Category Archives: Immortality

When German Bowl XLII kicks off on Saturday, it will be the first ever championship appearance for Dresden Monarchs head coach Ulrich Dauber. Like most coaches, it has been a long, hard road to get to this point, with Saturday being a rare shot at the pinnacle of his profession and the immortality that comes with it.

For Jordan Neuman, it is simply been there, done that, time to do it again.

The Schwbisch Hall Unicorns head coach has had one of the most impressive starts to a European coaching career in recent memory and Saturday will simply be the latest chapter. Win or lose, his status as one of the best on the continent will not be up for debate.

Since taking over for the legendary Siegrfried Gehrke in 2017, Neuman has posted a perfect 52-0 regular season record at the helm in Schwbisch Hall. In fact, he has only lost one game during that span, the last German Bowl championship played back in 2019. With back-to-back titles under his belt in 2017 and 2018, a third on Saturday would be further proof of his continued dominance.

The 38-year-old native of Fort Worth, Texas first arrived in Europe back in 2005 fresh out of McMurry University, ready to serve as quarterback of the Unicorns. He did that admirably, but his true calling as a coach was first displayed in Austria, where he served as offensive coordinator for the Vienna Vikings from 2011 to 2013, winning back-to-back Austrian titles the last two seasons and a Eurobowl in 2013.

In 2014, he was quarterback coach for the German National Team when they claimed the European title and returned to the Unicorns as OC, helping them to three straight German Bowl appearances and a Eurobowl final in 2015. Winning the big one seemed elusive at that time, but since taking over in 2017, its been almost automatic for Neuman and he already has a CEFL Bowl trophy from this season to pad his resume.

There are few who would dismiss Neumans dominance over the last five years, but like so many of the great ones, his early accomplishments havent been praised nearly enough. While grey-haired coaches struggle unsuccessfully for years to climb the mountaintop of German football, Neuman has made it his home and the view remains incredible.

As the football landscape in Europe shifts to accommodate the new ELF, there are those who believe the new powers and coaches have already claimed supremacy in Europe. That hasnt happened quite yet. If Schwbisch Hall can win again on Saturday, there is little question who the reigning power is.

Football in Europe is Jordan Neumans world. We are all just living in it.

Watch German Bowl XLII live on AFI.tv. Schwbisch Hall Unicorns vs Dresden Monarchs, Oct. 9, 18:00 CET (6 pm, 12 noon ET).

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Another German Bowl win could cement Jordan Neuman as the best coach in Europe - American Football International

ABBA was never just a giddy pop band. Well, it was, tooa passable imitation of a giddy pop band, but that was the least of it.

They were sorcerers of sound and sentiment, who brought the human heart to life in a certain way at a certain moment by arranging twelve notes in particularly beguiling sequences, but mostly by resonating with the Zeitgeist of their time, which is to say the aftermath of the 1960s, otherwise the 70s.But then, as they came to grief on the icebergs of their disintegrating internal romances, coincidentally or otherwise,pop simultaneously seemed to begin to come to an end, vacating our heads, leaving them echoing with dislocated hooklines and strange jangly noises. For a long time, a new story appeared to be indicated but has failed to form itself. The solution may now be at hand.

ABBA, the greatest pop band of the 1970sperhaps the greatest pop band,full stopis reuniting after four decades. Yet the four figures on stage will not be the embodied entities we know as Agnetha, Anni-Frid, Bjrn, and Benny, all now in their seventies. Rather, they will be their digital selves, as Benny puts it: the avatars of ABBA (or ABBAtars, as they have inevitably been dubbed). In May 2022, holograms of the four band members' thirty-something incarnationsABBA in its prime, digitally reconstituted using performance-capture from recent sessions with the band members in 2021will perform a series of concerts at the ABBA Arena, a purpose-built venue at the Queen Elizabeth Olympic Park in London. It is the stuff of wild sci-fi imaginings. What will appear in London will notbe ABBA now or ABBA thenbut both/and:ABBA always, an immortal ABBA. Is this a problem? No and yes.

On the one hand, no; its only pop, after all! But the yes part of the answer cannot be erased. We live in undemocratic times. Crucial matters concerning not merely our future conditions, but even our future natures are being decided over our heads. It would be ominous and dastardly if a much-loved pop band were to take us painlessly to the next stage. Might it be icily observed that there is no sneakier way of normalizing transhumanism than taking an ancient pop band in the exit lounge of life and making them the first arrivals in the pantheon of Eternity?

ABBA made music for sweethearts (with added sugar). When we were youngsters we almost always heard them in the same conditions: from the back seat of the car of an older couple who was giving us a lift to a dance.The couple always asked you what you thought of ABBA and the answer was always, by definition, non-committal. We liked ABBA but never said so, for to do so was to admit something about yourself that you wished to hide. We liked them in secret, longed to hear them as though by happenstance, on somebody elses four-track. ABBA was guilty of being commercial. They might have come from a progressive country, but they were not themselves, in any sense whatsoever, progressive. They were pure poppop so pure it made you dizzy with its sweetness, and turned you into a sugar addict within a few bumps and saccharine bars.

