H.Mallette...when you have waded through as many as 1,000 messages a day
about something you've done, some laudatory, many critical, usually all of
them contradictory, then you can talk to me about knee-jerk defensiveness.

Once in a while I get cranky -- especially when awaiting word on a pickup
-- but for the most part, I think I've been pretty good in all of this.

Re: language...if you're going to America from Russia as an ambassador,
you're expected to know English fluently. B5 is funded by (mostly) and
operated by Earth, and English is more or less the dominant language. Hence,
they know it well enough to communicate with us. (BTW, this is already
happening here...every airport on the planet, for example, uses english
consistently in the control tower to planes, and more people outside english-
speaking countries are educated in english than we are in alternate
languages.)

For others, there are 3 basic options: english, Centauri, and an
interstellar kind of esperanto. Failing that, mechanical translators, such as
are seen in "Legacies," are brought into service.

jms