Cory Doctorow has made several careers out of thinking about the future, as a journalist and co-editor of Boing Boing, an activist with strong ties to the Creative Commons movement and the right-to-privacy movement, and an author of novels that largely revolve around the ways changing technology changes society. From his debut novel, Down And Out In The Magic Kingdom (about rival groups of Walt Disney World designers in a post-scarcity society where social currency determines personal value), to his most acclaimed, Little Brother (about a teenage gamer fighting the Department of Homeland Security), his books tend to be high-tech and high-concept, but more about how people interface with technologies that feel just a few years into the future.

But they also tend to address current social issues head-on. Doctorows latest novel, Walkaway, is largely about people who respond to the financial disparity between the ultra-rich and the 99 percent by walking away and building their own networked micro-societies in abandoned areas. Frightened of losing control over society, the 1 percent wages full-on war against the walkaways, especially after they develop a process that can digitize individual human brains, essentially uploading them to machines and making them immortal. When I talked to Doctorow about the book and the technology behind it, we started with how feasible any of this might be someday, but wound up getting deep into the questions of how to change society, whether people are fundamentally good, and the balance between fighting a surveillance state and streaming everything to protect ourselves from government overreach.

Walkway feels timely in terms of present politics and sociology, but the technology is more theoretical. How much of this future do you consider plausible?

Oh, the technology is the most hand-wavey stuff in the book. Its probably easier to identify the stuff thats least plausible, like consciousness uploading. If our consciousness isnt inextricably tied to our bodies, we have no good way to know that, apart from wishful thinking. That sort of thing should always be looked at suspiciously as a metaphor, and not as a prediction. When we were making steam engines, we were all sure we could make a steam-powered brain. We had a lot of other different versions of this in fiction at different times it always turns out by this amazing coincidence, we think whatever technology we use every day is the best way to understand our own cognition. The most common technology of the day is definitely the thing that is most like our brains, rather than something coming up in the future. So Im deeply, deeply skeptical of the idea that our brains are things that well put in computers.

But we do live a lot of our lives in the digital realm. We project our minds into the digital world. So as a metaphor for understanding who we are and how we relate to other people, consciousness uploading is a useful metaphor. Machine-learning-based vision systems are getting better at recognizing objects. Like a lot of fast-growing things, we dont know if its on an S-curve or a J-curve. Is it going through a burst of productivity that will reach an actual limit and then taper off, or are we in some crazy exponential curve that will just go up and up, with machine learning getting better and better, and delivering more and more dividends? We cant answer, because a lot of what were getting out of machine learning right now is incremental, but some of it is breakthroughs. Its got that sexiness factor, where a bunch of people who would have historically not given a shit about machine learning are suddenly looking really closely at it, discovering easy wins that were invisible to earlier practitioners. Maybe there will be all new kinds of amazing discoveries.

Other things in Walkaway All of the biotech stuff, like turning urine back into beer, that feels like something within the realm of CRISPR hackers. Its something they might attempt, though maybe not pull off to the extent that I would drink what they made. CRISPR is one of those brands where theres so much crazy, awesome, interesting stuff, and also so much hot air and bloviating that its hard to tell whats hand-waving and whats real. As a fiction writer, thats my sweet spot. Exciting, expansive, fast-moving, and full of bullshit? That is science-fiction-writing gold, right there. Everything you write about it sounds eminently plausible.

With the first Homeland book, it felt like you were suggesting real ways to resist surveillance overreach and react to real politics. Walkaway deals with similar issues, but in a far more speculative way. Can readers learn anything useful from Walkaway about dealing with current economic and power inequities?

Consciousness uploading in Walkaway is not a solution more like a McGuffin. Nobody really solves any problems with that. They solve problems with ethics and social movement and organizational tools, with communal living and unselfishness and commitment to abundance. Having Airs that act like house elves is just fashion. But other things they do, like using networks to build flexible political groups that allow them to pool their labor, I think if were going to have a resistance, thats the resistance. Thats what we get out of technology.

