Category Archives: Immortality Medicine

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Books are the ultimate relaxing escape, whether you have the option to travel or not. If youre looking for a new recommendation to add to your shelf, weve got some info on the top books Aussies were reading in 2021.

Australias biggest online book store, Booktopia, has given us the inside track on what Aussies were searching for in bookland last year.

Lets start off with the top 10 most-searched books on the Booktopia site last year.

The list includes a few favourites, like Harry Potter, as well as some returning classics such as Dune, which no doubt benefitted from its big-screen adaptation.

All synopses are from Booktopia.

Harry Potter (series) by J.K. Rowling

Harry Potter has never even heard of Hogwarts when the letters start dropping on the doormat at number four, Privet Drive. Addressed in green ink on yellowish parchment with a purple seal, they are swiftly confiscated by his grisly aunt and uncle. Then, on Harrys eleventh birthday, a great beetle-eyed giant of a man called Rubeus Hagrid bursts in with some astonishing news: Harry Potter is a wizard, and he has a place at Hogwarts School of Witchcraft and Wizardry. An incredible adventure is about to begin!

It Ends With Us by Colleen Hoover

Lily hasnt always had it easy, but thats never stopped her from working hard for the life she wants. Shes come a long way from the small town in Maine where she grew up she graduated from college, moved to Boston, and started her own business. So when she feels a spark with a gorgeous neurosurgeon named Ryle Kincaid, everything in Lilys life suddenly seems almost too good to be true.

Ryle is assertive, stubborn, maybe even a little arrogant. Hes also sensitive, brilliant, and has a total soft spot for Lily, but Ryles complete aversion to relationships is disturbing. Even as Lily finds herself becoming the exception to his no dating rule, she cant help but wonder what made him that way in the first place.

As questions about her new relationship overwhelm her, so do thoughts of Atlas Corrigan her first love and a link to the past she left behind. He was her kindred spirit, her protector. When Atlas suddenly reappears, everything Lily has built with Ryle is threatened.

Atomic Habits by James Clear

People think when you want to change your life, you need to think big. But world-renowned habits expert James Clear has discovered another way. He knows that real change comes from the compound effect of hundreds of small decisions doing two push-ups a day, waking up five minutes early, or holding a single short phone call. He calls them atomic habits.

In this ground-breaking book, Clears reveals exactly how these minuscule changes can grow into such life-altering outcomes. He uncovers a handful of simple life hacks (the forgotten art of Habit Stacking, the unexpected power of the Two Minute Rule, or the trick to entering the Goldilocks Zone), and delves into cutting-edge psychology and neuroscience to explain why they matter. Along the way, he tells inspiring stories of Olympic gold medalists, leading CEOs, and distinguished scientists who have used the science of tiny habits to stay productive, motivated, and happy.

Duneby Frank Herbert

Melange, or spice, is the most valuable and rarest element in the universe; a drug that does everything from increasing a persons life-span to making intersteller travel possible. And it can only be found on a single planet: the inhospitable desert world Arrakis.

Whoever controls Arrakis controls the spice. And whoever controls the spice controls the universe. When the Emperor transfers stewardship of Arrakis from the noble House Harkonnen to House Atreides, the Harkonnens fight back, murdering Duke Leto Atreides.

Paul, his son, and Lady Jessica, his concubine, flee into the desert. On the point of death, they are rescued by a band for Fremen, the native people of Arrakis, who control Arrakis second great resource: the giant worms that burrow beneath the burning desert sands. In order to avenge his father and retake Arrakis from the Harkonnens, Paul must earn the trust of the Fremen and lead a tiny army against the innumerable forces aligned against them. And his journey will change the universe.

The Seven Husbands of Evelyn Hugo by Taylor Jenkins Reid

Reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job, no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now?

Summoned to Evelyns luxurious apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show business in the 80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship and a great forbidden love.

Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary star, but as Evelyns story nears its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life intersects with Moniques own in tragic and irreversible ways.

The Song of Achilles by Madeleine Miller

Greece in the age of heroes. Patroclus, an awkward young prince, has been exiled to the court of King Peleus and his perfect son Achilles. Despite their differences, Achilles befriends the shamed prince, and as they grow into young men skilled in the arts of war and medicine, their bond blossoms into something deeper despite the displeasure of Achilless mother Thetis, a cruel sea goddess. But when word comes that Helen of Sparta has been kidnapped, Achilles must go to war in distant Troy and fulfill his destiny. Torn between love and fear for his friend, Patroclus goes with him, little knowing that the years that follow will test everything they hold dear.

Demon Slayer (book series) by Koyoharu Gotouge

In Taisho-era Japan, kindhearted Tanjiro Kamado makes a living selling charcoal. But his peaceful life is shattered when a demon slaughters his entire family. His little sister Nezuko is the only survivor, but she has been transformed into a demon herself! Tanjiro sets out on a dangerous journey to find a way to return his sister to normal and destroy the demon who ruined his life.

Shadow and Bone (book series) by Leigh Bardugo

Soldier. Summoner. Saint.

Follow Alina Starkov throughShadow and Bone, Siege and Storm, andRuin and Risingas she discovers her dormant powers and is swept up in a world of luxury and illusion. As Alina struggles to fit into her new life, a threat to the kingdom of Ravka growsone that will test old alliances and challenge the very limits of magic, one that will forge a leader from a frightened girl.

The Midnight Library by Matt Haig

Between life and death there is a library. When Nora Seed finds herself in the Midnight Library, she has a chance to make things right. Up until now, her life has been full of misery and regret. She feels she has let everyone down, including herself. But things are about to change.

The books in the Midnight Library enable Nora to live as if she had done things differently. With the help of an old friend, she can now undo every one of her regrets as she tries to work out her perfect life. But things arent always what she imagined theyd be, and soon her choices place the library and herself in extreme danger.

Before time runs out, she must answer the ultimate question: what is the best way to live?

The Invisible Life of Addie LaRue by V. E. Schwab

When Addie LaRue makes a pact with the devil, she trades her soul for immortality. But theres always a price the devil takes away her place in the world, cursing her to be forgotten by everyone.

Addie flees her tiny hometown in 18th Century France, beginning a journey that takes her across the world, learning to live a life where no one remembers her and everything she owns is lost and broken. Existing only as a muse for artists throughout history, she learns to fall in love anew every single day.

Her only companion on this journey is her dark devil with hypnotic green eyes, who visits her each year on the anniversary of their deal. Alone in the world, Addie has no choice but to confront him, to understand him, maybe to beat him.

Until one day, in a second hand bookshop in Manhattan, Addie meets someone who remembers her. Suddenly thrust back into a real, normal life, Addie realises she cant escape her fate forever.

Alongside those 2021 top books, we also have info on the most-searched authors last year. This is who topped the list:

If youre looking for a novel from a little closer to home, here are Booktopias top five most searched Australian books from 2021:

Did your favourite book make the list? If not you can shout out your top book for 2021 in Booktopias FAB award.

If this wasnt enough to inspire you to find a new read weve also got a list of the top-rated books to come out in 2021.

See the original post here:
These Are the Top Books Aussies Searched for in 2021, According to Booktopia - Lifehacker Australia

The first emperor of China, Qin Shi Huang, wanted to live forever.

