It's rather unlikely that an individual with diagnosed shellfish allergy, which in some cases is limited in scope but in cases of severe reaction is more frequently quite broad in scope, could reasonably attribute gastric distress following grasshopper (invertebrate) ingestion to psychosomatic causes. Please reference ample documentation of anaphylaxis following ingestion of grasshoppers.

Restaurant menus generally inform customers of the visually identifiable components of a dish. Wait staff in establishments offering seafood, at least those who have been doing their job for more than a couple of days, are generally aware of shellfish allergies and the consequences of consuming such things for customer who are allergic. Wait or kitchen staff who would proceed to simply remove shellfish from the plate served to a customer, and subsequently attempt to serve the same dish again, should be terminated.

No, it seems the GP has a shellfish allergy, which can result in problems ranging from mild discomfort to anaphylactic shock and death. Exposure to the bodily fluids of shellfish can elicit the same response. People with such issues may also exhibit adverse reactions after consuming other invertebrates, such as insects.

He's not getting anything you're trying to say, so you might as well give up on him now.

The course you've set for the future of the planet is by no means set in stone. Loss of our magnetic field is one possible factor in the course, but is not a certainty and there is plenty of discord on the topic. Go ahead and cite recent sources if you're so certain of your position on this, and be sure to look for dissenting views while you're at it.

I never said we don't have a major problem with special interests on the "pro-carbon" side of the aisle getting undeserved benefits; quite to the contrary, I agree with you on that point. That's money that should absolutely be reallocated to better causes. Saying one thing doesn't mean a person believes something entirely different, and you'd do well to take caution before assuming such things, as it tends to make reasonable discussion difficult and may result in your position being taken less seriously than it otherwise would.

The point here is that we have hordes of immediate problems in society that no reasonable person would say he doesn't care about, but that statement of caring rings hollow when it isn't backed by money and action. Instead, we as a society seem to like to adopt elitist, knee-jerk, "favorite sports team" style positions on matters that may be fairly described as extraordinarily difficult to even get agreed quantification on. Meanwhile, kids are living under bridges in our nation's cities, and folks are dropping dead from chronic disease at relatively young ages left and right.

Do you want to carry on with your knee-jerk reactions and stay in your comfortable little bubble, where you can safely think about things on a time scale that ranges from 50 to perhaps hundreds of years or more, or do you want to take a moment to consider that maybe your energy might be better placed somewhere else, some place that might make a different on matters that are killing millions of people right now? Should you choose the former, don't worry, you'll be the company of most of the rest of society. I suppose that's some consolation at least.

Yes, there is a long term trend to remove nearly all CO2 from the atmosphere. However, your lack of reading comprehension ability has resulted in your failure to note the part where I said "won't be a concern for billions of years." Try again.

You're absolutely right. People love to complain about Big Industry concerns related to fossil fuel production and consumption, but they don't seem so inclined to talk about the sprawling industries built around various forms of alternative energy production (with all their spectacular fiscal abuses, corruption, and failures of other sorts), climate change studies, government programs to research and produce reams of new legislation every few years, etc. Meanwhile, our society continues to be okay with current death rates from an assortment of diseases and widespread famine. People say they care about those things, but their focus and money say otherwise. Apparently, it's cooler (no pun intended) to care about CO2 levels in the atmosphere than it is to do a better job of dealing with things that are killing millions of people right now.

CO2 levels have fluctuated a *lot* in our planet's history. The amount of time we've spent measuring these concentrations is tiny by comparison. The long term trend for our planet, human influence aside, appears likely to be a virtual elimination of atmospheric CO2 as it becomes trapped in landmasses. This of course would result in the elimination of most terrestrial life on Earth as we know it, and won't be a concern for billions of years, but it is the likely trajectory nonetheless.

That's a rather poor example. In the case you've cited, parents are responsible for what their children are exposed to, and should be the most significant force in their lives of those children when it comes to offering alternatives to things like fast food. We don't generally watch television in our household. Also, I don't know many eight year olds who are permitted to run around town by themselves. Perhaps it's different where you live. Then there's also the angle of allowing children to make their own decisions at various stages, but with open discussion of what's happening in lives of those children. I'm a parent, and I practice what I'm preaching here. Are you a parent?

You should read the GP again. He wasn't disagreeing with your position or advocating use of a rolling release.

You can run an official Google Chrome build on Debian/Ubuntu/Fedora/openSUSE. You can also run XFCE on current releases of these distros. What functionality is missing from any of the available mail clients available in their repositories? All these things are supported with current security and bug fix updates as well. It seems you're complaining about nothing.

Debian 7 is less than 24 hours into being the stable version, and went into release freeze status less than a year ago (2012-06-30). I'm endlessly amused by what people consider "old" these days.

"Best practices" is such a wonderful term; its sheer flexibility permits the person invoking it to assure his audience that he meant exactly what he said, even when he didn't say much of substance.

Now if you'll excuse me, I'm late for a game of bullshit bingo.

A whole bunch of the folks who aren't paying federal income taxes also aren't paying state income taxes. I see you've nicely dodged the point regarding people paying their fair share in general, though. Most people would consider fair to be a number greater than zero.