I've been posting on the thread without saying thanks to you for your editorial. It's a good one.
I've stayed off the Schivao threads because the subject was and is too white hot.
As a kid of four or five I remember the first time I saw a Full Moon rising one winter. To me it looked twice as big as it should have as the atmosphere (or whatever) made it look that way coming up from the horizon. I remember feeling afraid. I thought the Moon was headed for the Earth and I was the only one who knew it.
Jump ahead twenty some years. I remember being on R&R in Hong Kong at the time the first heart transplant had been performed in South Africa. Something about the discussion of the day in newspapers and news magazines triggered the same kind of fear I had had when I was a kid. The fear probably came from all the talk about who was going to get who's heart and who would be making those kinds of decisions. Time and science has kind of sorted those things out.
I believe we are still way too close to the Schiavo fire and that our system of government will come to an acceptable conclusion (compromise). It always has before and we really don't have any alternative.