Ive had years of debating with friends in political movements about whether technology is a distraction. Malcolm Gladwell wrote a column about how real activists lay down shoe leather ringing doorbells. They dont post online petitions. But the reality is that if shoe-leather is needed, the way you mobilize it is with networks where you can find people who want to go and ring doorbells. And anyone who says, Well, I dont know why I would use a communications tool that will allow me to find people who feel the same way I do anywhere in the world, and recruit them to my cause, I just want to ring doorbells, that person is talking out of their ass.

In the book, you dont address the usual problem of human brain duplication, which is basically the transporter problem if you make a copy of yourself and destroy the original, is the new one really you, or are you dead? How do you feel about that question personally?

I have this super-glib answer, which is, Everyone who cares about that will die. If immortality is only available to people who dont care about that stuff, just wait a hundred years, and all the people with moral quandaries about it will be dead.

My thoughts on it are that if your hypothetical transporter had hypothetical characteristics that made it like murder, it would be like murder, and if your hypothetical transporter had hypothetical characteristics that didnt, it wouldnt be. Its your Gedankenexperiment, you give it the contours that you want it to have. I wrote an essay about this once, specifically about a classic science-fiction story called The Cold Equations, and how it omits the writers hand outside the frame, manipulating things so theres only one answer to their problem. The inevitability of The Cold Equations is not the inevitability of the universe. Its a contrivance. If you have a thought experiment and its clear that it can really only be answered one way, our next question should be, Why did you structure your thought experiment that way?

One of the three books youve often cited as inspiring Walkaway was Rebecca Solnits A Paradise Built in Hell, about the positive, generous ways people respond to crisis, and how people in power usually make crisis worse by attempting to stabilize situations with heavy-handed measures. How early in the process of writing this did those parallels occur to you?

The elements of Walkaway were self-assembling in my subconscious out of things I wrote for Boing Boing and things I have seen in the world, whether they were at Maker Faire or Burning Man or on the 9 oclock news. Solnits book helped crystallize a lot of those ideas. I started actually writing this book by re-reading Down and Out in the Magic Kingdom and thinking about what story I could tell about how that society came into being. That primed me to start noticing things in the world that hinted at the kind of story.

Im filling in the blanks between our present day and Down and Out in The Magic Kingdom. I got as far as Walkaway, and I want to stick a pin in the board there, or hammer a piton into the side of the cliff, to help me find the next step there. My theory of change in my activist work is that theres no point charting a course from A to Z, because the world is dynamic. If your course from A to Z works now, by the time you get to M, everything from M to Z will have rearranged itself. Youre going to need a new plan. And so my view is, you do hill-climbing. You find that step you can take that makes the world a little better, that gives you a slightly more advantageous position, and then you see from there what your next step might be. In my activist work, Im going from A to B. In my imaginative fiction work, Im going from Z to M. Maybe theyll meet in the middle? Its just very abstract.

One outgrowth of that expansion is that in your writing in general, you often dig deep into what one technological change does to the world, then zip past the next few, because that first change makes things alter so fast that theres no time for consideration. Does that approach in fiction come out of your attitude about radical technological change?

Yeah. I do think things are intertwingled. I think it was Arthur C. Clarke who said if an old, well-established scientist says something is possible, theyre probably right, and if they say something is impossible, theyre probably wrong. The world is weirder than we tend to extrapolate. We make thought experiments that are stripped-down models, where a small thing changes another thing and then stops there, as opposed to rippling outward and making interference patterns with other changes. Like Gardner Dozois said, a science-fiction writer should see cars and cinemas and not only predict the drive-in, but also the sexual revolution. And it occurred to me one day that in the 21st century, the major effect all of those things that lingers isnt the sexual revolution, the car, the drive-in, or the cinema. Its the fact that because the sexual revolution necessitated a driving license, for the first time in American history, civilians started covering government issued ID, and that created the entire modern bureaucratic surveillance state. So if you really want to be a real badass science-fiction writer, you should predict that hitching government-issued credentials to the procreative act would profoundly change our current world more than anything else.

Youve said you consider science fiction to be a sort of social-engineering fly-through of possible technology. Once youve considered what technology or social issue you want to write about, at what point do the characters come in for you?