In a fascinating article, Johan Hakelius discusses the Swedish pop explosion of the 1990s, when Sweden became the third most important pop-producing country in the world. The roots of it,he writes, lie in the 1970s and the Swedish love of manufacturing. . . . Swedish pop is as reliable as a Swiss watch. It does everything its supposed to, but it rarely, if ever, changes any basic parameters.

Hakelius writes that once he asked Bjrn Ulvaeus, one quarter of ABBA, how much unpublished material from his ABBA days remained in his bottom drawer. None, came the answer. I want everything to be perfect. If it was, we recorded it. If it wasnt, there was no point in keeping it.

That, posits Hakelius, is the reasoning of an engineer, not an artist. Why keep a dud prototype? The triumph of Swedish pop, he suggests, is not a triumph for the creative spirit, but a triumph of Swedish engineering. Its a bit of a cheap shot as well as an interesting thought. The second-best kinds of songs are always highly engineered; the best make it seem like theyre not.

In 1972, the year ABBA was formed, an English journalist named Roland Huntford published The New Totalitarians, in which he exposed the underbelly of Swedish progressivism: a near century as a one-party state under the Social Democrats, featuring crude anti-family policies and rampant state incursion into citizens' intimate lives. Huntford described a country governed by corporatism, in which personal freedoms and ambition had been sacrificed to political ideas that read on the page better than they play out in reality. Modern Sweden, Huntford declared, has fulfilled Huxleys specifications for the new totalitarianism. A centralised administration rules people who love their servitude.

In this equation, ABBA functioned as both antidote and accomplice. In a 1999 TV documentary about the band, Anni-Frid recalled that ABBA received a lot of criticism from the Swedish press due to its non-involvement in politics of any kind. Yet there is a kind of odd symbiosis between the band and its nation; ABBA served to impose a gracing aspect on an otherwise dour picture. In his 2014 book, The Almost Nearly Perfect People: Behind the Myth of the Scandinavian Utopia, Michael Booth expresses puzzlement at the recurring trope whereby Swedes pronounce themselves the happiest people in the world. The reason is straightforward: This is how they are told to regard themselves by the state-directed media, responsible for bolstering Swedish self-esteem. ABBA has fulfilled something like the same function in speaking to the whole world.

Huntford had attempted to parse the paradoxes of Swedens apparently contradictory combinations of progressivism and post-patriarchal paternalism, prudishness and sexual liberation. It was a mistake, he decided, to say that the Swedes were particularly freewheeling or emancipated. Since the 1960s Sweden pushed sexual emancipation as though an element of economic policy, but as Huntford observed, sexual license, like the preceding obscurantism, was culturally and politically motivated. Freedom was not the point. The state became concerned with personal morality as a weapon of social change. The English, he observed, are no less sexually liberated. But what distinguishes Sweden is that morality has become the concern of the government, where elsewhere it is something independent, growing out of changes in society.

Sex became a safety valve for releasing built-up tensions wrought by the high-control society. The energies that might have gone into political dissent went into sexual adventuring. In every other area, freedom had been supplanted by the requirements of the collective. But eventually even sexual freedom began to atrophy. As Huntford observed: By eradicating ritual and taboo, the excitement has been dissipated, and the function of sex as a surrogate for political tension therefore handicapped.

Correcting this became a function of culture. In some ways ABBA's emergence might be seen as a (perhaps) unconscious urge to superimpose romance on what had become the clinical functionality of sex. In Sweden, Huntford noted, control and distribution of culture was remarkably centralized. The state provided most of it, and was seen to do so. In music, the State is sole impresario, and private concert agencies are illegal.

In such a schema, ABBA, wittingly or otherwise, would have been invaluable to Sweden and its government as the progressive revolution approached its zenith. The band projected a smiling, exultant face and emanations under different headings of exuberance and well-beinga good-looking foursome comprising two smiling happy couples singing songs to intoxicate the worlds sweethearts with the idea that love was easy and fun, even if a little throwaway.

It is notable that the patterns discernible in Sweden in the 1970s have now become commonplace in Europe and America, with the COVID operation increasingly an accelerant. People are told what to think, and otherwise not encouraged to. The state knows best, especially about the citizens most intimate affairs.

Booth tries to drill into the conundrum of Swedish hyper-collectivism/hyper-individualism. In Sweden, self-sufficiency and autonomy is all; debt of any kind, be it emotional, a favor, or a borrowed fiver, is avoided at all cost. Booth cites historian Henrik Berggren seeking to refute the idea that Sweden is anti-individualist. On the contrary, Berggren claims, by making people dependent on the state but independent of other humans, the Swedish system liberates the individual in ways that conventional democratic-capitalist societies do not. Sweden's statist individualism creates love without ulterior motives. Wives don't stick around because their husband keeps the joint bank account pin code in a locked drawer in his desk, and husbands don't hold their tongues because their wife's father owns the mill. Authentic love and friendship is possible only between individuals who are independent and equal.

