We thank all those who responded to our article: '(Re) making the Procrustean Bed: Standardization and Customizations as Competing Logic in Health Care.' (1) Each commentary engaged critically with the main ideas we presented, offering some affirmation but also taking the discussion in new (and sometimes unexpected) theoretical and empirical directions.

As we get older and accumulate knowledge, we tend to become procrustean . New information that conflicts with existing knowledge is harder to take in.

A procrustean conception of women's lives guides Khilnani's treatment of gender and readers will doubtless find other reasons to quibble with his choices.

When the current government fully implements its planned education policies, all high schools will be put on the Procrustean bed, for an "egalitarian" ground in the extreme competition for matriculation.

The question how editions should negotiate the presence of Middle Arabic elements in manuscripts is a divisive one and there has been growing dissatisfaction in some circles with the frequently adopted approach of purifying editions of these elements in order to produce a " Procrustean " conformity with the privileged norms of Classical Arabic (" Procrustean " is Joshua Blau's term, referring to Christian Arabic texts, in A Grammar of Christian Arabic, Based Mainly on South-Palestinian Texts from the First Millennium [Louvain, 1966], 1: 36 n.

(1) To this reader, this Procrustean project is less convincing than other interpretations.

Murphy's Procrustean attempt to connect the creators and their creation of the independent USAF to the ethos of the Escadrille Lafayette must also deal with the fact that the independent USAF was created by the bomber barons, not the fighter mafia.

This intuitive understanding of others, this ability to connect and relate is what made him an insightful critic, eminently respectful of texts, never subjecting them to the Procrustean bed of academic practice or the high wire of theory, able instead to illuminate the detail that alters the way we think about an author, or think tout court.

Synopsis: What do we fail to see when we force other, earlier cultures into the Procrustean bed of concepts that organize our contemporary world?

That is, for Paul there is no Procrustean God-known-apart-from-Jesus to which final appeal can be made.

Encompassing different cultural zones, Balakian's book eschews the Procrustean imputation by presenting vigorous, clear-sighted, unifying arguments.