Sometimes I need to remind myself just why I'm spending so much time trying to make sense of other people's data, and why I go on (and on) about identifiers. One reason for my obsession is I want data to be "sticky", like the burrs shown in the photo above (Who invented velcro? by A-dep). Shared identifiers are like the hooks on the burrs, if two pieces of data have the same identifier they will stick together.