If you haven't read "Pave the Planet", you should do so before reading this. It's not that reading the other thing will make this any more comprehensible, but it can't hurt.

What follows is an email exchange on a private mailing list between Matthew, David and the inestimable Mr. Jassid. Please keep in mind that the level of sarcasm often runs high on this mailing list. (And this was just such an occasion.)

David wrote:
More species are extinct, many times over, than are currently in existence now. 100 of which you can see at your local zoo.

To which Matthew queried:
I'm trying to understand this. Can you help?

And to which Sir Jassid replied:
No. Who knows what it means.

To which David clarified:
Opps! My bad. I didn't understand at first what it was that you didn't understand. But now I understand what you didn't understand. I wrote something that I understood, but you couldn't understand because when I re-read what I had written I thought I understood it, but now I realize that it was not understandable to you or me. Now that I understand what you didn't understand I'll explain in a way that I think you can understand.

(Was I drooling?)

I was thinking of the species which are "currently in existence now" when I wrote "100 of which you can see at your local zoo." Unfortunately,for everyone who's waded through this post, I goofed since it came out as meaning "you can see 100 extinct species at your local zoo."

Do you understand now?