So Booth asks, eyebrow raised, are the Social Democrats in effect bercupids? He gives the idea a half-moments thought before binning it.

In a country steeped in dullness, full of people pretending to be happy, the conditions were perhaps ideal to create a hothouse capable of forcing out a form of constructed joy such as ABBA. From the gray asphalt of Stockholm ABBA grew as four flowers from the cracks, bringing light and color and sweetness to the gloom of progressive collectivismor perhaps four variegated poppies in the chimney of Swedens technologization of itself.

And so there is no more obvious and immediate candidate for pop immortality, no more complete combination in a single combo of desiring, beauty, sweetness, innocence, knowingness, love and its loss. Which raises those inevitable ethical questions: Is the introduction to human culture of edgy concepts like avatars, cyborgs, transhumanism, and posthumanism appropriately effected with a download and a bunch of gigs? Ought such matters not be treated with gravity rather than glitz? Should something so potentially earth-shaking, not to say controversial, be rendered misleadingly palatable by giddy pop songs? Might ABBA, perhaps innocently, be paving the way for a new, dark, digital world?

Perhaps we might dust down a copy of HuntfordsThe New Totalitarians, since what was then an experimental domestic condition now eyes up the entire world. Sweden in 1972, according to Huntford, was a spiritual desert. But this seemed to have no ill effect on the Swede. His contentment depends entirely on material possessions.

Or, I hear a voice piping up from the back, maybe we should just lighten up? Its only a few pop concerts, after all. Trouble is, once the sweetened pill is swallowed, there is no going back. And where we go one, we go all.

John Watersis an Irish writer and commentator, the author of ten books, and a playwright.

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ABBA Immortal | John Waters - First Things

If you are human, you are going to die. This isn't the most comforting thought, but death is the inevitable price we must pay for being alive. Humans are, however, getting better at pushing back our expiration date, as our medicines and technologies advance.

If the human life span continues to stretch, could we one day become immortal? The answer depends on what you think it means to be an immortal human.

"I don't think when people are even asking about immortality they really mean true immortality, unless they believe in something like a soul," Susan Schneider, a philosopher and founding director of the Center for the Future Mind at Florida Atlantic University, told Live Science. "If someone was, say, to upgrade their brain and body to live a really long time, they would still not be able to live beyond the end of the universe."

Scientists expect the universe will end, which puts an immediate dampener on a mystery about the potential for human immortality. Some scientists have speculated about surviving the death of the universe, as science journalist John Horgan reported for Scientific American, but it's unlikely that any humans alive today will experience the universe's demise anyway.

Related: What happens when you die?

Many humans grow old and die. To live indefinitely, we would need to stop the body from aging. A group of animals that may have already solved this problem, so it isn't as far-fetched as it sounds.

Hydra are small, jellyfish-like invertebrates with a remarkable approach to aging. They are largely made up of stem cells that constantly divide to make new cells, as their older cells are discarded. The constant influx of new cells allows hydra to rejuvenate themselves and stay forever young, Live Science previously reported.

"They don't seem to age, so, potentially they are immortal," Daniel Martnez, a biology professor at Pomona College in Claremont, California, who discovered the hydra's lack of aging, told Live Science. Hydra show that animals do not have to grow old, but that doesn't mean humans could replicate their rejuvenating habits. At 0.4 inches (10 millimeters) long, hydra are small and don't have organs. "It's impossible for us because our bodies are super complex," Martnez said.

Humans have stem cells that can repair and even regrow parts of the body, such as in the liver, but the human body is not made almost entirely of these cells, like hydra are. That's because humans need cells to do things other than just divide and make new cells. For example, our red blood cells transport oxygen around the body. "We make cells commit to a function, and in doing that, they have to lose the ability to divide," Martnez said. As the cells age, so do we.

We can't simply discard our old cells like hydra do, because we need them. For example, the neurons in the brain transmit information. "We don't want those to be replaced," Martnez said. "Because otherwise, we won't remember anything." Hydra could inspire research that allows humans to live healthier lives, for example, by finding ways for our cells to function better as they age, according to Martnez. However, his gut feeling is that humans will never achieve such biological immortality.

Though Martnez personally doesn't want to live forever, he thinks humans are already capable of a form of immortality. "I always say, 'I think we are immortal,'" he said. "Poets to me are immortal because they're still with us after so many years and they still influence us. And so I think that people survive through their legacy."

