Category Archives: Immortality

Marvel's Thanos can't be killed for good in the comics, as Death won't allow him to join her realm after the Mad Titan is defeated.

Spoilers forEternals#2 below!

In the Marvel Comics Universe, killing Thanos is next to impossible. It's not because the Mad Titan is incapable of being defeated in battle, but instead, it's because, at times, he's not allowed to die. In the latest issue ofEternals,readers are reminded that Thanos is effectively immortal and it's all because Death won't allow him to enter her realm.

Thanos has long sought the affection of the living embodiment of Death, as he wiped out half of existence with the Infinity Gauntlet in an effort to impress her. However, Death has never accepted Thanos' love as he had hoped. Instead, she's spurned his feelings - so much so, that in Cosmic Powers #1, she banned him from her realm, effectively making the villain immortal. That's on top of all of his original Eternal-related powers, including immunity to all disease and non-aging. While his ban and immortality werethought to be removed, in this week'sEternals,it seems that might not be the case after all.

Related:Eternals Star Shares New Details About The MCUs First Gay Romance

In Eternals#2 by Kieron Gillen, Esad Ribic, Matthew Wilson, and Clayton Cowles, Ikaris and Thanos battle across space and time in a fight on Titanos. The Eternals outcasted Thanos, an Eternal born with the Deviant gene giving him his monstrous appearance, and looked down on him even more thanks to the Snap. The two powerful Eternals exchange blows, as they travel through portals and different time periods. However, after Ikaris does damage to Thanos, it's noted that the Mad Titan can't be harmed so easily, as his wounds close as "Death itself rejects him from her embrace."

Since the fight lasts both seconds and for all of time and history, it's unclear whether Thanos is affected by the previous ban from Death's realm because of time-travel shenanigans, or if it's currently active. It wouldn't be surprising if it was the latter, as Thanos has died multiple times in recent Marvel Comics history, only to continually come back. If Death is preventing him from truly dying then that would explain his returns. You'd think that the Infinity Stones might play a factor in why Thanos can't be killed for good, but instead, it's a curse from the being whose affection he seeks the most.

Thanos is back and wants to kill the Eternals for good. With the Machine that revives Eternals now inoperative, the Mad Titan holds a key advantage to those who have previously outcast him - he seemingly can't die thanks to Death. The Eternals, meanwhile, have to figure out how to stop Thanos while losing their immortality. It seems like quite a tall task for the ancient beings.

Next:Marvels Green Lantern Will Fight An Infinity Ring-Powered Thanos

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Liam McGuire is a comics editor for Screen Rant. He has worked for numerous publications including Cineplex Canada, MLB.com, Vice, CBR.com, and more. You can reach out to him directly at liam.m@screenrant.com

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Marvel Confirms Thanos Can't Be Killed, But Not For The Reason You Think - Screen Rant

Tigres sprung a surprise by beating Palmeiras of Brazil to become the first Mexican side to reach the Club World Cup final, but it is not just history that will drive the team in Thursday's clash with Bayern Munich.

Tigres UANL, from the suburbs of Monterrey, are bidding to cement themselves as Mexico's top team handy given that they are bankrolled by the country's top cement company.

Most fans in Mexico do not view Tigres as a big club. The likes of America, Chivas (Guadalajara), Cruz Azul and Pumas (UNAM) are traditionally the big four for many.

But Tigres are the most successful Mexican team over the past 10 years, winning five domestic titles, and are regarded as one of the best supported clubs in the country. Even training sessions regularly attract packed stands.

The Club World Cup has given them the chance to showcase their skills on the field and backing off it to a global audience and Bayern will face a real battle in Doha.

"We lost three CONCACAF Champions League finals in the past so not being able to reach the Club World Cupmade the tournament even more desirable and important," saysJose Ivan Martinez Carreon, a Tigres supporter from Monterrey, Nuevo Leon, a proud northern region where people'sloyalties often lie more with the state than with Mexico as a whole.

"Having the opportunity to play against clubs like Bayernis a dream come true and something unique for Tigres fans. We've carried a stigma in Mexico despite having passionate support. But now with the Club World Cup, the press and fans in general are recognizing our club."

Their colorful goalkeeper Nahuel Guzman, who headed in a stoppage-time winner in a CONCACAF Champions League game in February 2020, says their pursuit of the title is all about Tigres proving their worth.

"This is a Club World Cup and we are going to represent only Tigres and we are not going to represent anyone else who wants to support us," the Argentina international told the club website.

Mexicans are generally split about supporting Tigres in the final.

"If Tigres win, the victory only belongs to them and the same goes if they fail. You can't identify yourself with another club you compete against every season," Milo Assad, co-founder of the Mexican national team supporters'club and a big America fan, told DW.

