Thanks John; thanks Klaus. Responding to Klaus: >>That said, $("a").not( $("#nav a") ) is not supposed to work if I understood >>that correctly.
Having reread the spec, I agree with you, but oddly $("a").not( $ ("#nav a") ) DID work as I expected it to. No matter. Your final suggestion works too. And the Too Much Recursion error is largely irrelevant because an alert isn't what I really want to do here anyway. I'll be posting a new problem shortly :^p