The oldest-living human on record is Jeanne Calment from France, who died at the age of 122 in 1997, according to Guinness World Records. In a 2021 study published in the journal Nature Communications, researchers reported that humans may be able to live up to a maximum of between 120 and 150 years, after which, the researchers anticipate a complete loss of resilience the body's ability to recover from things like illness or injury. To live beyond this limit, humans would need to stop cells from aging and prevent disease.

Related: What's the oldest living thing alive today?

Humans may be able to live beyond their biological limits with future technological advancements involving nanotechnology. This is the manipulation of materials on a nanoscale, less than 100 nanometers (one-billionth of a meter or 400-billionths of an inch). Machines this small could travel in the blood and possibly prevent aging by repairing the damage cells experience over time. Nanotech could also cure certain diseases, including some types of cancer, by removing cancerous cells from the body, according to the University of Melbourne in Australia.

Preventing the human body from aging still isn't enough to achieve immortality; just ask the hydra. Even though hydra don't show signs of aging, the creatures still die. They are eaten by predators, such as fish, and perish if their environment changes too much, such as if their ponds freeze in winter, Martnez said.

Humans don't have many predators to contend with, but we are prone to fatal accidents and vulnerable to extreme environmental events, such as those intensified by climate change. We'll need a sturdier vessel than our current bodies to ensure our survival long into the future. Technology may provide the solution for this, too.

As technology advances, futurists anticipate two defining milestones. The first is the singularity, in which we will design artificial intelligence (A.I.) smart enough to redesign itself, and it will get progressively smarter until it is vastly superior to our own intelligence, Live Science previously reported. The second milestone is virtual immortality, where we will be able to scan our brains and transfer ourselves to a non-biological medium, like a computer.

Researchers have already mapped the neural connections of a roundworm (Caenorhabditis elegans). As part of the so-called OpenWorm project, they then simulated the roundworm's brain in software replicating the neural connections, and programmed that software to direct a Lego robot, according to Smithsonian Magazine. The robot then appeared to start behaving like a roundworm. Scientists aren't close to mapping the connections between the 86 billion neurons of the human brain (roundworms have only 302 neurons), but advances in artificial intelligence may help us get there.

Once the human mind is in a computer and can be uploaded to the internet, we won't have to worry about the human body perishing. Moving the human mind out of the body would be a significant step on the road to immortality but, according to Schneider, there's a catch. "I don't think that will achieve immortality for you, and that's because I think you'd be creating a digital double," she said.

Schneider, who is also the author of "Artificial You: AI and the Future of Your Mind" (Princeton University Press, 2019), describes a thought experiment in which the brain either does or doesn't survive the upload process. If the brain does survive, then the digital copy can't be you as you're still alive; conversely, the digital copy also can't be you if your brain doesn't survive the upload process, because it wouldn't be if you did the copy can only be your digital double.

Related: What is consciousness?

According to Schneider, a better route to extreme longevity, while also preserving the person, would be through biological enhancements compatible with the survival of the human brain. Another, more controversial route would be through brain chips.

"There's been a lot of talk about gradually replacing parts of the brain with chips. So, eventually, one becomes like an artificial intelligence," Schneider said. In other words, slowly transitioning into a cyborg and thinking in chips rather than neurons. But if the human brain is intimately connected to you, then replacing it could mean suicide, she added.

The human body appears to have an expiration date, regardless of how it is upgraded or uploaded. Whether humans are still human without their bodies is an open question.

"To me, it's not even really an issue about whether you're technically a human being or not," Schneider said. "The real issue is whether you're the same self of a person. So, what really matters here is, what is it to be a conscious being? And when is it that changes in the brain change which conscious being you are?" In other words, at what point does changing what we can do with our brains change who we are?

Schneider is excited by the potential brain and body enhancements of the future and likes the idea of ridding ourselves of death by old age, despite some of her reservations. "I would love that, absolutely, she said. "And I would love to see science and technology cure ailments, make us smarter. I would love to see people have the option of upgrading their brains with chips. I just want them to understand what's at stake."

Originally published on Live Science.

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Will humans ever be immortal? - Livescience.com

Karbala and spirit of immortality

FROM defining our sense of purpose to building nations, heroes have shaped the course of history.

No matter how greata personality, eventually the one true reality of being a mortal dominated the lives of those gallant heroes, but real legends outlived their mortal nature, dwelling in the minds and hearts of their descendants.

Defying the laws of mortality, great legends have created moments of glory that live on to chant the memories of their descendants for eternity.

Heroes get remembered, but legends never die. Immortality is the supreme aspiration that has been achieved by those in history, who have sacrificed their own lives to raise humanity towards the light of hope and virtue.

One such epitome of eternal valor is Hz. Imam Hussein (RA), whose sacrifice is a lesson for all those who believe in rising against the evils in their society.

In September of the year 680, Hz. Imam Hussein, set out on an eternal journey with his family and just seventy-two armed men, unaware of the fact that he was fated to become perpetually, the prince of Martyrs.