But it is not just the country making a first appearance in the final.

Tigres are also the first side from CONCACAF, the North and Central American and Caribbean federation, to reach the showpiece. The federation has traditionally been seen as one of the weakest but the progression of Tigres is changing minds.

Tigres forward Carlos Gonzalez told a news conference: "No other Mexican team hasgone this far, but now we want more. We came here hoping to lift the trophy and now that we're close, we're encouraged and motivated that we can achieve our goal."

World player of the year Robert Lewandowski will go up against Tigres' own hot shot Andre-Pierre Gignac

The Paraguayan shone in the win over Palmeiras, where strike partner Andre-Pierre Gignac scored the winner from the penalty spot. Former France striker Gignac is a rare export to Mexican football from Europe and has been there since 2015, another sign of the growing reputation of Tigres.

Palmeiras were distraught at losing. The Club World Cup is a big deal in Brazil, often enabling their club sides to go up against the cream of Europe. For Brazilian sides it is the biggest game possible and that Palmeiras didn't even reach the final stunned the country.

In contrast, the tournament is viewed as somewhat of an afterthought to European sides. The money and prestige involved in the UEFA Champions Leaguedwarfs FIFA's competition - something FIFA President Gianni Infantino is determined to change with his expansion of the tournament to 24 teams from 2022onwards.

But that is not to say European sides don't take the Club World Cup seriously, havingalways reached the final in its current incarnation and having only lost out to Brazilian sides three times since the 2005 revamp.

Bayern played their strongest XI in beating Egypt's Al Ahly in Monday's semifinal and have made a commitment to the tournament by having to squeeze in the two games between a Bundesliga clash last Friday and another German top-flight match next Monday.

All that amid a global pandemic which has led some critics to question why the tournament is even taking place at all.

European criticism of Qatar's treatment of migrant workers does not appear to be shared in Mexico

Indeed, coronavirus restrictions robbed New Zealand's Auckland City of the chance to compete in the Club World Cup this year, much to their dismay.

"The FIFA Club World Cup is crucial to our club and in some ways it is as important to us as the UEFA Champions League is to clubs in Europe," Auckland City chairman Ivan Vuksich told DW.

"Theformat has come in for some criticism outside our confederation but for our club, our country and region, it has provided a very welcome opportunity to compete on the world stage.

"It is important to remind people, especially those close to the corridors of power, that football is a global game."

Modest Auckland finished third in the 2014 edition, surprising the football world.A victory for Tigres against Bayern on Thursday would have similar ramifications in Latin America and show that the Club World Cup really does matter football-wise, even if human rights campaigners in Europe are aghast at host Qatar.

But concerns over the awarding of prestigious football tournaments to Qatar and thetreatment of the migrant workers who have built thestadiums and infrastructure appearto be a less pressing issue in Mexico, where Tigres have a shot atfootballing immortality.

"Here we are, with the stars in the sky shining down on us,' said Gonzalez. "We're very proud of what we've done and I imagine there are a few tears among our fans. This triumph is for them."

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Why Bayern Munich's opponents, Tigres, are taking the Club World Cup seriously, even if Europe is not - DW (English)

In the early days of the pandemic, my days were bookended by stories of death. I woke up each day hours before dawn to work on my book manuscript, happy to have a passion project to soothe my anxious energy. Mybookchronicleshow Vermont patients, caregivers and health care providers navigated medical aid-in-dying, in the aftermath oflegalization. In the morning, I combed through my notes, writing feverishly about dying, and in the evening, I absorbed the news of bodies accumulating around the world more quickly than they could be buried.

I have never been more acutely aware of my own mortality. I offered my husband detailed instructions about how to tend to my unfinished manuscript, should the need arise. We joked, with gallows humor, about how my death would make an ironic capstone to the book; he, of course, agreed to pen the afterword for the posthumous publication.

Studying medical aid-in-dying, and now living through the greatest pandemic in 100 years, has forced me to reckon with mortality. Over the five years that Ive collected stories about death and dying, people have often questioned how I could study such a morbid topic. Isnt it depressing? The answer is, anything but. Humbling and grounding, yes, and at times terribly sad, but never depressing.

An avid reader since childhood, I have always taken great comfort in stories. When the pandemic began, I realized that immersing myself in stories about death had actually helped me. Thinking about my own inevitable death is sad, but it doesnt terrify me anymore. At 40, I hope I have a great many years left, but Im also more or less at peace with my finitude.

Yet last spring, when I picked up Natalie Babbittsnovel Tuck Everlasting to read to my 7-year-old son, I realized it was this bookthat first made me address my mortality, some 30 years ago.

