do stimulate debate. A careful, well documented article is usually conservative. It will get into a tolerable journal, cheer the author up, and be read by his or her friends and the journal's editors and referees. Thence it will disappear into the great sea of unread articles. It probably has no especial purchase on truth, nor does it provoke thought, nor does it advance the discipline.