Nineteen years had gone by since Hz. Imam Hussein and his brother had buried their father, Hz. Ali (RA), outside Kufa, and waited in patience when Muawiyah established his rule then.

Muawiyah was dead and Hz. Hussein was determined to free the followers of Islam from the reins of a treacherous monarchy and bring the caliphate to its right place.

Muawiyah may have cautioned his son Yazid about the consequences of any perilous attack against The Holy Prophets grandson, but it seemed to have no impact, for history is often sabotaged by the villainy of the reckless.

By declining to collaborate or to be coerced into silence, and by acknowledging that this would mean his own demise, Hz. Hussein attained a revolution in consciousness, that transcended the attributes of its historical time and place turning into an eternal sensation.

Ali Shariati, a revolutionary activist, and a sociology professor, acclaimed Hz. Hussein as the most authentic example of martyrdom. Martyrdom has a unique radiance, Shariati declared. It creates light and heat in the world.

It creates movement, vision and hope. By his death the martyr condemns the oppressor and provides commitment for the oppressed.

Hz. Imam Husseins sacrifice revolutionized the ten-day memorial of the events at Karbala from suffering and grief into an activism of rising up against oppression and tyranny.

After he had reached his last destination, Hz. Imam Hussein and his followers passed from that physical state of antiquity to the immortal realm of valiant legends.

The fighters and the survivors related their memories of those ten days leading up to Ashura, that are still remembered and recalled centuries later, with every detail that loses its momentary pledge and ascends into an endless beam.

While Shimr, the ruthless general and his four thousand men lingered on for heat and thirst to cause despair, engaging in random conflicts with Hz. Husseins warriors: everlasting reminiscences were formed.

The accounts that are central to Islamic history have been kept alive through centuries by the heartfelt force of memory and commemoration.

It is not possible to determine the degree of shock, anguish and outrage that grabbed the days following the events at Karbala.

So keenly felt was the dread, so enormous was the burden, and so painful was the impact in diminishing the souls that are touched through many years, as the events still continue to agonize our communal recollections like a fresh bruise.

The Day of Arbaeen marks forty days after the Day of Ashura, the day Hz. Imam Hussain ibn Ali was killed in the Battle of Karbala.

Muslims all over the world mourn and commemorate the seventh century killing of the Holy Prophets grandson, Hz. Imam Hussein, during the Arbaeen.

The days and events that followed the Battle of Karbala not only divided everyone but also left a lasting historical legacy that belongs to all of us who dwell this small world.

Ours is a small yet hypothetically more united world with large divisions, and tyrannical regimes, still carried out at an international level by despotic rulers, demonstrating a power struggle.

Many Islamic states including Iraq and other cities, where Hz. Ali once struggled against Muawiya and Hz. Hussein against Yazid, a power struggle through repressive foreign invasions and political manipulation continues.

Western powers have manipulated the religious divisions through their powerful influence to serve their own purpose.

The disharmony and division within the followers are manipulated at a higher level, fostered by the enemies of Islam by exploiting it to weaken the Islamic platform.

It may seem only wishful on their part, for as long as the spirit of Karbala and the glorious martyrdom is alive among true believers, the purity of faith shall remain whole through all ages.

Just like with Yazid in the seventh century, the western powers in the twenty first century confirm the notion that history is often sabotaged by the villainy of the reckless.

Echoed through the plains of creation it was a day that changed the world and our leading role in a supposedly more globalized multifaceted world has been to not only remember those undying souls but also to keep their spirit alive in our lives.

The Karbala story has prevailed and persisted testing faith and politics through time, bearing witness to the fact that what unites the people of Islam is far greater than what divides them, and every Muslim treasures the essence of harmony preached by Hz.

Mohammad (PBUH). We mourn the memory of that crucial day, honouring the martyrs of Karbala and expressing our affection and respect for Hz. Imam Hussein.

The accounts of the tragedy of Karbala evoke a deep sensation instilling the audacity to rise up against tyranny and oppression, no matter the odds. It invokes a desire to fight for justice and humanity.

The esteemed human rights activist, Nelson Mandela once said, I have spent more than 20 years in prison, then on one night I decided to surrender by signing all the terms and conditions of government.

But, suddenly, I thought about Imam Hussain and Karbala Movement and Imam Hussain gave me strength to stand for right of freedom and liberation and I did.

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Karbala and spirit of immortality | By Wajeeha Bilal - Pakistan Observer

With Canadian movie theatres still caught in capacity-restriction limbo and theatrical titles continuing to hopscotch around the release-date calendar there is comfort in knowing that, thanks to streaming and video-on-demand, we can all program our own double (or triple, or quadruple) bills at home. Heres a look at this weeks best under-the-radar films, and where to find them.