If the concept of mortality was terrifying to me, the idea of immortality was even more so.

Published in 1975,Tuck Everlasting takes place in the 19thcentury, 87 years after the Tuck family unwittingly drinks from a magical spring that renders them immortal. The story is set in motion when a 10-year-old girl, Winnie Foster, accidentally discovers their secret. They bring her to their woodland cottage to persuade her to keep quiet, warning her of the catastrophe that would ensue if news of the spring were to become public.

The novelquickly charmed educators and parents, winning numerous literary awards. While itcaptivates young readers with its lyrical prose, its matter-of-fact philosophizing on life and death set it apart. In a key scene, Angus, the patriarch of the Tuck family, explains to Winnie that dying is an unavoidable part of the wheel of life. The bitter comes with the sweet. It is the difference between having a life and merely being alive. You cant have living without dying.

The Tucks haunted my childhood. To my 10-year-old self, it seemed clear that the only thing scarier than dying wasnotdying. How awful it would be to outlive nearly everyone that you love! How bleak it would feel to be resigned to a life of complete social isolation. If the concept of mortality was terrifying to me, the idea of immortality was even more so.

This is precisely what the author had in mind. Babbittwrote the book to tame the worriesof her daughter Lucy, who was then 4-years-old. Babbitt wanted to help Lucy understand that dying was a natural part of the wheel of life, thatnotdying is much less desirable than it may seem.

Flipping cultural scripts on fears about death: thisis the power of stories.

As a non-fiction author, I write for reasons not so different from Babbitts. I use real peoples stories to examine cultural fears about death in my case, about lack of control over dying. Medical aid-in-dying offers what is, for many, a seductive vision of personal control over dying, and the promise of a peaceful, sanitized death. Yet such control often proves illusory, both becauseaccess to assisted death is much more complicatedthan it may seem, and because death, itself, is wily.

[P]eople have often questioned how I could study such a morbid topic. Isnt it depressing? The answer is, anything but.

I think about a woman in her mid-60s Ill call Candace, who developed metastatic cancer. Once it was clear that she was not going to get better, Candace decided to die on her own terms, with medical assistance. She procured the lethal prescription, which was no easy feat, because many physicians are reluctant to participate in the process. By the time she was ready to die, however, she was no longer able to ingest the medication.

The pandemic has made me even more sure that, like Candace, we are not in control of our destinies. But the Tucks werent in control, either. They waited passively, resigned to let the oppressive unfurling of time wash over them. In this sense, immortalitys promise of control over death is also illusory. It is poignant that the Tucks look forward to the day,every 10 years, when their sons return to the family cottage. During the pandemics eternal spring, when days bled into weeks and then months, I identified with this feeling, marking my days with UPS deliveries, as time moved ever so slowly.

During the pandemic, I have been in the fortunate position of being able to forestall illness and death with the appropriate precautions, such as staying at home. These measures should permit me to avoid the wrong sort of death. (There is universal agreement at this point that dying from COVID-19 is the wrong sort of death.) But I cannot avoid death altogether, nor (I think) would I want to.

Now, 10 months into this crisis, my book is complete. The wheel spins on. The end of the pandemic no longer feels as far off and impossible as it did last spring. And still, I wonder what kind of story I am in. I marvel at that wonder.

Follow Cognoscenti on Facebook and Twitter.

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'The Bitter Comes With The Sweet': Without Death, There Is No Life - WBUR

Ideas about the soul have been powerful throughout the history of religion and philosophy. Until the 19th-century, most people took the existence of souls for granted. With the rise of modern psychology, this belief lost its plausibility, and today it is largely absent from academic philosophical and even theological writing.

Many now deny the existence of a soul, considering human emotions and motives simply a function of neurons firing. Disney Pixars new film Soul seems to go against the grain of this development.

It presents its viewers with two realms of being. The first is the realm of human activity, where life occurs. The second realm is of the soul where life has yet to begin, the great before, and where it ends, the great beyond. In their conception of the soul, the producers hark back to some of the most influential ideas of western intellectual history but in an unmistakably 21st-century way.

The film follows Joe Gardner, an aspiring jazz pianist who is stuck in the rut of his daily life as a part-time middle school music teacher. At the beginning of the film, Joe suffers an accident which leaves him hovering between life and death. The viewer observes Joes soul separate from its body as it journeys to the great beyond.

This starting point accurately mirrors the historical origins of western ideas about the soul. The Greek word for soul psyche was originally restricted in its use to the context of dying. Homer describes death as the souls departure from its body. At the beginning of its history in the west, the soul was evident primarily in its absence from a dead body.

