Learning to love the moon

from Slate:
To explain the relationship of the moon to Earth, a reader named David sent me this moon mechanics link. Brian Crosby, an astrophysicist, points out that we on Earth rely on the moon in the most basic ways:

"First, without the moon, terrestrial life on Earth likely wouldn't exist, as the lack of tides and tidal zones would have deprived the planet of a necessary transition point for life from the ocean to pass onto dry ground.

Second, without the moon to stabilize the axis of rotation of the Earth, precession would regularly leave half the planet constantly exposed to the sun and half constantly in shadow. The environmental havoc would [be] immense, if not catastrophic to life."