Catfish, I have to thank you.

I've been wanting -- for purposes that have nothing at all to do with the PoolForum -- to have a great, real-world example of contemporary post-modern reasoning: ie, 'there is nothing that's completely true, and I'm absolutely sure of that!'.

My older son had collected several examples from some of his professors several years back, but that was second hand. Yours is first hand, 'in your own words' so to speak and not enveloped in an academic context. I especially liked the way that you criticized some of the data sources for incompleteness, or for failing to screen data-selection errors (with some validity) and then turned around and noted (with exceptional validity) that
Yes, I play fast and loose with conjecture . . .
Who could argue with you, on that last point?

You are articulate, bright, and irrational -- a truly potent mix, and one that has become increasingly common as non-scientific higher education has abandoned rationality, except as a garnish or as a ploy in debate.

As for specific rebuttal of some of your claims, that will be hard to do coherently, since your claims and ideas are so scattered and directionless, but again, for the sake of the lurkers and Google, we'll try to take it up later when things are less busy.

I assume there's no functional urgency: it appears that don't have a pool problem, or even a pool, at present.

Gratefully yours,

PoolDoc