With the rise of Greek philosophy in the 6th century BC, the soul was also seen as the force animating the living body. Meanwhile, the idea of death as the separation of body and soul remained generally accepted.

This created tension. If souls were supposed to enliven a particular body, they had to interact closely with the body and arguably form a unity with it. But then how could the soul survive the bodys decay or even exist separately?

A further difficulty arose from the widely shared belief in reincarnation. Could human souls be born again into the bodies of animals or even plants? And if so, how could they then constitute the operational centre, so to speak, of their current host?

Plato and Aristotle parted ways over these questions. For Plato, the souls connection with the body was only accidental. The hero of Platos dialogues, Socrates, explained to his friends, hours before his execution, that the philosopher yearns for his death because it marks the liberation of the soul into its true existence.

Platos student Aristotle, by contrast, denied that there even was a proper afterlife for the soul. Insofar as the soul was simply the life of the body, he urged, the two formed an indissoluble unity, which death brought to an end.

Things took a further turn with the rise of Christianity. Overall, Christians were more sympathetic to the Platonist view than to its alternatives, because they believed in a life after death. But they rejected the idea of an accidental connection between soul and body. The classical Christian view of the soul as found in Thomas Aquinas fused Platonic with Aristotelian ideas: the soul is immortal but tied in eternity to the identity of a body-soul compound. As such, it will be brought back to life at the end of time.

Against this rough sketch of the western history of the soul, Pixars position comes closest to the Platonic view. Souls depart from the dying person and travel to the great beyond. Souls also pre-exist their earthly incarnation, and some of them at least dont seem overly keen to embark on this journey into life. Souls are immaterial - another tenet of Platonic philosophy - although in the movie they are understandably not invisible. Finally, reincarnation seems possible, even across species as Joe finds out when, for a while, he enters the body of a cat.

Yet the parallels only go so far.

Joe Gardner is unwilling to accept his departure from earthly life, and much of the movie deals with his attempts to return to his previous existence. For Plato, this would indicate that Joe was a bad person unable to detach himself from material pleasures. In the film, however, it is this desire that makes Joe remarkable.

His companion, a not-yet-born soul introduced only as number 22, learns more from Joe, due to his unbending will to return to Earth, than she did from the souls of Gandhi, Einstein and Jung, who had previously tutored her in preparation for her birth. In the world of 21st-century New York, into which the two enter through an extraordinary series of events, number 22 suddenly develops a lust for life after experiencing the simple pleasures of living from eating pizza to watching the leaves fall from a tree.

None of this would have made much sense to Plato. Rather, the film relies on distinctly modern ideas about the affirmation of the present life as worth living on its own terms. The ultimate purpose of the soul is to be the spark that imparts the simple gift of life.

Joes conclusion from his experience as a disembodied soul is to savour every remaining moment of the earthly life he regains at the end of the film. And even number 22 comes to embrace the value of an embodied existence, despite its risks and limitations.

These are ideas well known from romantic and existentialist philosophers of the 19th and 20th centuries. Friedrich Schleiermacher (1768-1834) sneered at the notion of personal immortality as the ridiculous wish to perpetuate ones own miserable existence. Instead, he posited the idea of immortality in this moment. The lesson Joe learns, and wants us to learn, from his unusual experience is rather similar, and points to the thoroughly modern cast into which traditional ideas about the soul have been moulded by the makers of this film.

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Disney Pixar's Soul: how the moviemakers took Plato's view of existence and added a modern twist - The Conversation UK

Whether there is an afterlife is one of life's greatest mysteries. However, one woman believes she has the conclusive answer after she temporarily died. A person by the name of Star was attacked in her own home and was left fighting for her life.

Before paramedics could arrive at the scene, Star temporarily died which resulted in a heavenly vision.

In her brief moment of clinical death - which is the cessation of the heart or breathing - Star believes she met God.

Star wrote on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation: "A pure, brilliant light engulfed me and I no longer had a physical body. But, I still existed?

"I had no eyes to see but I looked at everything around me. I was in the centre of a vast nothingness, but the nothingness was not empty.

"It was completely filled with the presence of the living God.

"There are no words in the English language to describe where I was. I was in the middle of the Glory.

"Then the Lord wrapped me in His Love and held me to His breast.

"I was filled to every fibre of my being with His peace that passes all understanding. I felt the love He had for me."

READ MORE:Life after death: Man who survived gas explosion recalls harrowing NDE

"From a biomedical perspective, this hope might help the body fight illnesses, improve the chances of spontaneous remissions or allow the illness to run its course, it's more equanimity for the person involved.

