G'Day again Paul, That e-mails have been "delivered" does not mean that the recipient has read them or even opened them. This point has clearly passed you by, but hopefully is now settled. You state that you "don't know that [you] have any responsibility to explain to anyone why [you] ask a reasonable question in a forum such as this, ..." This forum is run by Steven and myself and if either or both of us consider your question to be deliberately belittling to a respected and valuable member of this forum, then you are required to explain yourself. If you do not, then you will be barred from contributing further or simply thrown off. I hope that I make myself clear on this point, too. I also hope that this puts an end to both issues and that we can look forward to your posting of the puzzle. Whether you decide to apologise to Robert for the obvious insinuation you were making, I leave to your discretion. One more thing, however. I did not find the tensor calculus of General Relativity to be "easy" and I know of no one in my year at university who did. Certainly Einstein himself did not find it "easy," since he hired a professional mathematician to do it for him. You might also like to research what Albert Einstein's Ph.D. consisted of. Best wishes, Neville. Paul Deema <paul_deema@xxxxxxxxxxx> wrote: Neville J Thanks for your immediate response to my last request re the puzzle and for your permission. I've been to my 'Sent' folder and extracted the three messages in question, and from the headers I also extracted the 'From' and 'To' lines all of which I've shown below together with your response (to which I am now responding). If you did not receive the earliest (to ntj005@xxxxxxxxxxx - address extracted from the header of one of your messages eg From: "Dr. Neville Jones" <ntj005@xxxxxxxxxxx>) then the second, to the open forum, I would have thought, would have elicited a puzzled response. Since it did not, I'm sure you can see why I deduced either preoccupation or apathy on your part. None were returned as not delivered, so I had presumed that they were in fact delivered. Concerning my question to Robert B about his PhD. This is at least the third time I've sought this information -- all requests either ignored or not answered. I don't know that I have any responsibility to explain to anyone why I ask a reasonable question in a forum such as this, but since I have no ulterior motive, I did this because I wished to know if the qualification was in any way relevant to the subject under discussion. You see there are quite a few people in this world who obtain a PhD from a questionable institution in an 'easy' subject, ... --------------------------------- New Yahoo! Mail is the ultimate force in competitive emailing. Find out more at the Yahoo! Mail Championships. Plus: play games and win prizes.