That ecological embrace should recommend the reality that we are all vulnerable in an instant, and in no less a manner than all those hundreds-of-billions of other creatures who are at our mercy.

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Most people would rather not scrape by on a nutritional bare minimum, especially if cancer or a car accident could come and steal it all away in an instant.

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It all ended in an instant Friday morning, when, authorities say, 20-year-old Adam Lanza went into Sherlach's school and killed her and 25 others, including 20 young students.

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Also, of course, if you leave the euro, suddenly all debts are denominated in euros, but all income is in relatively less valuable drachmas: you get an instant debt spiral.

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Their views can change in an instant, casting all the existing numbers into oblivion.

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Rather, such fiscal uncertainty mirrors the very mechanisms we least understand, namely, the destructive powers of nature herself, whose all too earthly ferocity can turn upside down in an instant every philosophy, economic engine and ethic.

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They stretch us out into empathy, and all we can do is feel for these strangers who in an instant feel like family.

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Fuelling all such discussion is the unavoidable fact that in an age of instant communications, offences to Muslim sensitivity, such as the cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad published in a Danish newspaper, can easily trigger a global chain reaction, causing everything from murderous riots in Pakistan to a collapse of European exports to Muslim countries.

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It's possible that all of these companies are getting knocked for the outside potential that their drugs could vanish in an instant (see: " Drug Patent Peril").

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