"But even if there is no biological change, a focus on the possibility of immortality can help some individuals disidentify from their bodily pain and develop a more peaceful relationship with their experience as their suffering.

"When this happens, improbable beliefs in an immortal body or soul can be seen as entirely rational and pragmatic even.

"However, when beliefs about immortality exclude attention to the biological physical body, it can have serious negative effects on health, and even cause untimely deaths.

"So, what we believe about death and our ideas of enteral life can really make a difference as to how we live, how we handle pain and suffering and experience being alive here and now."

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Life after death: Woman 'engulfed by light and God' in afterlife vision - Daily Express

Charles Woodson is arguably the greatest cornerback to ever play football. Everyone, including Woodson himself, knew that he'd be a first-ballot Hall of Famer once the time arrived, but that doesn't make the moment any less special. Even for someone who comes off as being cooler than a polar bear's toe nail, Woodson couldn't contain his emotions once the hall became a reality.

And by the way, there's absolutely nothing wrong with that. In a sport rife with masculinity and machismo, there's something so pure about seeing a superstar overcome with emotions when a dream comes true. Anyone who has ever played football likely started doing so in grade school, so reaching the pinnacle evokes the most genuine reactions.

Woodson is the man, there's no doubt about it. He was Mr. Football in Ohio as a prep star, helped lead Michigan to a national title and became the first ever defensive player to win the Heisman while in Ann Arbor and won a Super Bowl with the Green Bay Packers. Now, he's a Hall of Famer. As he said, it's quite literally a form of "immortality" because the bronze busts should last for thousands and thousands of years. Woodson has long been one of the best Wolverines and cornerbacks of all time and now, he's simply one of the best of all time officially.

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Charles Woodson's Words Prove Just How Special The Hall Of Fame Is - Wolverine Maven

In remembrances of Cicely Tyson and Cloris Leachman, two acting titans who died last week, one couldnt help but notice parallels between their careers.

In the early 1970s when they first achieved national acclaim, both were already in their mid-40s. Leachman won an Academy Award in 1972 for her supporting role in The Last Picture Show. That same year, Tyson starred in Sounder, becoming only the second Black woman nominated for a best-actress Oscar.

Both also enjoyed success on television Leachman on The Mary Tyler Moore Show and, later, her own spinoff series, Phyllis. Tyson soared in The Autobiography of Miss Jane Pittman and Roots. At 80, Leachman won an Emmy, her eighth, for Malcolm in the Middle. Tyson, also a multiple Emmy winner, made a celebrated return to Broadway in The Trip to Bountiful, winning a Tony when she was 88. And each continued to work into their 90s.

Yet theres a jarring difference. On the Internet Movie Database, Leachman has 287 credits while Tyson has 94, although their career longevity was roughly the same. Of course Leachman, as a white actress, always had more opportunities. Tyson could have worked more, but instead she chose only those roles that exalted the emotional complexity of Black people, especially Black women.

I made up my mind that I could not afford the luxury of just being an actress, and I would use my career as my platform, Tyson told CBS This Morning cohost Gayle King in one of her last interviews. She was promoting her autobiography, Just as I Am, written with Michelle Burford, where she explains the promise she made to herself.

As an artist with the privilege of the spotlight, I felt an enormous responsibility to use that forum as a force for good, as a place from which to display the full spectrum of our humanity, Tyson wrote in the book, which was released two days before her death. My art had to both mirror the times and propel them forward. I was determined to do all I could to alter the narrative about Black people to change the way Black women in particular were perceived, by reflecting our dignity.

Like Lena Horne, who years earlier refused to accept roles she found demeaning, this meant that Tyson often found meaningful work scarce. If Hollywood refused to acknowledge the depth of Black lives, that would be the industrys shame. Tyson would not perpetuate its lies for more money or greater fame.

Still, I wonder what else Tyson might have given us if allowed the breadth of opportunities Leachman enjoyed. (In my casting director fantasies, I long imagined Tyson playing political trailblazer Shirley Chisholm, the first Black woman elected to Congress.)

In her career, Leachman could move from the drama of a depressed woman having an affair with a much younger man in The Last Picture Show, to the narcissistic and neurotic Phyllis Lindstrom on The Mary Tyler Moore Show, to the hilarious Frau Blcher in Young Frankenstein. Her range was inexhaustible.

The same could be said of Tyson, who also carried the burden of correcting this nations disgraceful image of Black people, one very much reinforced by popular media. To be clear, I doubt she saw that weight on her petite shoulders as a burden at all. It was the cost she willingly paid for her time on this earth. Thats a choice many Black people confront throughout their lives whether to prostrate themselves for white acceptance or create a life where they can lift their people as they climb.