Artificial Immortality (digital TIFF Lightbox until Oct. 7, streaming on Crave starting Oct. 8): If you feel like 2021 has gone on forever, then perhaps skip Ann Shins new documentary examining all the many ways in which scientists are advancing the live-forever market. But for those who can push past the daunting reality of our long-winter world, Artificial Immortality offers a fascinating look at what lengths people will apparently go to in order to never, ever die. While a survey of next-gen tech might drag in feature-length format, Shin wisely and poignantly wraps the narrative around her own family history and anxieties about leaving this mortal coil. The result is a thought-provoking and, for some, entirely relatable treatise on what it means to rage against the dying of the light.

Courtesy of Sundance Institute

Wild Indian (VOD, including Google Play and Apple TV/iTunes): After the raves that greeted Lyle Mitchell Corbine Jr.s drama following its Sundance Film Festival premiere this past January, I expected more promotion around Wild Indians general release. Instead, I just happened to stumble upon it while scrolling through Apple TVs new release tab, unaware it had been added to the flooded VOD market weeks earlier. While Corbines murder-mystery drama might be a bit too stage-y for the cinema, it unfolds perfectly in the comfort of a living room. But the real reason to watch is Canadian actor Michael Greyeyes, who adds to his of-the-moment reputation following the zombie drama Blood Quantum and television series Rutherford Falls by delivering a searing performance as a man outrunning his horrible past.

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Courtesy of BEZELEVS and Focus Features

Profile (VOD, including Google Play and Apple TV/iTunes): About a year and change ago, I wondered aloud whether the pandemic might cause Hollywood to, at least temporarily, pivot to a new form of filmmaking screen-life films, whose stories take place entirely on someones computer screen in order to avoid utilizing large crews and crowds. That, fortunately, didnt become reality, though this year has seen a trickle of screen-life movies, including Profile, from the genres champion, Timur Bekmambetov (Searching, the Unfriended series). Profile isnt exactly a pandemic-era film it was produced back in 2018 but its storyline following a young London journalist cat-fishing an ISIS recruiter, told entirely through the journalists social-media feeds and video chats, feels extremely, uncomfortably and, thrillingly, circa 2021.

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Full Stream Ahead: Michael Greyeyes, ISIS terrorists and eternal androids top this week's best underrated releases - The Globe and Mail

CardioNerds(Amit Goyal,Daniel Ambinder) and Dr. Mark Belkin, (CardioNerds Correspondent) and Dr. Shirlene Obuobi (CardioNerds Ambassador) from University of Chicago are honored to bring to you the Dr. Milton Packer perspective on the evolution of the neurohormonal hypothesis as part of The CardioNerds Heart Success Series.

In part 6 Dr. Packer reflects on a conversation he had with Dr. Eugene Braunwald about mentorship and its role in immortality. This episode is particularly meaningful to the CardioNerds team as mentorship and sponsorship is such an important part of the CardioNerds mission.

Check out theCardioNerdsHeart Failure Success Series Pagefor more heart success episodes and content!

This is a non CME episode. Disclosures: Milton Packer reports receiving consulting fees fromAbbvie, Actavis,Amgen, Amarin,AstraZeneca,Boehringer Ingelheim,Bristol Myers Squibb, Casana, CSL Behring,Cytokinetics,Johnson & Johnson Health Care Systems Inc., Eli Lilly and Company,Moderna, Novartis, ParatusRx, Pfizer, Relypsa, Salamandra, Synthetic Biologics,Teva Pharmaceuticals USA Inc.and Theravance Biopharma Inc.

CardioNerdsHeart Failure Success Series PageCardioNerds Episode PageCardioNerds AcademyCardionerds Healy Honor Roll

CardioNerds Journal ClubSubscribe to The Heartbeat Newsletter!Check out CardioNerds SWAG!Become a CardioNerds Patron!

This CardioNerdsHeart Failure Success Series was created in memory of Dr. David Taylor. We thank our partners at the Heart Failure Soci

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151. The Evolution Of The Neurohormonal Hypothesis With Dr. Milton Packer: Part 6 Mentorship & The Secret to Immortality - DocWire News

Artist Heidi Mrazs latest work, Aerodynamics by Entomology, uses 1,000 butterflies to portray the metamorphosis of Porsches 917 from an unstable monster to an immortal race car, according to the news release about the works unveiling this past weekend.

While Mraz chose butterflies, which undergo a transformation in their development, to illustrate the cars evolution in her 4 x 6-foot work, it was another insect, gnats, that actually led to the cars success.

The little-known account of John Horsmans epiphany and how he modified the 917 inspired me on so many levels that I felt the need to share the story through my art. Mraz is quoted in the news release.

Using butterflies as the medium was a natural choice. Symbolically, butterflies draw a variety of parallels to the 917s story. They are an insect like the dead gnats that covered the car; both the 917 and the butterfly are lightweight, and each needed to undergo a metamorphosis in order to mature. Both are also symbols of immortality despite having short life cycles.

