I exchanged personal emails with him enough times that I'm 90% certain this sad link refers to the poster we knew as Nosoul, among other names. I hope I'm wrong, but there are just too many details that match what I knew about him, both from his long posting history on Beliefnet and what little I received via email.

I got a shiver up my spine when I realized that his last post as "Don't Be Captious" was on the day the guy in the link died, and there's no way he would have started a thread and then not returned after so many replies. It's got to be him.

Bummer. At least it explains why he hasn't posted for years.

Also worrisome for me was that he died of a heart attack while only a few years younger than me, and I recently found out I have frighteningly high cholesterol levels. I was already keen to fix that, am even more so now!

www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsminer/obit...

I am strangely really depressed about this. I don't know why.

Maybe because I am reminded about my own mortality.

Aye, a shame. Here we have missed him all this time but did not know why.

He is on my short list of the best of people, as are you two.

As a 73-year-old, however, I am not reminded of mortality; I am already keenly aware. I hope to go as honorably as did Fiterman.

F5,

Thanks so much for posting the link.  It was great to learn how much he had done in his short life.  He was strongly cerebral guy -- but now we now he was likewise; a strong and physical man.

I surely benefited from contact with Nosoul and his points of view.

Apr 22, 2012 -- 4:07PM, Faustus5 wrote:

I exchanged personal emails with him enough times that I'm 90% certain this sad link refers to the poster we knew as Nosoul, among other names. I hope I'm wrong, but there are just too many details that match what I knew about him, both from his long posting history on Beliefnet and what little I received via email.

I got a shiver up my spine when I realized that his last post as "Don't Be Captious" was on the day the guy in the link died, and there's no way he would have started a thread and then not returned after so many replies. It's got to be him.

Bummer. At least it explains why he hasn't posted for years.

Also worrisome for me was that he died of a heart attack while only a few years younger than me, and I recently found out I have frighteningly high cholesterol levels. I was already keen to fix that, am even more so now!

www.legacy.com/obituaries/newsminer/obit...

Upon further thought, the reason why this news has thrown me into an emotional funk is the torture of knowing that such a bright, energetic, and idealistic person could cheerfully post a new discussion thread here and then be dead within the hour before reading a single reply.

His only internet access was via the computers at the college that employed him.  He would have finished his shift, logged on to start the thread on block universes, then gathered his stuff and gone to the gym where he suffered his heart attack and died.

Your number can come up at any moment, folks.  I know it is a cliche, but this has hammered the reality of that fact into my brain like no other event in my life. I keep reading the post he wrote on the day he died wishing I could hop into a time machine and warn him. But then, what the hell would I say?