That's one thread I stayed out of because I was short on time.
I woke up this morning thinking about global warming though, what causes it, how it will change my life and that of kids and their kids, etc....the mass migration of large percentages of the population, the food shortages, etc...

How just the lack of CARE for the planet with our government cow-towing to certain financial interests and allowing them to pollute at will for that big old buck. Even if that's not the reason for it, it's just the way the old Mighty Dollar and it's greed for it walks over the care of the land and it's rivers that's a point in itself.

But you know, ER.......your sensitivity is showing.
Something must have made you want to dip your pole in the HZ pond. We're a seasoned bunch over here. We've been hazed, and hazed again.
Some of us get bigger boxer gloves. Some of us leave and never come back. Some take time off and then laugh at some remark between opponents and jump right back in. I'm not saying that none of this is real; it's very real and very personal.

But after awhile, you KNOW a person's on-line personna, and what to expect. It becomes a safe sparring pit, a small slice of the world outside and what we have to encounter. This job doesn't require any qualifications except a right to dream and to argue, create and deny.
It doesn't pay well, and it can leave you with indigestion, but there are times when it's a feast, or a vacation or a expression of the soul.
You can't even begin to put a price on that.

I have a love/hate relationship with this place too.
Hate it because it eats up so much of my time (willingly, I might add), hate it because I get mad, or feel insulted, but I'm still here.
And the Zone is the only place I inhabit on a regular basis where I bare my soul.