Newly discovered documents reveal that 2,200 years ago, he even put out an executive order to search for a potion that would give him eternal life, Chinas Xinhua news agency reported.

Qin Shi Huang was born in 259 B.C., and by the time of his death in 210 B.C., he had conquered all six warring states of China to create a unified nation, of which he proclaimed himself emperor.

During his reign, strips of bamboo or wood known as slips were common writing materials. In 2002, more than 36,000 slips containing ancient calligraphy were discovered in an abandoned well in central China's Hunan province, according to Xinhua. [Photos: Terracotta Warriors Protect Secret Tomb]

The news agency reported that Zhang Chunlong, a researcher at the Hunan Institute of Archaeology, analyzed 48 medicine-related slips from that collection and found that the emperors decree to search for immortality potions reached frontier regions and remote villages.

"It required a highly efficient administration and strong executive force to pass down a government decree in ancient times, when transportation and communication facilities were undeveloped," Zhang told Xinhua.

The wooden slips even contained some responses from villages. One town called "Duxiang" reported back to the emperor that its inhabitants hadnt yet found the elixir of life, while another town in the modern-day Shandong Province in eastern China offered an herb from a local mountain.

Archaeologists and historians already had some idea that Qin Shi Huang was obsessed with immortality.

According to Chemistry World, the emperor was thought to have consumed cinnabar (or mercury sulfide) in the hopes it would prolong his life. As scientists know now, mercury is poisonous. Ironically, Qin Shi Huang's supposed cures may have helped bring on his death at the age of 39.

If he couldnt live forever, Qin Shi Huang wanted to at least ensure that he would be well-equipped in the afterlife. For his tomb, the emperor built a sprawling underground mausoleum thats never been excavated, though 8,000 ceramic soldiers and horses known as the Terracotta Army have been discovered since the 1970s near the burial mound.

Ancient writings claim the underground palace had a ceiling mimicking the night sky with pearls as stars and rivers of mercury. Its not clear how many of the ancient descriptions are exaggerations, though soil samples around the tomb have indicated high levels of mercury contamination.

See more here:
Chinas First Emperor Ordered Official Search for ...

Near the end of Elizabeth Holmes criminal trial, her lawyers submitted into evidence her punishing self-improvement plan.

4 a.m. Rise and thank God, the handwritten memo began. Exercise, meditation, prayer, breakfast [whey and, as she spelled it, bannanna] followed. By 6:45 a.m., a time when slackers were still fumbling for the alarm clock, she was at the office of Theranos, the blood-testing company she founded in 2003.

Holmes had many rules at Theranos: I am never a minute late. I show no excitement. ALL ABOUT BUSINESS. I am not impulsive. I know the outcome of every encounter. I do not hesitate. I constantly make decisions and change them as needed. I speak rarely. I call bullshit immediately.

It worked. Holmes resolve was so forceful, and fit so neatly into the Silicon Valley cliche of achieving the impossible by refusing to admit it was impossible, that it inspired belief right up to the moment on Monday when a jury officially convicted her of four counts of fraud.

Holmes was found guilty of four of 11 charges of fraud Monday, in a case that came to symbolise the pitfalls of Silicon Valleys culture of hustle, hype and greed.

A jury of eight men and four women took 50 hours over seven days of deliberations to reach a verdict, convicting her of three counts of wire fraud and one count of conspiracy to commit wire fraud by lying to investors to raise money for her company.

Each count carries a maximum sentence of 20 years in prison, terms that are likely to be served concurrently. Holmes (37) is expected to appeal.

The verdict signalled the end of an era. In Silicon Valley, where the line between talk and achievement is often vague, there is finally a limit to faking it.

From Stanford University dropout to Theranos $9 billion valuation to conviction, it is an epic rise and fall that will be chewed over in the coffee shops and juice bars of Palo Alto, California, until the tech industry departs for a new life in Elon Musks and Jeff Bezos off-world colonies. For a decade, Holmes fooled savvy investors, hundreds of smart employees, an all-star board and a media eager to anoint a new star even, or especially, if she had no qualifications.

Just as Silicon Valley is a cartoonish version of American notions about the virtues of hard work and getting rich quick, so Holmes was a heightened version of Silicon Valley.

As her self-improvement scheme made clear, she was trying to turn herself into a machine that had no time for anything but work. This was not for her own benefit, of course, but humanitys. She perfectly encapsulated the Silicon Valley credo that tech was here to serve us, and never mind exactly how it did it, the billions it was making or whether it even worked.

Whenever anyone a regulator, an investor, a reporter wanted to know a little more about exactly how the Theranos machines functioned, the company cried trade secrets. The real secret, of course, was that Theranos didnt have any trade secrets because its machines didnt work. But her answer worked for a long time.

Hiding fraud behind the imperatives of secrecy wasnt the only way Holmes actions were rooted in tradition. Her self-improvement plan dated back to Ben Franklin but found its most indelible expression in F Scott Fitzgeralds creation of Jay Gatsby, the mysterious, alluring, handsome millionaire who also ran a few swindles.

Gatsby was practically Holmes brother. He, too, got where he was with a schedule and rules, in his case written inside a book when he was a striving youth:

5pm-6pm: Practice elocution, poise and how to obtain it

7pm-9pm: Study needed inventions

The parallels with Holmes extended even to Gatsbys equally loose grasp of spelling. No more smokeing or chewing, he admonished himself.

Gatsby was a bootlegger but also used Wall Street to cheat. He sold fake bonds. Holmes chose Silicon Valley, the last and greatest of all human dreams. In the first decade of the century, it promised to reinvent transportation, friendship, commerce, politics, money.

Blood-testing must have seemed like a breeze by comparison, especially since Holmes was a natural salesperson, as good at bending reality as Steve Jobs himself. Here she was in an interview with the radio show Tech Nation in 2005, explaining what Theranos was all about:

We focused on creating a customised medicine tool that could be used in the home by every patient, so that every day, a patient can get real-time analysis of their blood samples.

Who could not applaud such an invention? Theranos was making a messy, uncertain and time-consuming medical process into something effortless and painless. A little teeny needle that pulls a little teeny drop of blood, she said. Software would do the rest.

Tech Nations host, Moira Gunn, has a masters degree in computer science and a doctor of philosophy in mechanical engineering, but she was dazzled. How old are you, Elizabeth? she asked.

Im 21, Holmes said.

Her age was brought up not to knock down her claims but to underline how impressive they were. Im gonna go tell my two children, they better get off their duffs, Gunn exclaimed.

Holmes said Theranos device was in the production phase. She added, We hope to release it, actually, to a pharmaceutical partner around mid-to-late this year. Thirteen years later, when the company dissolved, it had never successfully released a device.

In 2005, however, even reinventing blood testing at 21 was not enough, so deep were our expectations of genius. Holmes was asked about her future, and gave the stock Silicon Valley response: You aint seen nothing yet.

Theranos already had the next generations of its device in prototype, she said. It was miniaturised to make it even faster, to make it more high-throughput. It would be automated: You dont even have to touch your finger on the device.

