Why don't any of these stories acknowledge the abundance of nuclear power, and how relatively simple it would be to switch over to batteries on a nuclear-powered electric grid?

That's interesting, and makes sense. It makes me yearn for a world penned by Mitch Hedberg in which the entire population subsisted on bananas, where yellow meant 'go ahead', green meant 'whoa, hold on', and red meant where the fuck did you get that banana?'.

It's not giving up in the sense of not doing anything, but in the sense of abandoning scientific progress. We are innovators, that's how we evolved and that's how we continue to evolve. Turning our backs to progress will not move us forward, it will only delay whatever problems are plaguing us.

History is overflowing with examples. Every time technology creates new problems, it solves them. Sometimes it helps to take a step back or ease off the throttle, but we are, at heart, tool users, and the more advanced we become, the more versatile and effective our tools become, allowing us to solve more and more…

The environmental problems our lifestyles cause, such as non-renewable resource depletion. Living off the grid is a simple way to solve those problems, but we sacrifice a lot in the process. I have no problem sacrificing convenience, but knowledge is too important.

Intellectual stimulation is of utmost importance. Sorry. I can't throw away millennia of easily-accessible knowledge for the sake of environmental impact concerns. I will continue living in the Information Age and find a solution by moving forward with the knowledge available to me, as we have always done, rather than…

Fair point. That's not to say it can't persist in some form, just that it doesn't as far as we can tell. Of course, to someone unfamiliar with the internet and cloud storage, it would be easy to conclude that a crashed computer means all the data is gone. If they didn't know where to look for it, they wouldn't find it.

There is a distinction between physiological and psychological functions. For example, a severed corpus callosum is physiological, whereas a hysterical illness is psychological. While it's not a perfect analogy, it's pretty similar to hardware vs software. If the soul exists, it is likely psychological/software.

Stories such as Steve's are the most interesting to me. He gives a very simple, straightforward account that doesn't guess at anything, like a proper police report. We need more accounts like his.

Could it be that the brain and the soul are not exclusive concepts? For example, the brain might be the equivalent of hardware whereas the soul is the equivalent of software.

He just blue himself.

Reading this article reminded me of a Star Wars novel I read a long time ago in which one of the characters asked if the red dots on an unfamiliar radar represented enemies, to which another character replied that red represented enemies everywhere, because humans bleed red. I can't help but wonder if that, as well as…

What fascinates me even more than the technology they had was the technology they didn't have—and got along just fine without. It goes to show that progress is not one great push, but a thousand individual fronts moving at their own speed.

I'm not sure we can prove or disprove a soul until we decide on what it is (or what it's supposed to be). All I know for sure is that eBay won't let you sell yours.

I'm not sure what you think you mean by "super-abundant". Water is not very accessible in most of the Solar System, and it makes much more sense to land on a planet whose surface is comprised of it rather than to attempt drilling through possibly miles of crust for ice on the surface of Mars or the moon. The ability…

The more basic a substance is, the more likely it is that it will be of value to creatures vastly different from ourselves. Just about the only thing we can say for certain about alien species is that they'll be working with the same set of elements we are, since they are observed to be more or less consistent…

Invasive species moving into new ecosystems strive to adapt and expand on principle; most invasive species do not seek out a specific target, instead targeting whatever is in their path, which may or may not be predetermined. While advanced behavioral patterns would be almost impossible to predict, basic survival…

Talk about vision; Kuiper and Nash not only demonstrated the existence of flat tori, but also predicted Pac-Man in the 50s.

I know that many tribes that far north eat everything raw (which makes sense; flammable substances aren't the most plentiful commodity across much of the tundra). I'm guessing the poison accumulated in certain organs, which they knew not to eat, or that it steadily diluted after dealing the necessary damage, to the…

The frozen body of Richard Brooks needs to be found drifting in an icy lake after a girl he was trying to kidnap locked him out of his car.