The news release shares the story of Horsmans discovery:

In 1969, following a lethal crash at Le Mans, Porsches engineers and Works drivers took the dangerously unstable 917 out to the Osterreichring racetrack in Austria to see if they could determine why it tended to lift off the track at high speed. An excerpt from Gulf 917 by Jay Gillotti stated, In hindsight, the handling problems that the drivers initially complained about with the 917 can be seen as rooted in the aerodynamics. It is also important to remember that aerodynamics for racing cars was still something of a black art in 1969. Formula One cars had only just sprouted primitive wings and ground-effect tunnels were still years away.

When the car returned to the pit, Porsches JWAE team manager and engineer, John Horsman, noticed dead gnats covering the car except on the rear spoilers. Horsman realized that this meant there was little or no airflow to the tail and therefore insufficient downforce to keep the car on the track at speed. Horsman quickly modified the car with aluminum sheets and duct tape and, on the next test drive, the Works driver was able to race around the circuit at record speed while keeping the 917 on the asphalt.

Now its a racing car! driver Brian Redman reportedly proclaimed.

And indeed it was. The 917 posted Porsches first overall victory at Le Mans in 1970 and won again in 1971 and, as the Mraz news release notes, continues to be celebrated as one of the greatest racing legends of all time, despite a racing career cut short due to evolving FIA regulations. The 917 also was the car featured in Steve McQueens movie, Le Mans, and the car comprised of butterflies in Mrazs artwork is done in the famed blue and orange Gulf Oil colors.

This extraordinary piece of art is made from approximately 1000 paper butterflies and other insects that match the iconic Gulf cars blue and orange racing livery, the news release points out. Hand-cut, placed and pinned, the butterflies add poignant dimension and illusion of movement to the artistic portrayal of the 917.

Were told Mraz selected chassis 917-022 for the portrait because of its iconic status, and because it was part of the Porsche 917 class at the Pebble Beach Concours dElegance, where she was able to collect primary source information about the car.

Next, she created an entomology-inspired piece, the 917 Specimen Box, that highlights each of the 917s with butterfly-shaped cut-outs created from photos shot while the cars were at Pebble Beach.

Working from a studio in Great Falls, Virginia, Mraz specializes in historic automotive projects and is in production of a feature-length documentary, Automotive Artifacts, which chronicles the behind-the-scenes work involved her artistic assemblages.

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Art reveals insects' role in the evolution of the Porsche 917 - The ClassicCars.com Journal

GREEN BAY, Wis. After losing two very close family members, Green Bay special teams coordinator Maurice Drayton decided to say with his Packers family for Sunday nights game against the San Francisco 49ers.

At the end of the day, its the family atmosphere here. We have a task at hand, Drayton said on Wednesday. I kind of live by a mantra of you have to close ranks and keep marching. Thats not to make light of anything thats going on at the time. But that mentality has always helped us to go forward. Its not about me. Its about us and we.

Drayton said a grandmother and cousin transitioned from mortality to immortality. Nonetheless, Drayton stuck with the team for its 30-28 victory over the 49ers, a triumph made possible by Mason Crosbys 51-yard field goal as time expired.

Draytons units made mostly positive contributions to the outcome. Crosby made three field goals to win his eighth NFC Special Teams Player of the Week Award. Corey Bojorquez battled NFC Special Teams Player of the Month Mitch Wishnowsky to a draw in a battle of top punters.

The only blemish and it was a big one was the 68-yard kickoff return by Trenton Cannon late in the first half that lit the 49ers fuse to rally from a 17-0 deficit. Ty Summers was blocked inside and Kylin Hill was blocked outside to form a huge alley. The other five kickoffs resulted in three touchbacks and the Niners taking possession at their 17 and 19.

Kickoff is like riding a motorcycle without a helmet, Drayton said. You make one mistake, it can be pretty bad for you. Literally, we had a guy get a little too far to the right and another guy that didn't get far enough to his right. Next thing you know, theyre up on Mason. Good thing Mason we talked two weeks ago about Mason making tackles so we got him on the ground. They wound up scoring, which is not good. I promise you, were going to get it right.

Hill made one understated play that helped the Packers win the game. And that play wasnt made on Sunday. Rather, it was made last Monday. His 41-yard return against the Detroit Lions in Week 2 was stuck in the mind of 49ers coach Kyle Shanahan and his special teams coordinator, Richard Hightower, on the final kickoff of the game. The 49ers could have kicked the ball to Hill in hope of burning off some of the remaining seconds on his return. Instead, they kicked the ball out of the end zone, setting up Green Bay at the 25 with the full 37 seconds to go.

We have a lot of respect for Hill, Hightower told 49ers beat reporters on Wednesday. He had a big, explosive return the week before where he got those guys to like the 50-yard line or something like that, (so) it was half a field [Green Bay Packers QB] Aaron [Rodgers] had to work with, and they went down there and scored. So, the thought process on that is basically weve got a lot of respect for the guy and make them go longer than they have to there.