So in one of the first media interviews Holmes ever did, she said Theranos had a working device that would be able to analyse your health without actually touching you. No one called her on it. No wonder she and her deputy and boyfriend, Ramesh Balwani, the companys chief operating officer known as Sunny, thought they could brazen it out in the Silicon Valley tradition until they had something that actually worked.

This is a credulous age. William Perry, a Theranos board member, was secretary of defense under President Bill Clinton, a mathematician, engineer and Stanford professor. Not, in other words, a fool with regard to Silicon Valley. Yet he told The New Yorker in 2014 that Holmes has sometimes been called another Steve Jobs, but I think thats an inadequate comparison. She has a social consciousness that Steve never had. He was a genius; shes one with a big heart.

Perry declined to comment.

Jobs, who died in 2011, might as well have been a recruiter for Theranos. Adam Rosendorff, a lab director at Theranos, testified during Holmes trial that he thought the company was going to be the next Apple. He applied for the job after reading a biography of the Apple co-founder.

The whole excitement around Steve Jobs was very compelling to me, he said. I wanted to make a more global impact on health care and I thought that joining a diagnostics company would help me do that.

Rosendorff grew disillusioned before Theranos misleading claims were exposed, but Perry stuck it out until December 2016, when the startup was forced to change its board in a futile attempt to survive.

With believers like these, Holmes dream must have seemed so close that she could hardly fail to grasp it. A couple more late nights from the engineering team, a few more magazine covers declaring her a genius, and it would be as good as done.

So where does this conviction leave the rest of us her marks, her enablers, her investors and former fans?

Ripe for the next huckster that comes along, probably. Some Silicon Valley promises are so sweet we just cant get enough of them. Immortality. Crypto. Flying cars. Mars. Digital harmony. Wealth beyond compare.

As Fitzgerald wrote, we will always be a sucker for the orgastic future that year by year recedes before us. The New York Times

See more here:
The epic rise and fall of Theranos's Elizabeth Holmes - The Irish Times

Novak Djokovics hopes of returning to the Australian Open and competing for a record 21st grand slam title and a shot at tennis immortality crashed in astonishing fashion on Thursday as he was denied entrance into Melbourne, Victoria at the airport and his visa was cancelled due to insufficient evidence to support a medical exemption. His journey to that moment reveals much about him.

Towards the end of last year, as thoughts shifted to the season ahead, and players considered their participation at Melbourne Park, Djokovic gave an interview to Serbian publication Blic. He described questions about his vaccination status as inappropriate and he bemoaned the role of the media. He was pointedly direct: Your editors can take what I have just said and turn it into a scandal, he said. I do not want to be a part of that storm.

During the first week of the Australian tennis summer, the storm arrived when Djokovic announced on social media that he had received an exemption permission to travel to Australia without being vaccinated. Over the past few months, the vaccination requirements for players wishing to compete at the Australian Open have left a profound mark on the professional tours. Uptake of Covid vaccines in tennis had been extremely slow, but once the Victoria state government rules were confirmed, the rate of vaccination rose. It only made the world No 1s unresolved status more conspicuous.

While Djokovic never explicitly revealed his vaccination status, he has offered numerous indications of his stance. Long before vaccines were available, he stated his concern about having to be vaccinated in order to travel.

He has often stressed the importance of embracing natural solutions; early in the pandemic he held Instagram live conversations in which he spoke of how the power of gratitude could turn the most toxic food, or maybe most polluted water into the most healing water. After having surgery on his right elbow in 2018, a procedure that has allowed him to win nine grand slam titles since, he said that he cried for three days. His belief in alternative medicine is complemented by his commitment to alternative history. He frequently retreats to Visoko, in the hills of Bosnia and Herzegovina, where he meets up with the businessman Semir Osmanagic whose claims that there are ancient man-made structures with magical healing powers, refuted by scientists, have turned the hills into a lucrative tourist destination. Djokovic has also expressed his support for the ultranationalist alternative historian Jovan Deretic, whose writings claim, among other things, that numerous European cultures, including ancient Greeks, Celts and Etruscans, are descended from Serbs.

Djokovic is unyielding in his commitment to his beliefs away from the court, however questionable they are, and that single-mindedness is also visible in his faith in the methods that have led to his on-court success.

Since the criteria for the Australian Open became clear, it always appeared that Djokovic intended to find a way to compete at the tournament, but only without compromising those beliefs.

Last year, one of the defining images of the chaotic Australian Open was the continued presence of the tournament director, Craig Tiley, on television as he managed the sudden lockdown that prevented crowds attending much of the event. After Djokovics announcement, Tiley returned to a similar role yesterday as he stressed there had been no favourable treatment for Djokovic and reinforced the strength of the medical exemption process. The exemption applications were reviewed by two independent panels of experts, one assembled by Tennis Australia and another by the Victorian government, which Tiley described as a more rigorous process than for regular citizens.

But further obstacles emerged on Tuesday, when Australias home affairs minister, Karen Andrews, said it was the federal government that would enforce our requirements at the Australian border, whatever Tennis Australia and the Victorian government might have decided about a non-vaccinated player taking part in the tournament.

Djokovic is popular with a considerable group of players due to the concern he has expressed for the lower-ranked members of the ATP Tour but, as the world No 1, he is also a clear beneficiary of the privileges afforded to top players. The cynicism that some have was reflected in comments from Jamie Murray, who suggested he does not believe he would have received an exemption, and Alex de Minaur who subtly described the subject as interesting and hoped that other applicants received the same treatment. In the end, he was sharply dealt with. The clear and simple solution for the world No 1 would have been to arrive in Australia vaccinated and without issue, but the federal government, Victoria state and Tennis Australia also shoulder significant blame for their contributions in allowing a player to travel for a full day before rejecting him at the border.

If Djokovics application was tenuous enough to be denied on arrival, the medical exemption process that was defended so stringently by Victoria State and Tennis Australia was a monumental blunder. As Djokovic was turned away and forced to grapple with his shattered dreams, one reality was difficult to escape. In this storm, everybody had lost something.

Visit link:
Lost in the storm: Novak Djokovic sees Australian Open dreams blown away - The Guardian

This is a rush transcript from "Hannity" on December 2, 2021. Thiscopy may not be in its final form and may be updated.

SEAN HANNITY, FOX NEWS HOST: All right. Thank you. And more on Alec Baldwin crying a lot tonight. Tucker, thank you.

Welcome to HANNITY.

At this hour, we are tracking multiple breaking stories, yes, including Alec Baldwin's interview it just ended. He admittedly shot two people on a movie set killing one. He claims he never pulled the trigger and he cried an awful lot. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

ALEC BALDWIN, ACTOR: She was someone who was loved by everyone who worked with and liked by everyone who worked with and admired -- I'm sorry.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: We'll have more on this straight ahead.

First, our count continues, sadly.

ANNOUNCER: Americans held hostage, behind enemy lines, day 110.

HANNITY: I know the media has turned the page. Joe Biden's turned the page. We will never turn the page. It's 110 days since Joe Biden abandoned, Americans in Afghanistan, military families, green card holders, our Afghan allies. It's 123 days since he promised he'd leave nobody behind.

Joe Biden lied to every American. Joe, you can still go rescue the Americans, the green cardholders, the military families that you abandoned. The ones you promised you wouldn't abandon.

