Okay, let's eliminate the likelihood of being attacked at the head. How about all those broken necks in history? It's possible to die of a flailed chest, but I bet broken necks are more common, what with the neck/head basically being a fleshy ball on a chain.

The lizard-brain thing with the spinal cord is just an alarm system, really. The impulse from your fingertip travels to your spine, and under certain circumstances, it cuts through the red tape and says FIRE!!! rather than just passing along the message to the brain and waiting for a response. Thus, you lift your finger off the stove before you're really conscious that it's hot.

Unless you're talking about something else?

Defamer cheerfully misunderstands fic and slash.

Considering the entire article is four, maybe five sentences long, they've managed to pack an impressive amount of stupid and sloppy into such a tiny little space.

Hah. Went back and checked. Just three sentences. Now the stupid is even more amazing!

they've managed to pack an impressive amount of stupid and sloppy into such a tiny little space.

See also: my mother in law.

How about all those broken necks in history? It's possible to die of a flailed chest, but I bet broken necks are more common, what with the neck/head basically being a fleshy ball on a chain.

I can see this eliminating more accidental deaths. Are you eliminating the head entirely, or just moving the brain down? If you keep the head, then you've added distance between eyes and ears to the big computer -- will there be latency considerations?

For malicious deaths, I don't think it'd make one that much safer.

Are you still encasing the CPU in bone? How will that work with the skeletal system--are you enlarging the torso to accomodate? Where would the brain go? Tucked somewhere below the diaphragm? There's a lot of motion in the torso. Do we want the brain in motion even when the body is at rest?

I think the fragile brain on a stem thing makes sense on the "wouldn't want to live like that" front. Before modern medicine how many brain injured people actualy DID?

[Please note: I'm not suggesting brain injured people should not live. I'm suggesting that for hunter gatherers (or bunny rabbits for that matter) to take care of community members with disrupted higher functions likely didn't work so many critters evolved on an "all or nothing" track higher-function wise.]

I'm pretty sure some insects have brain functions in their torsos or knees or whatnot, but evolution didn't branch that way for any of the mammals. Must be some pressure not to.

And, really, how often are people attacked and decapitated?

I was watching Farenheit 9/11 for the first time last night (I put off watching it for so long because my own depression was so bad that the real world reasons to be depressed were too much to add on) and they showed a clip of a public beheading in Jedda, Saudi Arabia. I thought they'd pull away from the actual beheading, but they didn't. The executioner did *not* get it on the first swing.

I imagine the head was a better target in the days of swordplay than it is now.

Must be some pressure not to.

Same pressure that gave us the knee? I figure sometimes stuff just works well enough to not have the species die out. Get us as far as sapience, and we'll start picking up the slack.

I imagine the head was a better target in the days of swordplay than it is now.

It's still really hard to pull off the in-combat decapitation, though. Unless you're a Macleod.

Well, I'm glad for the head because the face is one of the first physical things that attracts me about a person. And otherwise we'd have to say "giving chest" or something.