Right, Joe. Here's what you said.

-Every once in a while, Steve Shaw posts a snippet of something that makes me think he's almost on the brink of understanding all this. Example: What makes it all even worse is that you only tell them all this because you happened to be born here. Had you been born in India the story would be different....[etc.]

But then he posts another twenty posts that show he still doesn't have a clue.

Now as an aficionado of English as she is both spoken and written, I'm just going to hang on to that little word "then" in that last bit there. To me, and to anyone else with even a vague mastery of this fine language of ours, that little "then" denotes something to follow in temporal terms Steve's quoted "snippet." So I went back and counted the number of posts I made in this thread between the snippet in question and Joe's post referring to it. It is eight. Just the eight, Joe.

Joe, you accused me a little while back of not understanding plain English or something, playing the dunce, etc.,something along those lines. Well I must say I ought to thank you for this oh so erudite illustration of your far superior powers over mine apropos of our beloved tongue (it's sacred to me). An alternative explanation has just occurred to me, however. You have deliberately presented us with a myth about my postings out of which we are to glean deeper truths. As eight can become twenty, so one God can become three people. Saying the mythological twenty instead of the truthful eight is so much more honest Ah yes, I can see it now. That'll be it. Thus endeth Joe's lesson in how to present deep and sacred truths. Tell fibs and expect the flock to dig among them for the truth! Cle-ver!