Back home, Joe was barely able to form a cogent sentence. Today, during what can be only described as another rambling, bumbling, mumbling speech about COVID-19. The very frail looking Joe Biden struggled to speak at all and seemingly coughing up an entire lung in the process. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

JOE BIDEN, PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: Without cutting corners on -- for safety, to get such vaccines renewed -- reviewed and renewed -- reviewed and approved if they're needed. And then get your booster shot when you're -- when you're eligible. Excuse me, we don't yet believe -- excuse me -- that additional measures will be needed.

I was just told. It's a question I got to ask. I've been meaning to ask for a long time, whether or not, not just it increases the -- the resistance to the variant that is being dealt with, but it also is -- it is stronger. It not only just raises the total but it's a stronger, makes things more powerful in terms of resisting.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: This is not funny. That's supposed to be the leader of the free world. He's clearly not well.

Yesterday, during another concerning moment, Joe Biden flat out lied about an important trip to Israel during the Six Day War. One problem we'll tell you about, but first watch this.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: I was saying to a couple of younger members of my staff before I came over, but the many times I've been to Israel, I said, not all of a sudden, I realized, god, you're getting old, Biden. I have known every -- every prime minister well since Golda Meir including Golda Meir.

And during, the Six Day War, I had an opportunity to -- she invited me to come over because I was going to be the liaison between she and the Egyptians about the Suez and so on and so forth.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: One big problem, none of that happened. Joe wasn't there. He wasn't even in the Senate. Instead at the time, he was getting really bad grades in law school.

But don't worry in between the lies, the bumbling, mumbling confusion and weakness, Joe Biden has COVID-19, he's got it all figured out -- earlier today announcing that the federal mass mandate on trains planes will be extended to the spring of 2022, also encouraging every American to wear a mask at all times indoors, before sauntering off stage mask-free.

Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: And we are extending the requirement both internationally and domestically to wear masks for travel on aircraft, trains, public transportation through the winter months. Thank you for your patience and listening to me. Thank you.

(APPLAUSE)

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: And then make to make matters worse, Joe is now reportedly considering a vaccine mandate for domestic travel, but still preferential treatment exists for illegal immigrants that continues. No COVID testing, no vaccine mandates, and yes, free travel courtesy of you the taxpayer, to the state of their choice where illegal immigrants will receive free room and board and shelter and health care and free education.

This as Biden's current vaccine mandates are getting held up in court. But Joe doesn't care. He does whatever the flip-flopping Dr. Fauci tells him to do. He follows him blindly. It's almost as if an unelected, dishonest, life-long bureaucrat is now running the country. It's that bad. Take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

BIDEN: Continuing to give me advice on uh developments as they occur. I've seen more of Dr. Fauci that I have my wife -- we kid each other. But they look, who's president? Fauci. But all kidding aside, I sincerely mean it.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: This is not good for our country. Dr. Fauci should not have any role in our federal government. He needs to be fired, needed to be fired a long time ago. He also needs to be investigated for lying to Congress. Fauci got literally every single solitary thing on COVID wrong. Everything, from the beginning. February 2020, he said that risk of COVID in the U.S. is minuscule. Yeah, he was wrong.

A few weeks later, he encouraged Americans to travel on cruise ships, saying no reason not to go. Once again, dead wrong, after nearly all of his models, projections, they were all wrong. And remember, two weeks to slow the spread, he was wrong again.

And let's not forget about his ever evolving positions on masks. First, it was, masks don't work. You know maybe, maybe stop a little bit. But it doesn't work. And it was one masks, then it was two masks, then it was mask indoors, not outdoors. Then it was vax or mask, then it was vax and mask, now, it's vax, mask, and booster and probably ten more boosters after that.

Now, first no vaccine mandate. Now, we support mandates. No one on earth has been more inconsistent on COVID-19 than America's so-called top expert Anthony flip-flop Fauci and it gets worse. Fauci also misled everyone in the country on the origins of COVID-19. Maybe that's because under his direction, it was his NIH that was funding the dangerous gain of function research at that Wuhan Institute of Virology prior to the outbreak. In fact, on October the 20th, his own NIH admitted that they funded a study at the Wuhan lab where, quote, spike proteins were tested from naturally occurring bat coronavirus -- coronaviruses circulating in China to see if they were capable of binding to a human being. That is by its very definition gain of function research. You paid for it.

But on May 11th, Fauci testified the NIH was not ever involved in funding gain of function research at the Wuhan Institute of Virology, not ever not at all. Dr. Fauci is a liar.

Now, who knows whether or not Anthony Fauci will ever get prosecuted. That only seems to happen to conservatives, or people that know Donald Trump, let alone even investigated for lying to Congress. Don't hold your breath.

But make no mistake, Anthony Fauci has to go. He needs to be fired today. He is dishonest, incompetent and he speculates widely and he's wrong often. And he spends more time as a political pundit on TV than an actual doctor, and more than anything he seems to love the limelight.

According to the conspiracy theorists at MSDNC, half the country no longer trusts Dr. Fauci because they want the pandemic to continue. What? What -- name one person that wants this Adam Schiff show to continue? take a look.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

UNIDENTIFIED MALE: If people follow Fauci, there's a likelihood of a chance that COVID will go away. And if COVID goes away, it's bad right now for Republicans. It's just the math on this, the political math on this is not hard to figure out.

UNIDETNTIFIED MALE: Yeah.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: High limit is just a completely unhinged idiot even for the network that features you know the tinfoil hat wearing Rachel Maddow who's going to get $30 million according to reports for one show a week. And Democratic operative Chucky Todd, he'll never be Tim Russert.

But let me be clear, I would not wish COVID on my worst enemy. I want everybody, whether you agree with me politically or not, if you're a liberal Democrat, if you're part of the progressive caucus, you hate me, you want me off the air, please be careful. I want you to live.

Make no mistake, every conservative that I know wants life to return to normal. No more lockdowns, no more draconian measures, no mandates, no masks, no lectures, no scolding. We're sick of it.

Now, here's a news flash for MSDNC: Americans don't like Anthony Fauci because he's horrible at his job and he's wrong constantly and the bar changes every hour of every day. If Biden really cared about reaching all Americans, he would replace Fauci with someone less toxic. That appears not to be happening.

Joe Biden is not a uniter. He's a cognitively struggling mess of a Democratic socialist Marxist from Delaware who is in way over his head and everybody knows it. So, now, he does whatever his far left advisers tell him to do.

Joining us now with reaction, Arkansas gubernatorial candidate Sarah Sanders, along with former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus.

Reince, we start with you tonight.

You -- you know, all that was made in the year 2020 and I've been playing Joe Biden, well, 220,000 Americans die, that person shouldn't be president. Well, 355,000 people have died under his watch since he's inaugurated and that's more people that died in all of 2020.

So, by his own definition, should he go?

REINCE PRIEBUS, FORMER WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF: Well, he based his entire campaign, Sean, on the idea that he was going to resolve this entire COVID crisis and Trump didn't know what he was doing. His poll numbers are in the tank because he promised to solve COVID and he didn't. You know, we -- I would put so much money behind an ad with that clip of Biden saying that Fauci is the president. He's lost all credibility.

