Let's send these volunteers with paintball guns to Afghanistan. They must be able to do a better job at subduing the Taliban than these modern-day British redcoats!

This should be a source of entertainment and amusement, rather than anything serious. I'm slow (just ask my wife), but it has finally dawned on me that if you ask specific questions, most of these people immediately go into message board hibernation. Maybe they have a good answer, but get distracted and forget to post a reply. Maybe they get hit by a truck. Who knows.

Even message board regulars won't respond to specific questions. It was a little frustrating at first, because I wanted to get a REAL response; something serious. Now I understand how this game is being played. They'll change the subject, post something different on the same topic, but won't respond with specific answers. Not gonna happen - wouldn't be prudent.

At least we can rest assured that they're still in the land of the living.

I lost a friend who had known me since grammar school this way. He had an ancestor who had been an officer in an Alabama regiment and wanted to get a list of battles for his ancestor from Manassas to Appomattox. This was long before Footnote, so I went to the library and got the information from microfilm, and was happy to do it for a long-time friend. Turns out the officer resigned at the end of a year and went home. My friend was sure that could not be correct, as he certainly served in that regiment until Lee surrendered. When I replied that his ancestor's name was no longer carried on roll, my friend suggested that his ancestor must have just continued with the regiment as a citizen volunteer (more or less like a lot of supposed Black Confederates). My friend didn't care for my explanation as to why that wouldn't work and hasn't spoken to me since.

You can tell people what they want to hear, or they will get mad, take their football and go home.

In high school algebra class, if you didn't have the right answer or simply failed to do my homework, there was a penalty. You couldn't change the topic or switch to a different question more to your liking. You had to stay after school and get it done. If that standard applied here, there would be a lot of hours to be made up after class.