I really don't care what someone may try to define as being "normal", seeing as the term is one that lacks any useful definition. Seriously, what difference does it even make? It's "normal" for a volcano to erupt, doesn't mean you wanna sit underneath it as hot lava comes towards you and not bother trying to get out of the way. Whether something is natural or not makes absolutely no difference to the consequences.

You may feel isolated but that certainly doesn't hold true for everyone. My assertion of 'we' was the correct one, things that happen in this world have wider effects than you might imagine, and if you weren't so isolated you might understand how that was true.

a) it depends on whether you have a social conscience or not

b) flooding caused by rain and flooding caused by ocean levels rising are completely different things.

Nice theory... doesn't hold in practice though. You may be in a part of the world where you've not noticed it, but I'm only 30 and have definitely seen change over my lifetime where I am. The Koch funded research that came out a week or two ago showed a 1.5 degree increase over the last 50 years. This really does make a difference.

"This means that the amount of water melting in spring does not increase (and should actually DECREASE if you believe global warming, since more warming means less snow during winter, right?)"

Nope, not right. Think about what it is that drives rain and snow... it's not cold... it's heat, without heat you don't get evaporation which means you don't get precipitation. As heat increases, so does the amount of water that evaporates, which means more water in their air, which means more precipitation. As global warming increases, so will the water cycle velocity, so we will see higher river levels in places where the water is dumped back down to earth.

Have a look at Bangladesh... have a look at its population, its projected population in 50 years, how much of it will be underwater in 50 years, and how much of its land that isn't underwater will become many times more difficult to grow anything on because of the increased salt due to being right next to what will then be ocean. We're not talking small numbers. Imagine trying to relocate half the population of the US, and you start getting an idea of what we're up against.

It's not very common but it's not unheard of, the condition's known as monophobia, which you may know already, and yes it does sound like she had it bad, possibly to the extent that it would have had an effect on her health, as persistent worrying does, increasing the chance of something like that happening. I've seen similar anxiety disorders, both self-directed or externally-directed, such as a mother who was convinced her baby wouldn't wake up again if she didn't sing a certain song to him going to sleep. The thought processes that lead to that belief are complex to say the least. One of the difficult things with a fear like that is that it is self preserving, because getting rid of the fear would expose the chance of that thing happening (eg, if she stopped thinking that she needed to sing that song for her child to ever wake up again, then she would stop, which would lead to loss of her child) which results in the putting up of defenses against having the fear dealt with, which you obviously saw first hand.

And yes these things can be very acute, and I imagine can form like synesthesias, where a crossover between two unrelated concepts forms, so the number 7 might always appear yellow. While less common, there's no reason why these can't form with higher function concepts, like the idea of being alone and the idea of personal danger. Of course, there's so many different concepts within our brains that there's a massive number of combinations of things that could result from the same thing happening... and when it is acute, the person, being otherwise of complete rational mindedness, just finds ways of dealing with that thing, or avoiding it, while living otherwise as any other "normal" person would do.

Lead by example ;-)

Is always good to see occasions where the saying "have you ever noticed that the less someone knows, the louder they know it?" is shown to not always be true, that sometimes, the knowledgeable can be noisy too :-)

I doubt anyone can code an algorithm sophisticated enough to tell whether is person is legally a child or not, let alone whether that person is being abused or not... even if these people decide it would be good to go ahead with such an idea, when they discover that what they want to do is actually impossible, the whole thing will disappear back into the void from whence it came anyway, just like every other time somebody who doesn't understand computers thinks they can be simply made to do things that are impossible (or at least not possible for the foreseeable future)

No they do not! Commies, brown people and the poor aren't "living", they're simply targets to be destroyed, and if you disagree you must be a commie, brown, or poor.

I find it anything BUT depressing! Is nice to know that no one's too big to be able to just throw their weight around, do whatever the hell they like, and be completely invulnerable to retaliation while doing so. Okay, liberating a gig of data isn't much in the way of retaliation, it doesn't exactly remove their ability to wage war, so accomplishment is between little to none, but even so, getting all depressed that Goliath is even vulnerable to stones seems to be a little divorced from reality really.

Spending? You mean printing, surely? The problem the Americans have got is that dollars aren't circulating, corps 'n financial institutions are hoarding trillians in dollars and other assets, and as wealth only adds to an economy when it changes hands, the more that gets hoarded, the less that can happen. That's why economically successful countries like Germany have high upper band tax rates, as it encourages investment as a means of tax evasion... without the high tax rate, people are more willing to pay themselves stupidly high rates, hoarding wealth and slowing down the economy.

I think you're reading what I said the way you want to. Fact of the matter is that the way Israel has behaved has been appauling, and that is a fact. Morality does not work on a 'lowest common denominator' basis, the actions of others is NOT a defence for the immorality of the actions of oneself. As it's not a defence, it must be a deflection, and I am not going to play that game with you.

"why would you say "Israel" in scare quotes and say you feel dirty but not "Syria" as well?"

Your deflection is most disingenuous. I can't put a word in quotes in I didn't even use that word, can I? So your problem is that I talked about one country, and you think that I can only talk about one country if I talk about every other country in the world as well, otherwise it's "not fair"... gonna complain that I haven't talked about Egypt or Jordan as well? Well I'm flattered that an opinion of mine isn't enough and you just need to hear more from me about surrounding areas as well, but I do suggest instead that you grow up.