And it comes down to this -- Fauci is not the president. These doctors are there to supposedly advise the president. It's up to the president to lead. But here's the problem, Biden's base is nuts and they want all of us to be nuts, and they want us to lock down our lives with no information, lock down our kids lives at no information, the doctor that we're talking about -- I know people have been watching this today -- the doctor in South Africa that found this omicron variant has gone off on, in particular the U.K., about the fact that they're basing all of these quarantines on information that doesn't say that this Omicron violent variant is dangerous.

And her exact quote was, after saying that, she said no one here in South Africa is known to have been hospitalized with the Omicron variant nor is anyone here believed to have fallen severely ill with it. So, this guy has mismanaged everything.

HANNITY: You know, Sarah, it's sort of like follow the science but only when it's convenient. But it really was -- you know, we got to remember too and put this in perspective. Joe Biden was handed three vaccines, monoclonal antibodies as therapy. He only mentioned that once, and that was fairly recently because their fixation is one size fits all medicine, regardless of maybe rare conditions, regardless of natural immunity. And studies like the one in Israel that show that it was times more effective with the delta variant, it still needs to be peer-reviewed.

So all this was handed to him but and yet we have more dead Americans since Joe Biden's been inaugurated than we did in 2020. That speaks volumes to me.

SARAH SANDERS (R), ARKANSAS GUBERNATORIAL CANDIDATE: This is yet another failure by the Biden administration. Joe Biden may think it's funny to joke about Fauci being president and abdicating his power to him, to an unelected, lifelong bureaucrat, but there's nothing funny at all about it. The only person that might be able to screw things up more than Joe Biden is probably Dr. Fauci, and it is absolutely ridiculous, the mandates, the rules, the shutdowns. It's all about power and control concentrated in the hands of a few elites who frankly think they know more than the rest of us.

It's absolutely un-American and we have to have strong conservative leaders across this country standing up, pushing back, making sure we're defending our freedom and keeping this madness from continuing.

HANNITY: You know, Reince, I look at this and look at what Donald Trump did for New York in its worst moments. They weren't prepared. They didn't buy the ventilators their own health department recommended. He provided every ventilator, built 3,000-bed hospital, sent in a Navy hospital ship. It -- both these places, he even manned them, all the PPE, and they remained 80 percent empty. Why would they leave them empty these beds?

PRIEBUS: And not to mention the fact that he locked on the border and under this President Biden, you've got over 200,000 people a month that's pouring over the border and at the same time, you have Biden toying with the idea of a seven-day quarantine for domestic travel, which is going to further tank the economy. It's just an amazing decision that they're making to not care about the border, but to -- but then lock down Americans for traveling domestically over a virus that the doctor herself said --

(CROSSTALK)

HANNITY: Preferential treatment.

PRIEBUS: -- freaking out.

HANNITY: And then if illegal immigrants broke the law and they got separated had family separation, Joe wants to give him 450 grand. You can't make it up.

Sarah, thank you. Reince Priebus, thank you.

Now, tonight with Biden, failing on every level, Democrats are desperately searching for a win earlier today, what's known as the DCCC tweeted out this image with the caption "Thank you, Joe Biden".

If you look closely at this hilariously misleading pathetic graph, it shows gas prices have decreased a whopping two cents a gallon over the last week. Now, keep in mind, gas prices in reality are 42 percent up since Joe Biden took office. But those of you that fill up your gas tank already know that, and you know, you're paying a lot more to heat your home, and you're paying a lot more for everything you buy. But according to the DCCC, mission accomplished.

Meanwhile, pure chaos from the office of the vice president. In the past two weeks, two top advisors now have resigned, as reports continue to emerge about the toxic work environment created by Kamala Harris and her chief of staff. Vice President Harris doesn't have a care in the world because today she got behind the wheel of a large bus and started to sing. I'm not making it up.

(BEGIN VIDEO CLIP)

KAMALA HARRIS, VICE PRESIDENT OF THE UNITED STATES: The wheels on the bus go round and round.

(END VIDEO CLIP)

HANNITY: The wheels of the bus go round and round. Better than the laughing.

Here with reaction, someone who served in the Senate with Kamala Harris, Florida Senator Marco Rubio.

You know, Trafalgar, Robert Cahaly, had a poll yesterday. Biden at 36 percent, the last poll on Kamala, 28 percent. Can you think of a single thing they're doing, this administration that you would define as successful, Senator?

SEN. MARCO RUBIO (R-FL): Well, I mean, you know -- I mean, I was chuckling as I come on the air just seeing that image of the bus thing. I mean, it's almost sort of embarrassing (ph). You think about these guys are sitting in Beijing and China looking at us and saying, you know -- I mean, the United States, we're going to do very much. I mean, they're in the hands of people that are going to destroy it. We won't have to do anything.

And it's just -- it's an embarrassment really. And on issue after issue, and you -- as you came on the air, you were talking about the COVID restrictions and the things you're talking about, can you imagine, for example, them imposing a domestic vaccine requirement at airports? By the way, I mean, they would just be -- the whole country I think at that, they'd lose everybody on that.

Look, I'm vaccinated, I think I'm speaking out of turn, I believe most of the people on the air with you have been vaccinated. I think people should be. But you can't force people to do something they don't want.

And in fact, I know that there are some people out there that now don't want to get the booster because they're forcing them to do that sort of thing. It's counterproductive. That's the reality. They've messed up on every front.

COVID today continues to be --

HANNITY: Well, people don't know what to believe anymore, Senator, because they've been --

RUBIO: Yeah.

HANNITY: Every day, the bar changes. Every day, the rules changed. Every day, you know, the science, quote, changes. So, it's not really rooted in science.

I want to ask you about China and the unwillingness of Joe Biden to take on China, because you are willing to take on China. You did -- you stated it very emphatically today. You know, we know what's happening with Taiwan. We see the fighter jets flying in Taiwan airspace. We hear the talk of reunification, which is really the takeover of China.

But you took it a step further as it relates to the defense bill. Explain.

RUBIO: Well, first of all, we've been doing it for a while. Now, China has actually sanctioned me twice, and they've issued a travel ban against me, which is fine. I've had to cancel my vacation to Beijing.

HANNITY: It's a badge of honor, Senator.

RUBIO: Yeah, I know.

But here's the thing, okay, in China, we know, the world knows for a fact that in the Xinjiang province, they have factories filled with Uyghur Muslims who are working as slaves, they are forced to work there. And I'm going to tell you, Sean, all of us, every single one of us, is buying and has bought things that have been made by that that slave labor.

And I have a bill that basically says if you sell a product that's made in Xinjiang, you either have to prove it wasn't made by slaves or you can't import it into the United States. It passed unanimously out of the Senate. I'm trying to get it on this defense bill, and the Democrats are saying, well, there's a procedural problem with it.

There's no procedural problem with it. The problem is they don't want to pass it. The White House is against it. John Kerry is against it, and major American corporations are against it because they're making a lot of money with the free labor coming out of the Xinjiang province.

HANNITY: No, you're right on principle. The years -- it's going to be 2022, Senator. I agree completely.

