Daniel replies:

Anthropologists, roofs...you remind me of the time I was living in an African village, and there was an anthropologist studying the tribe. She didn't know how to ask questions without prompting a specific answer. She asked a bunch of young men, ""You never lived in thatched huts, did you? They were gone in your grandfathers' time, right?"" Naturally, they told her they never had. Then when she left they began talking about how they'd steal bits of kindling from the roof, and their mothers would holler at them. ""So you all lived in thatched huts,"" I said. ""Why did you tell the anthropologist you never did?"" ""Well, what's the difference?"" they said. ""Besides she wants to think of us as modern people--so why disappoint her?"" I think she wrote a book about the tribe. Tricky business, anthropology.