  This paper seeks to synthesize much recent work on the HTSC materials around
the latest energy resolved scanning tunnelling microscopy (STM) results from
Davis and coworkers. The conductance diffuse scattering results in particular
are employed as point of entry to discuss bosonic modes, both of condensed and
uncondensed form. The bosonic mode picture is essential to understanding an
ever growing range of observations within the HTSC field. The work is expounded
within the context of the negative-U, boson-fermion modelling long advocated by
the author. This general approach is presently seeing much theoretical
development, into which I have looked to couple many of the experimental
advances. While this formal theory is not yet sufficiently detailed to cover
adequately all the experimental complexities presented by the real cuprate
systems, it is clear it affords very appreciable support to the line taken. An
attempt is made throughout to clarify why and how it is that these novel
phenomena are tied so very closely to this particular set of materials.
