I wonder whether I should change my username to be consistent with the meta post. :-)

Seeing how much was written about this single question, it's hard to add something reasonable without fear of getting into very long exchange.

> By the way, my "off-topic" post is no longer there. But I am sure you guys still have it somewhere. Feel free to go and see what happened. I can only give an abbreviated account here, leaving out many details.

@ThinkingTorus You should be able to access the post here: Prove that a loop around a hole can not deform continuously to a point.

Even if a post is deleted, if you have a link you can see it if you are author of the post (and you're logged into your account).