[AndrewC]

And my reference to paranoia refers to a badly expressed sense of MTBF. Anyone who worries about everyday contingencies has not done his math.

We are all going to die. How one copes with this fact is personal, but obsessive concern for contingencies over which we have no control is sick.

Saying that one relies on miracles to get through ordinary days is, at the very least, bad writing.

You still built a strawman since hosepipe never said what you infer. Relying on something does not mean excessive. I rely on my bank not to make mistakes. That does not infer I rely on my bank to make it through every day, although that might be so occasionally. Your straw man also has holes in him, since you chide hosepipe for "calculations" quote--It's rather silly to calculate the odds for things that have already happened. and you now chide anyone who has not done "calculations" quote --Anyone who worries about everyday contingencies has not done his math.

Finally, the important point, a day is not ordinary until it is over. It can be extraordinary at any point of that day.

[js1138]

I was responding to the combined rhetorical effect of “I tely on [miracles]” and “I should be dead at lease 20 times that I know positively of...”

You can parse that any way you like, but it implies that the laws of nature and probability bend around the writer of those statements. I doubt they do.