Your Governor Ron DeSantis and you and Rick Scott have all taken a strong stance against mandates and lockdowns and draconian measures with COVID. Joe Biden only mentioned monoclonal antibodies once. In Florida, the governor set up the centers once we started having breakthrough cases with Delta.

RUBIO: Right.

HANNITY: And then Joe Biden rations it and, what, is punishing the people of Florida? Are you kidding me?

RUBIO: Yeah. No, that's exactly why he did it.

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'Hannity' on Fauci and Biden's 'failures' - Fox News

Recently, one of our co-founders, Dr. Robert Goldman, was featured in the Life Section of the Bangkok Post with a candid interview about anti-aging, lifespan, lifestyle, and longevity. The following is that article, we hope that you find it as interesting as we did.

Next week, the American Academy of Anti-Aging Medicine (A4M) will organise its 29th Annual World Congress at The Venetian and Palazzo Resort in Las Vegas. Since 1992, A4M has been on a mission to redefine healthcare through longevity medicine in order to optimise vitality and extend the human lifespan.

But the question is do we really want to become super seniors or centenarians in a disruptive world?

Co-founder Dr. Robert Goldman believes in the possibility of "practical immortality" with a lifespan of 120-plus years. Nine years ago, I met the ebullient anti-ageing physician at a conference organised by VitalLife Scientific Wellness Center and Bumrungrad International Hospital.

I asked him whether it's unnatural to stop the clock with anti-ageing medicine as the body isn't designed to last over 120 years.

"It's as unnatural as taking a plane,'' Dr. Goldman said. "Because if man was meant to fly, he should have been born with wings.''

The fact is anti-ageing interventions are not something new and the search for the fountain of youth has been part of human culture and societies for millennia.

Dr. Goldman asserts that there's nothing out of line with anti-aging medicine and its utilisation to stretch the life span and enhance quality of life.

The demand for anti-ageing programmes is being driven by baby boomers who don't want to age the way their parents did.

Its comprehensive approach to wellness encompasses nutrition, dietary supplements, lifestyle modification, and controversial hormone replacement therapy.

One mechanism of ageing is a decline in hormone levels, which sends a chemical message to cells that this body is old and they start to die off. Hormone replacement therapy attempts to trick the cells to think that they're still young.

However, it's not a quick fix or a magic pill as it takes effort and focus in adopting an anti-ageing lifestyle and treatments.

Through very early detection, prevention and reversal of age-related diseases, this field of medicine aims to prevent illnesses and disabilities. In addition, advances in biotechnology will drive dramatic changes in anti-ageing medicine to accomplish practical immortality.

Around a century ago, a 40-year-old was considered to be an elderly person, and today those in their 70s are in the winter of life. The practical immortality concept proposes that in the future people will not be considered old until they are centenarians.

On the other hand, longevity can be earned without taking supplements and hormones. For example, Japan's nonagenarians and centenarians are proof of natural and healthy ageing through diet, exercise, way of life and cultural factors.

Accordingly, the anti-aging movement has faced controversy and been accused of being pseudoscience and a business that prescribes dietary supplements, hormone injections, as well as other products and services.

Nevertheless, over the three decades, A4M has grown into a global community with alliances in countries including Thailand.

Next week, its Annual World Congress event is being held under the theme "The Next Chapter: Unmasking The Hidden Epidemic", and it will address many neglected health crises in a world stricken by Covid-19.

The pandemic has posed numerous challenges and changes as we focus on fighting infectious diseases and viral mutations. We aim to be survivors and not be afflicted by a deadly virus and its economic consequences.

Accordingly, the past two years have put many of us in a health-conscious mode and made us dependent on self-care due to lockdown.

It has probably changed many people's perspectives of the world and the meaning of life. Stuck in a crisis for two whole years, we may not even care about outliving turtles and just try to cope with current circumstances, which reinforce how uncertainty in life remains absolute certain.

Read the rest here:
Extending The Human Lifespan - Anti Aging News

What Im about to tell you is a story of mice and men, but not quite the way John Steinbeck envisioned it. No, unlike your English class, the musing currently sitting inside my skull is definitely part of the hear-me-out variety. My thought goes like this: when my future children are looking at old folks homes for me, maybe Ill be wishing I got my intestines pumped with the excrement of a teenager.

Now, stay with meIm begging youbecause Im talking about a new scientific innovation here. And yes, for once, it is as weird as it sounds. Thats right, the future includes faeces. Who wouldve thunk it? Well, scientists have long known about the secret strength found within the metropolis of trillions of bacteria in your tummy. Known as the gut microbiome, this goldmine is also central to mental health, the immune system, and more. And now, an unusual study has opened the door for a mind-blowing new strategy for researchers to turn back time and reverse ageing in the human brain.

Published in the journal Nature Aging in October 2021, research indicates that bacteria in young peoples poop could be the key to the, as of now, unavoidable shrinking of the brain. Before you click off in horror, allow me to explain how the team behind the research stumbled upon this incredibly odd discovery.

Although Jeff Bezos has been on the quest for immortality for quite a while now, most of us dont think about brain ageing at all. Our society is unfortunately focused on the more cosmetic threats to our finite existence. Not everyone is eager to start looking older, contrary to what our love for vintage fits seems to say about us and gen Zs affinity with disposable pictures. We are constantly spinning the wheel with our body image and appearance as we age, but god forbid we ever end up looking old. Imagined wrinkles and insecurities around laugh lines dominate conversations and common knowledge around anti-ageing. The results of this have led to some extreme efforts to keep our clutch on youth close, from vampire facials to baby Botox.

But lets forget physical appearance for a minute. I think the most Ive done to combat the inevitable decline in my abilities was to play a few rounds of brain training aged 10, feigning surprise when I got any age under 65. But what will happen when Im actually 65, and it might be too late? Unlike with our skin, there is no magic cream to slap onto your skull in an attempt at reversing the ageing of the human brain. Your brain health is probably a lot more important to keep track of since a shrinking brainwhich happens as you get oldercan negatively impact your thinking, learning and memory. Being a brain teaser buff and stocking up on your sudoku puzzles can delay cognitive decline but, unfortunately, none of us is Peter Pan and the cost of growing up is entropy.

First of all, let me start by clarifying one thing: this research is not the fountain of youth or anythingthough for some fulvic acid might be. The research has found that older mice, when given gut bacteria transplants from younger mice, show learning and memory abilities similar to those of the younger rodents. To put it plainly, a cocktail of gut goopor poo transplant as co-author John Cryan told Inverseappeared to reverse some of their brains decline.

Researchers transplanted faeces from three-to-four-month-old rodents into the intestines of 19 or 20 month-old mice to cultivate a similar gut microbiome. On a human scale, this would be like taking the ripe poop of an 18-year-old and transplanting it into the body of a 70-year-old. Pretty grim mental image, yet pretty impressive possibilities, right?

In the old mice, the transplanted faecal bacteria seemingly promoted the growth of gut microbiota resembling the younger mices microbiome. The results of the study found that the mice who had the faecal transplant were able to reach a specific goal with greater success than mice without it. This indicates that certain gut bacteria could influence cognitive functions, which tend to decline in efficiency over time as organisms get older.

