> > Is proof of *existing* harm really necessary?

> How can you ask such a question?  Of course it's necessary!
> Otherwise, we're arguing about how many angels can dance on the head
> of a pin.

Forgive me for prolonging the subject line, but I have an absolutely useless
bit of trivia STRAINING AT MY FOREHEAD TO ESCAPE.

The origin of the "how many angels can dance on the head of a pin" question
turns out to have been a medieval debate on whether angels were corporeal
or purely spiritual; some wag noted that if the latter were the case, then
*ALL* angels could dance on the head of a pin (so the only two interesting
answers are 0 or infinity), and this rather clever formulation has outlived
the actual argument and been stripped of meaning.

One might opine that modern quantum physics is suffering the same problem,
with lots of amusing descriptions of problems being repeated without the
context and leading people to believe very odd things about physics.

Sorry about the digression.  We now rejoin our petty bickering already in
progress.   :-)