Whew! Didn’t know this would take so much work. Don’t know which forum to post on. All I wanted to do was say that I was pleased to find The Straight Dope when I asked a question on Google. We followed Cecil when we lived in Chicago in the “New Reader’s Press” and have his books. Since we moved to CA we haven’t found regular access to The Straight Dope and I was delighted to come across this site.
Welcome aboard! … sorry that you had a problem with posting, you’ll get used to it fairly quickly. And if you post something in the wrong forum, a moderator will be happy to move it. If you suspect that you might have posted in the wrong forum, just REPORT your post (click on the ! in the little red triangle in upper right corner of post) and tell the moderators, and they’ll move it. No prob at all. The purpose of the forums is to try to keep similar discussions in one place.
Anyhow, you should find hours of catching up on Cecil’s columns in the Archives, and we’re glad to have you join in the interesting (and often weird) discussions here on the Message Boards.