After the long kickoff return, receiver Allen Lazard signed up for special-teams duty and played four snaps. And when linebacker Krys Barnes exited with a concussion, every-down linebacker DeVondre Campbell volunteered to replace him and got his first two snaps of special-teams action this season.

Anytime you have people who are so selfless, man, thats awesome, Drayton said. Thats what you look for, what youre trying to breed in a team.

It was selfless play, much like that demonstrated by their coordinator who was leading with a heavy heart.

We were able to deal with it because of this organization, because of the family atmosphere that we have in the locker room, Drayton said. At the end of the day, its not about me. Its always about us and we and, because of that, were able to put one foot in front of the other. When guys ask me all the time, How are you doing? Putting one foot in front of the other, right, left. As long we were doing that, were going forward. So, were going to be fine.

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Not About Me as Drayton Coaches with Heavy Heart - Sports Illustrated

Keanu Reeves

Axelle/Bauer-Griffin/FilmMagic Keanu Reeves

Keanu Reeves is known as an action star and the "internet's boyfriend," but now the actor is adding comic book writer to his extensive rsum.

The John Wick star sat down virtually with PEOPLE to talk about his upcoming new comic book, BRZRKR, co-written by Matt Kindt, which Reeves describes as "sensationalistic."

"We are looking at violence in the impulse of violence and how it's used, and how it tries to be controlled," Reeves, 57, tells PEOPLE of the project. "And trying to understand the character that we might not be able to relate to it, being immortal, but we relate to the idea of wanting to be immortal."

The comic book follows an immortal warrior, known as Berzerker, a half-mortal, half-God, who is cursed and compelled toward violenceat the cost of his sanity. After wandering the world for centuries, Berzerker finds himself working for the U.S. government in exchange for the truth of his blood-soaked existence and how he may end the gruesome cycle.

RELATED: The Matrix: Resurrections Trailer Sees Keanu Reeves Reunite with Carrie-Anne Moss

Reeves says, "We can relate to the idea of the imagination of what [immortality] would be like. We have vampiric stories that speak about that. But that's part of the human condition, whether it's the living condition of our mortality or human wish-fulfillment that we don't have mortality."

BRZRKR Keanu Reeevs

BOOM! Studios

He adds, "In the context of violence, which is everywhere, it's survival, it's conquest, it's eating. So it plays everywhere, and we're trying to look at it from different... It's an examination of it."

Reeves and Kindt wrote the story together with artist Ron Garney providing the bloody depictions on the page. This is The Matrix star's comic book writing debut.

The story took "at least two years" to write and see completed, says Kindt, with the trio working remotely during the COVID-19 lockdown.

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When asked how Reeves found the time to squeeze in writing a comic book series while working on the upcoming The Matrix Resurrections and John Wick: Chapter 4, the actor says they "had groundwork and things to do."

"But how do we find the time? Because we love it," he says. "That was what we did. We love it."

BRZRKR Vol. 1 collects #1 - 4 and is available in bookstores on Oct. 5.

Continued here:

Keanu Reeves Explores 'the Impulse of Violence' in His First Comic Book BRZRKR : 'It's Everywhere' - Yahoo Entertainment

How long you live and how well you age rests on many factors beyond your control, but the discovery that gut microbes play a key role means what you eat can make a difference

By Scott Anderson

Gretchen Rehrs

WHY do we age? As youngsters, we seem invincible. We climb trees, frolic in the dirt and blithely share alarming quantities of mucus. At college, we can thrive on a diet of ramen and beer, party all night and still sit an exam the next day. But in our 30s, we start to wind down. It becomes harder to maintain muscle tone and avoid illness. Our joints start to ache and our memory begins to dim. And it is mostly downhill from there.

People have long attempted to stop or reverse this process. But fountains of youth and secrets of immortality remain firmly in the realms of fiction. Our bodies wear out, even if we no longer do the back-breaking physical labour our ancestors did. And the world seems determined to grind us down with a plethora of disease-causing microbes. To help fend off these pathogens, our bodies recruit other microbes, vast numbers of which reside in our intestines, where we feed them in exchange for their services. But, as we age, this gut microbiota becomes less effective at fighting diseases too.

This raises an intriguing possibility. Perhaps the secret of longevity lies not in the body itself, but in our gut microbes. We still have much to learn about this complex assemblage of bacteria, viruses, fungi and archaea, yet it turns out that people who achieve a healthy old age often have a distinctive gut flora. Whats more, we are finding ways to manipulate this world inside us. As strange as it seems, there is gathering evidence that we can increase our lifespan by changing our gut microbes.

Gretchen Rehrs

Even

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Secrets of a long and healthy life reside in your gut microbiome - New Scientist