Hi, This will hopefully lighten the tense situation in the mailing list.

Poem by Ogden Nash: The cow is of the bovine ilk One end moo, the other end milk

Ilk was a synonym for same in the middle ages but now means type or kind. That being said, at the risk of being impugned, I think that Mr Paul Vogel's usage of the word ilk is jarring and incorrect. Mohan Ravichandran