Even when Tom makes comments to me about one of my as yet unproven postulates, or some small slight or some other comment which could be deem derogatory, I've never sensed a particular contempt or disdain, but rather it seems more akin to resignation or frustration. Usually one can sense his satisfaction and amusement at his own retort. ;-)

If Tom really had such contempt for the posters here, why would he spend time here?

Perhaps Tom needs to use the ;-) which I employ constantly just to show I'm not all hot and heavy about some topic. When talking to folks with words only, they can't hear the intonations and some folks simply have no "sarcasm" or "witticism" detection in place to perceive when posters are playing devil's advocate, etcetera.

Perhaps it's his prolific posting that is somewhat intimidating. I suppose if I were more liberal and posted liberal agit-prop to the boards, I might start to dread the unavoidable shoe pounding and finger thwapping from Tom each time I made a post.

So the answer is simple - everyone just needs to avoid posting liberal agit-prop that triggers the Tom rebuttal!

;-)