From Coretta Scott King to Harriet Tubman to a sharecropper fighting to save her family from the ravages of the Depression and racism, Tyson excelled in playing tenacious, undefeated Black women. She held up a mirror to her community, and what we saw reflected was beauty, substance, and self-respect. For more than six decades, Tyson refused to stand in a spotlight that shone on her alone.

Both Leachman and Tyson are icons. One will be remembered for finding that distinctive spark in every part she played. Tysons greatest role was her sacred belief that what was best for her culture would be best for her career. A love of Blackness was her true compass, and with it she defied ignorance, saw light in desolation, and traced a path from our broken places to glory and grace.

Rene Graham can be reached at renee.graham@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @reneeygraham.

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Cicely, Cloris, and two paths to Hollywood immortality - The Boston Globe

ByMichael Ormsbee, PhD,Florida State UniversityEdited by Kate Findley and proofread byAngelaShoemaker, The Great Courses DailyAging doesnt cause the dramatic drop in muscle mass that we often see; rather, it is chronic disuse of muscles due to inactivity that is primarily responsible. Photo By DenisProduction.com / ShutterstockAging and Lifting Weights

Research has repeatedly shown that lifting weights can help prevent age-associated chronic diseases like osteoporosis and type 2 diabetes. It is also a major factor in allowing you to move around and maintain your independence.

You need at least enough muscle mass to walk unassisted, get out of a chair, and carry groceries. The best part about lifting weights is that there are no age restrictions.

Now, you may need a modification of an exercise or two, but that is where a certified personal trainer can come into play and show you proper form to prevent injury and make any changes you may need to accommodate any physical limitation. Consider Ernestine Shepherd, who began to lift weights at age 56 and started competing as a bodybuilder in her 70s.

As we age, a phenomenon called sarcopenia occurs, which is the natural, progressive loss of muscle mass. Studies have shown that between the ages of 40 and 50 years old, we can lose more than 8% of our muscle mass, and that can accelerate to more than 15% per decade after the age of 75, if measures are not taken to prevent it.

Fortunately, we can do much to slow this process down. Most people think that aging alone causes us to lose muscle. Now, though, research is showing that its not simply aging but rather the lack of physical activity that is responsible for sarcopenia.

One study looked at lifelong exercisers to determine if chronic exercise could prevent the loss of muscle mass and strength in aging adults. The researchers took 20 men and 20 women between the ages of 40 and 81 years old who exercised at least four to five times per week and competed as triathletes.

These older athletes were put through a series of tests to study their health, strength, and body composition using magnetic resonance imaging or MRI technology. MRI gives us a precise view of the fat and muscle in specific regions of your body. This study used it on the quadriceps muscles of the thigh to look at muscle quality.

As you might expect, the younger people in the study did have a lower body mass index, or BMI, and body fat percentage compared to older athletes. However, the lean muscle mass and strength were no different between the younger and the older athletes.

Whats more is that these benefits were similar in both men and women. This highlights the fact that long-term exercise training can aid in preserving muscle mass and may also prevent increases in body fat as we age.

Additionally, this study helps to debunk a common myth by showing that aging alone doesnt cause the dramatic drop in muscle mass that we often see. Rather, its the chronic disuse and inactivity that are primarily to blame.

One of the most interesting people to discuss is a man who is a prime example of how exercise and a healthy diet can improve your muscle mass and quality of life, Professor Ormsbee said. Hes John Nagy.

Nagy is a participant in the Physical Activity Centre of Excellence at McMaster University in Canada. Not only does he exercise vigorously, but he is also 97 years old.

A recent interview described his daily routine like this: his warm-up begins with movements in the shower, followed by floor and ball exercises for his core and his back. Hell then walk to the Universitytwo miles each wayor make up for it on his treadmill, followed by a 90-minute workout at the University.

He also keeps dumbbells, resistance bands, and a Swiss Ball in his apartment next to the treadmill along with a stationary bike. Mr. Nagy embodies the idea of using regular exercise to maintain his quality of life and to stay able-bodied so that he can live to the fullest.

Just like Ernestine Shepherd, Professor Ormsbee said. Maybe we should all take a pageor maybe a few chaptersout of their books.

Michael Ormsbee is an Associate Professor in the Department of Nutrition, Food, and Exercise Sciences and Interim Director of the Institute of Sports Sciences and Medicine in the College of Human Sciences at Florida State University. He received his MS in Exercise Physiology from South Dakota State University and his PhD in Bioenergetics from East Carolina University.

