Indeed. If she had voted yes -- and she has not told us if that was her intention -- then the motion would have passed, 6-3.

If she does announce anywhere that she would have voted yes, then I'm going to run through the process all over again and ask people to vote anew.

And just to be clear about one thing: I very strongly supported this motion -- and, in fact, I seconded it -- because it takes discretion AWAY from the TalkBoard president, in favor of a specified procedure that we can all see and understand. In the recent case of the rental cars motion, I felt compelled (by common sense) to clean up the motion -- changing that leftover "five" to "four," especially -- but any authority that I had to do that was implicit rather than explicit. This new motion would have provided a transparent process for moving forward without unnecessary and delaying revoting on obvious corrections and additions. We may still get that.

And disputes among TalkBoard members should not "disappoint" anybody. Any issue worthy of debate will have strong proponents on both sides. If it did not, then it would be obvious. For example, sensible people would never debate whether this is 2015. Of course it is! Debate over. If observers want nothing but agreement, then they came to the wrong place. On the other hand, we can -- and I believe that we do -- disagree without being disagreeable. The intensity of our debates is perfectly acceptable to me.

Bruce