Like a new lease of life, the older rodents spatial memorywhich holds information needed to plan routeschanged following the transplant using a simple test called the Morris water maze. The older mice, both with and without the faecal transplant, were placed in a water maze that required them to use their spatial memory to plan and follow a path in order to get to a dry platform.

After saying RIP to the research-rat-pack and decapitating the rodents, researchers looked inside the brains of the older mice to see if their behavioural improvements were reflected in their neurobiology. They found that the old mices hippocampusa brain region responsible for memoryresembled that of younger mice.

Marcus Bhme, a neuroscientist with University College Cork (UCC) and one of the authors of the study, shared with Inverse, It was really great to see that full change in their microbiomes can really excel such effects on cognitive behavior, like almost resembling the learning performance of young mice, it was pretty mind-blowing.

I, like many others, yearn for that happy-go-lucky state of mind. The appeal of it lies within being free and childlike, a desire that has previously pushed many on TikTok to try to talk to their younger selves. Grappling with our short time on Earth is difficult to say the least. In order to understand how much of a medical marvel this research is, we need to take a step back and see the bigger picture here. Our brains are as beautiful as they are complex. Many areas orchestrate complicated cognitive processes, such as problem-solving, memory, judgment, and language.

At the centre of a lot of these processes, is the frontal cortex of your brain. Think of it as the command control of all your brains networks which takes care of managing everything that has to do with learning and memory processing. As mentioned earlier, the helpful hippocampus works to form and store memories. However, as we age, these regions slowly start to shrink.

Age is a bummer, in more ways than one since ageing also entails the decreased production of the dream team of chemical messengers in the braindopamine and serotonin. These are some of the many reasons for older adults forgetfulness, trouble remembering names, and inability to multitask. Or the age-old mystery affecting every adult alive, the one that not even Sherlock Holmes could crack: the case of the pesky missing keys.

Now, dont get excited just yet, as even the researchers behind the study assure that it only represents a new insight into how the human brain works. And these latest results actually fall in line with what we already knew about our trusty guts. For example, another studycompleted by researchers at the Keio University School of Medicine in Tokyopublished earlier this year in Nature, found that people who live to be older than 100 have a specific set of gut microbiomes that could potentially shield us against age-related diseases and infections.

Research into the special bacterial strains gets us closer and closer to creating anti-ageing treatments for the future. Until then, try to realise that you dont need a young brain to be young yourself. Im just saying, its never too late to get that lower back tattoo.

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Unorthodox gut study reveals poop may be able to reverse ageing in the brain - Screen Shot

One of the more disappointing reads of the season was the Oct. 27 opinion essay in The Washington Post penned by Alaskas own Chief Medical Officer Anne Zink.

Most of it is an acceptable accounting of Alaskas experience with Covid-19. We did pretty well in the beginning, and Gov. Mike Dunleavys administration, including Zink, did a phenomenal job getting test kits manufactured in-state, when it was nearly impossible to get supplies. They got protective gear shipped over from China in record time.

Alaskans followed Dr. Zinks advice in February of 2020 to wash their hands frequently for 20 seconds and sneeze into their sleeves. She is on the record early in the pandemic for saying that surgical masks are essentially petrie dishes.

A mask is a wet, moist environment thats collecting viruses and bacteria Its not useful to protect you from other people, she told a legislative hearing.

By June, 2020, Zink had changed her tune about why she wears a mask: Humility: I dont know if I have COVID as it is clear that people can spread the disease before they have symptoms. 2. Kindness: I dont know if the person I am near has a kid battling cancer, or cares for their elderly mom. While I might be fine, they might not. 3. Community: I want my community to thrive, businesses to stay open, employees to stay healthy. Keeping a lid on COVID helps us all.

Thats very laudable and noble, but 180-degrees from what she had said in February, 2020, and not particularly backed by science.

In The Washington Post last month, Zink took credit for Alaskas great look on the national stage early in the pandemic, and then blamed Alaskans for the outbreak in the fall of 2021, when case loads spiked.

Alaskans fell prey to misinformation, she said.

This is a curious argument: Alaskans, evidently, have some unique quality that makes them fall for misinformation when people in Florida, with some of the lowest Covid case counts in the world, do not.

Today, the case loads are spiking in Iowa and Kansas. It must be that people are suddenly falling for misinformation in Iowa, but not in Alaska, because within weeks of spiking and causing concern in hospitals in late September, Alaskas numbers have returned to what the World Health Organization considers the green zone of viral transmission below 5% for the past two weeks. Alaskans should pat themselves on the back for not falling for misinformation.

The blame for misinformation rests on the medical community, policy makers, and on social media, but perhaps unequally. Lets take the medical community first.

The struggle to understand what is probably a bioweapon, while filtering data through the sieve of medical experience and teachings, has led the medical profession to make imperfect recommendations to the public, and to exclude important avenues of inquiry, such as early treatment.

The medical community, led by people in charge such as Dr. Zink and Dr. Anthony Fauci, have pushed masks, distancing, and finally a leaky vaccine as the primary methods for controlling the disease. And yet, with this sneaky virus, its apparent that the vaccine is not going to succeed, as in less than two years the virus has evolved from its initial stage, to the more virulent Delta, and now to the even worse variant being called omicron. This virus, unlike viruses that come from nature, reminds us of the Greek mythological creature Hydra; every time one head is chopped off, two more grow back.

The jury is still out on whether the mass vaccination program is a good idea, but Zinks assertion that low vaccination rates and vaccine hesitancy in Alaska is a big reason for the September surge is unsupported. 81 percent of the Juneau population is vaccinated, and yet there were 19 new cases diagnosed Wednesday. This, in what is one of the most vaccinated communities in the country a town of 30,000 that also has instituted forced masking, six-foot distancing, and mandatory limits on gatherings. Not quite Australia, but they can see it from there.

Whats more, the breakthroughs and reinfections are on the rise in Alaska already. Through the end of September 2021, a total of 13,265 Covid-19 vaccine breakthrough cases were documented among Alaska residents, according to the Alaska Department of Health and Social Services.We must keep in mind that most Alaskans did not even have access to the vaccine until March of 2021, and yet by September, the breakthroughs were growing by leaps and bounds.

If the medical community has suffered reputation damage because of its changing and flawed advice, and if the political class has outdone itself in the scare tactics its perpetuated, the mosh pit of social media hasnt been all that helpful either. This virus is serious, and those who diminish or dismiss its dangers do so at their own peril, and the greater communitys as well.

But the people of social media are not to blame for the misinformation. Much of what they are trading in is no more misinformed than what is being fed to them by Big Pharma and its handmaidens at the FDA, CDC, and in the mainstream media. Alaskans are reading widely; are they to dismiss the repression they see occurring around the world? Should Alaskans not make a stand so their communities dont resemble the quarantine camps of Australia? Should they not fight for the Constitution?

Are the experiences of Israelis to be discounted? Is Ivermectin, which is a drug commonly used to treat Covid around the globe, such a danger that Alaskans cant have access to it? What would be the harm of telling Alaskans to load up on Vitamin D, lose weight, build their immune systems with zinc and quercetin, and get plenty of exercise?