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Regular Exercise and Lifting Weights Might Be the Key to Immortality - The Great Courses Daily News

Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki wants to inhabit the metaverse an online place where we work and play and entertain ourselves. He has dreamed about it for a long time, and he has so many followers now that Roblox will likely be one of the most credible candidates for building the metaverse, the universe of virtual worlds that are all interconnected, like in novels such asSnow CrashandReady Player One.

Roblox has 36 million people who come back daily to play on the platform. That makes the company one of the lead horses to move on to the next generation of technology. And Baszucki is a big fan of getting his own users to do the work.

People do everything from playing traditional games, to social experiences that are more around hanging out and just being together whether its working together in a restaurant or running away from a tornado, Baszucki said. And in the midst of this very difficult time, weve seen a lot of people using Roblox as a way to stay connected, whether its trying to have a birthday party, or how do we graduate from high school.

Baszuckis company is planning to go public soon through a direct listing offering, and Baszucki isnt able to talk about the latest financial details now. But Roblox has built a big war chest, raising $520 million in private capital at a $29.5 billion valuation earlier this month. It can use that money to build the metaverse and populate it with things that the users created.

Since Roblox focuses on user-generated content, Baszucki doesnt think his team will create the metaverse. His users will.

Above: Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki (right) speaks with Dean Takahashi of GamesBeat at Into the Metaverse.

Image Credit: VentureBeat

We think of ourselves as shepherds of this idea. But its an idea thats been around for a long time, he said. Our founding story goes way back to a prior company, Knowledge Revolution, where my Roblox cofounder Eric [Cassel] and I were building educational software to help people figure out how to understand physics experiments. And in the process of watching lots and lots of students use interactive physics, we saw that in addition to doing their physics homework, they were building stuff and creating stuff and watching what would happen when a car ran into a building. This kind of germinated the idea.

That origin is not so different from what Nvidia is doing today with its Omniverse physics simulation world, which is a kind of metaverse for engineers. (Richard Kerris of Nvidia will speak about that on Day Three of our event). Nvidias focus, however, is hyper-realistic.

Our hope is the metaverse doesnt just look like reality, Baszucki said. It feels like reality so that the cars in the metaverse have engines and they have axles and they have wheels. When the wheel falls off the car, the car does what we would expect in real life. So part of this hope of a physically driven metaverse is actually easier to program and easier to create emergent behavior because it kind of works like we expect.

He added, Weve all lost ourselves in a Pixar movie that is very high-quality rendering but it is not photorealistic rendering.

Above: How to make a metaverse

Image Credit: Roblox

The true metaverse will have something like eight different characteristics, Baszucki said. You have to have an avatar with a virtual identity. You can be everything from a rock star to a fashion model, and thats one big draw of the metaverse.

You can make friends with real people and socialize in the metaverse. It has to be immersive, or make you feel like youre somewhere else and you lose your sense of reality. You should be able to log in from anywhere, regardless of the country or culture where you come from. You need a low-latency connection, whether youre at a school or a business.

The metaverse has to have low friction, meaning you can go anywhere instantly. If youre studying ancient Rome at school, you should be able to transport yourself there within a second and take a tour with your class. It has to have a variety of content to support the long tail of interests people have. You need a vibrant economy to ensure that people can make a living in the metaverse not just coders but artists and designers too. And finally, you need safety and stability, so that people can come together and improve digital civility.

Above: Roblox will hold events related to Ready Player Two by Ernest Cline.

Image Credit: Roblox

Baszucki has done a couple of events with Ernest Cline, the author of Ready Player One and Ready Player Two. I asked Baszucki if he identified with the characters in the book who created the Oasis, or the books version of the metaverse. The founders of the Oasis in the book are Ogden Morrow and James Halliday.

When Ready Player One came out, I sent it to all the executives in the company because it was capturing not just societal changes but what I thought were visionary technologies that we were going to see play out as these platforms got better, Baszucki said. We really try to fade into the background. So Im not sure either one of those characters applies to us. We dont make any content. We actually dont have control of the content. We try to make really good technology and tools and a platform. And then we get amazed by the content.

He added, We almost see ourselves more as the creators of a primitive part of the electrical grid, back there in the distance, and were trying to more and more highlight the creative geniusof our creator community, which is really the real engine that works with us to power our part of the metaverse.

Baszucki compares what Roblox is doing to the invention of the printing press. The tech was so new that some philosophers at the time felt that people started reading too much. Over time, the culture came to accept book reading. Video went through the same cycle, as are games now. I joked that parents will one day tell their kids to stop reading and go back into Roblox to learn something.

Above: Lil Nas X in a Roblox experience

Image Credit: Roblox

People will know they have a physical identity and a digital identity, he said. Just as people that are very facile with books and videos and balancing them, were optimistic they will be with the metaverse as well. Were not so dystopian in our vision relative to maybe some science fiction. We think people will be able to balance this and use it in a positive way. We think it will be an integral part of learningand working.Just another tool side by side with video and books and other forms of communication.

Amid the pandemic, Baszucki said he has enjoyed seeing experiments on Roblox like concerts and parties that enable people to enjoy each other while social distanced.

Were hopeful that there are many situations where immersive 3D communication can bring people together, where its very difficult when theyre forced to be at a distance, he said. An example would be our Roblox holiday party, which we did in Robloxwith hundreds and hundreds of people.And because they were all employees, we were able to do the things we might do at a holiday party. I wish we could have been together physically. But we did have a nightclub. We did have a stage, wedid havea bar.

Quality has its own way of rising to the top. But the company has to spend a lot more time making sure the place is civil. More than 1,700 trust and safety volunteers ensure that Roblox is a safe and stable world for players.

We dont in any way filter on quality, but we have incredibly polished experiences that tend to do better, he said. We try to build systems that bubble up interesting things.We dont really know what is high quality if its safe and civil our Roblox community will vote with their feed and with their engagement and say this is interesting.

User-generated content rules on Roblox, and many young developers are starting to become entrepreneurs, forming teams or even studios focused on Roblox games. Hundreds of thousands are making interesting content, and more than 1,000 are making $10,000 or more and 250 are making more than $100,000. Those people are working alongside big brands that are making their own games for the platform.

The advances that will lead us to the metaverse are inexorable, Baszucki aid, as bandwidth, mobile devices, and other technologies improve.

Roblox has 830 employees, but Baszucki said it will need a diverse group of people to fill out its team to build the metaverse, with experts ranging from 3D game engines to corporate civility.

Baszucki believes that, if done right, the metaverse will make the world a better place by increasing the civility of the world.

The way we moderate, the way we nudge, the way we encourage civil discourse on the platform Im optimistic well be able to measure the general civility of society by watching whats happening on this platform, he said. Im also excited that at various ages, there will be various levels of appropriate nudging. There will be the ability tohave people with very different viewpointspop a little outof maybe the bubble they have and safely meet people with very different viewpoints and have a civil discussion with them.

Above: Part of the JDRF world inside Roblox.

Image Credit: Roblox

I also asked Baszucki if the metaverse is the place where well achieve digital immortality, as happens in the Ready Player Two novel.

This is such an enormous thing to think about. I think it goes way beyond the medical. Its a whole separate industry right there, Baszucki said. I do thinkover time the metaverse will be this wonderful place where [non-player characters] NPCs improve.Well see theTuring test happen not just through text and voice, but well see the Turing test happen in themetaverse.Well start to see NPCs that are harder and harder to distinguish from people over time.And this may be the foreshadowing to ultimately immortality. There may be forms of immortality that are a rough approximationof you and me. So I could imagine if you and I wore a device for our whole life that recorded everything we saw and everything we said, machine learning might be able to create an approximationof us that could live. But Im not so sure. I think its gonna be a while before we can snapshot every neuron and build that out.

So if you had to think of one, one thing you want to do in the metaverse, so what would that be?

Asked what he wants to do in the metaverse, Baszucki said his first thought was boring: just hang out with people that he knows in a social setting.

I think I want to have that ability to come together with people Ive been missing for a really, really long time.

He also wants to play a game in a virtual junkyard with friends, or two teams of five. They would build a crazy contraption with welding torches and drills and other gear, and then they would compete with each other using their contraptions.

Its all about the complexity of the physics and the interaction and emergent behavior, Baszucki said. These kinds of things are exciting to me.

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Roblox CEO Dave Baszucki believes users will create the metaverse - VentureBeat

After Diana absorbed the Book of Life, many fans questioned if that would mean she is now immortal like her vampire beau. Though this is not disclosed in the book series, Harkness addressed the question about Diana's mortality and Matthew's immortality during a fan Q&A.

While some fans have theorized that Diana may have created her own immortality spell to live out her days with Matthew, Harkness confirmed during the fan event that she will eventually die. "Shes mortal and a warm-blood, and not going to have an extended life," Harkness said.

The author added, "Matthew has an extended life, and I think, again, the sad truth is none of us really live forever, and we all have to make the best of what we get handed. So I think thats a really normal part of life. One of the things we need to do better maybe in our time is learning to say goodbye, and learning how to live without the kind of regrets."

Watch new episodes of A Discovery of Witches on Sky One or AMC.

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Does Matthew Die in 'A Discovery of Witches'? The Vampire's Fate Revealed! - Distractify