What of the stories Alaskans have told Must Read Alaska about doctors, nurses, and health practitioners discriminating against the unvaccinated or refusing to treat them altogether? Are those stories not relevant? What of the mandates on workers to get vaccinated or lose their jobs? Are these Alaskans experiences misinformation?

And importantly, what exactly is misinformation in an era in which some doctors, from Dr. Fauci to our local medical mafia at Providence, have become politicized and are telling leaders in Anchorage to enact behavioral mandates? From this perch, it appears that only because of the strong libertarian streak in Alaskans have we been able to avoid the vaccine passports now enacted in Washington, Oregon, and California.

Dr. Zinks writing in the Wa-Po belittled Alaskans. It shifted the blame to them for a virus that is a global roller-coaster of increasing intensity and challenge. She didnt help the case of doctors, and she insulted Alaskans by characterizing them as too stupid or hardheaded to know good information from bad in a world where the information is rapidly changing, and where much has been worthy of doubt.

Suzanne Downing is the publisher of Must Read Alaska.

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Suzanne Downing: Blaming 'misinformation,' Dr. Zink does a disservice to Alaskans - Must Read Alaska

The possibility of immortality, death in marginalized communities, and the advent of pharmaceuticals in delaying death make for intriguing topics to discuss and thanks to the Philosophy Department. These topics and more were covered by varying experts.

On Nov. 15, members of the Philosophy department convened a panel on Zoom to discuss varying statistics, viewpoints and stances regarding the subject of death. Some instances included the debate between Daoist and Western philosophy, the deaths of peoples of different races and ethnicities, how people, such as physicians, choose to end their lives and many other interesting topics.

The primary panelists included Cynthia Coe, David Schwan, Griff Tester and Jeff Dippmann. Dippmanns completion of a recent research project on Daoism and mortality was the catalyst for this panel. Schwan was the lead panelist and moderator of this discussion.

The topics included the saturation of death in the LGBTQ community, where Tester explained how those in the LGBTQ community were so used to death and abandonment from family, friends and other support systems. For that community, death became commonplace.

Here were a group of people, or more groups of people, who upon getting sick with HIV/AIDS, were ostracized by the communities they were a part of, Tester said. They had no one to take care of them, so they had to care for themselves and each other.

Dippmann, professor and department chair of Philosophy and Religious Studies, provided an introspective on Daoist philosophy and the concept of immortality, in addition to the lessons one may learn as an immortal. Dippmann cited a work of Bernard Williams (1929-2003) about the tedium of mortality and how in the work, a fictionalized opera, an elixir-taking woman lived for 300 years and found life as, boring, indifferent, and cold. She stops taking her elixir and dies an immediate death.

Coe, also a professor of Philosophy and Religious Studies, provided insight into pharmaceutical influences on death and how people may elect to end their lives. She provided the perspective of how pharmaceuticals, while they may abate death, did not guarantee quality of life.

There are many amazing things that have happened as the result of medical intervention in human life. Human lifespans have increased dramatically over the planet of the last 200 years, Coe said, before proceeding to cite Dr. Atul Gawande, a surgeon. But particularly at the end of life, medicine can cause more harm than good. Scientific advances have turned the processes of aging and dying into medical experiences, matters to be managed by health care professionals and we in the medical world have proved alarmingly unprepared for it.

Go here to see the original:
CWU Philosophy Department comes together to discuss Life after Death. - The Observer

Chinese mythical figure

Chang'e (Chinese: ; pinyin: Chng', unofficially rendered as Chang-Er[1] or Chang-o for simpler pronunciation), originally known as Heng'e,[note 1] is the Chinese goddess of the Moon. She is the subject of several legends in Chinese mythology, most of which incorporate several of the following elements: Houyi the archer, a benevolent or malevolent emperor, an elixir of life, and the Moon. She was married to Houyi. In modern times, Chang'e has been the namesake of the Chinese Lunar Exploration Program.

There are many tales about Chang'e, including a well-known story about her that is given as the origin of the Mid-Autumn Festival.[2] In one version, in a very distant past, Chang'e was a beautiful woman. Ten suns had risen together into the skies and scorched the Earth, thus causing hardship for the people.[2] Houyi the archer shot down nine of them, leaving just one Sun, and was given either two or one with enough for two elixirs of immortality as a reward.[2] He did not consume it straight away, but let Chang'e keep it with her, as he did not want to gain immortality without his beloved wife. However, while Houyi went out hunting, his apprentice Fengmeng broke into his house and tried to force Chang'e to give the elixir to him. She took them instead of giving them to Fengmeng. Then,[2] Chang'e flew upward past the heavens, choosing the Moon as a residence, as she loved her husband and hoped to live nearby him.[2] Houyi discovered what had transpired and felt guilty, so he displayed the fruits and cakes that Chang'e had enjoyed, and killed himself.[2] In older versions of the story, Chang'e stole the elixir from Houyi, drank it, and flew to the Moon so that her husband could not go after her.[3] Chang'e appears in Wu Cheng'en's late 16th-century novel Journey to the West.

The recently rediscovered divination text Guicang contains the story of Chang'e as a story providing the meaning to Hexagram 54 of the I Ching, "Returning Maiden".[4]

During the Mid-Autumn Festival, when the full Moon appears on the night of the eighth lunar month, an open-air altar is set up facing the Moon for the worship of Chang'e. New pastries are put on the altar for her to bless, and she is said to endow her worshippers with beauty. Her story is commonly used as a cautionary tale from older generations to warn young girls about the dangers of following selfish desires.

Chang'e was mentioned in a conversation between Houston CAPCOM and the Apollo 11 crew just before the first Moon landing in 1969:

Ronald Evans (CC): Among the large headlines concerning Apollo this morning, is one asking that you watch for a lovely girl with a big rabbit. An ancient legend says the girl named Chang-O has been living there for 4,000 years. It seems she was banished to the Moon because she stole the pill of immortality from her husband. You might also look for her companion, a large Chinese rabbit, who is easy to spot since he is always standing on his hind feet in the shade of a cinnamon tree. The name of the rabbit is not reported.Michael Collins (CMP): Okay. We'll keep a close eye out for the bunny girl.[note 2]

The International Astronomical Union has assigned the name Chang-Ngo to a small impact crater on the Moon. In 2007, China launched its first lunar probe, a robotic spacecraft named Chang'e 1 in the Goddess' honor. A second robotic probe, named Chang'e 2, was launched in 2010.[5] A third Chang'e spacecraft, called Chang'e 3, landed on the Moon on December 14th, 2013, making China the third country in the world to achieve such a feat after the former Soviet Union and the United States. The lander also delivered the robotic rover Yutu ("Jade Rabbit") to the lunar surface. On January 3rd, 2019, Chang'e 4 touched down on the far side of the Moon and deployed the Yutu-2 rover.[6]

The original plotline and inspiration of Naoko Takeuchi's Sailor Moon is inspired by the legend of Chang'e. The titular character is a princess of the moon while her love interest is from earth.

In 2013, Chang'e was released as a playable character in the MOBA Smite.

Chang'e and her story is the main theme of the 2020 American-Chinese animated feature film Over the Moon produced by Netflix. The goddess is voiced by Phillipa Soo.[7]

Read more:
Chang'e - Wikipedia