Well, here, Im trying to get people on an emotional fly-through here. Walkaway isnt about the impact of technology, so much as a shift in our social mores toward the belief that your neighbors are part of the solution, and not the problem. Competitive market economies create amazing productivity gains. We talk about how wasteful capitalism is, and how much pollution it produces, and so on, but if you look at any material object that you use thats been made in the last five years a car, a refrigerator, whatever the labor, energy, and material inputs to that object are an infinitesimal fraction of what they were when we were born. And that is an astounding accomplishment.

So market capitalism works really well. But it has a failure mode, and that failure mode is to pit us against one another so we have adversarial exclusive destinies, where my success is your loss. And that produces this world where when things go wrong, instead of turning to your neighbors, you run away from them. And we cant solve our problems without our neighbors. All those preppers who have bugout bags so they can run for the hills when the lights go out, those people are crazy, because if they get a burst appendix or bad stuff in their water, they cant solve their problems. Society is built up by having a variety of perspectives and expertises all convened under one roof, as opposed to each person for themselves. So the emotional fly-through here, where the characters come in, is in figuring out what would it be like if in a crisis, you turned to your neighbor and asked them how you could help them, and the two of you got together to help the next person you could find. Which I think going back to Rebecca Solnit, thats what we do in a crisis, but its not what we think well do. Its statistically illiterate to imagine that most people are bad, when most of the people you know are good. What are the odds that you would happen to know the very, very rare good people out of a pool of extremely bad people, as opposed to you knowing a fairly representative slice of people?

Is there a technological solution for what you call the virtue deficit, the fear that other people are probably bad and cant be trusted?

The leaderboard system in Walkaway [where people are competitively rated by what they contribute to a collective] is a really good example of how technology can pit us against us. One of the things Im really interested in is how the different frameworks of our social media produce different outcomes. So Twitter shows you the number of followers people have, and thats seems to be inextricably tied to social media. Its very rare now to find a social technology that doesnt show you how many followers people have. Tumblr doesnt, which is super-interesting. If youre on Tumblr, you dont know how popular another Tumblr person is. Flickr was one of the first social technologies, but it marked itself out from things like MySpace by refusing to allow you to see how many followers other people had. If youre making a technology about being sociable and finding your authentic self and expressing it to other people, then creating a system where people can easily compete to see whos the most popular runs antithetical to it. I think social media has optimized a mechanism for being compelling without being enjoyable.

We become inured to a lot of these technological techniques for manipulating our emotional states.

I can spend endless hours on Twitter, even though Im not enjoying it. The maximization of engagement rather than pleasure has been a hugely transformative and not-for-the-better shift in the way we do application and technology design. If we want to make technology that encourages pleasure instead of engagement, or cooperation instead of competition, there are conscious choices we can make. Well reach some natural limits. People become adapted to whatever kinds of social rewards they get from our technology. We tend to forget, when a new technology sweeps through our world like a bonfire, that well become inured to it, and itll cease to be impressive or compelling. Old ads for soap basically said, Buy soap and you will be clean. Talking about the value of the product used to be a fantastically persuasive technique. But through exposure, we became inured. Today, if you want to advertise soap, you do it like Axe body spray: spray this on your body and women will throw themselves at you! Its like a junkie chasing a high a dose that used to make us feel great now just makes us feel normal. We become inured to a lot of these technological techniques for manipulating our emotional states.

There are always people at the margin who dont become inured. A lot of people will try a casino game and find that mechanic really compelling, until they realize they wont win in the long term, and walk away. But other people are unable to disengage, and become problem gamblers. So are we going to use technology to make ourselves better or worse? Well find some techniques that people are broadly vulnerable to, or receptive to, and minorities of people will be susceptible to them in very profound ways, or will be totally immune to them. And then well develop new techniques, and theyll go in both directions to make us better and make us worse. But that doesnt mean that they wont make us better or worse. It just means that they create this boom-and-bust cycle of making big changes that become smallish changes that then beget a new big change.

Speaking of walking away from something that doesnt give you long-term gains, the hardest thing for me to buy in Walkaway wasnt brain uploads, it was the idea that you could put your heart and soul into building something, and then just quietly walk away if someone else tried to take it. Its a radical philosophy throughout the book, but ownership is so baked into American culture the twin ideas that having things makes you important and happy, and that if you make something, you deserve it. How would you convince someone to walk away from something they made and care for?

Well, theyre walking away from the physical reality of the home theyve built, but not the digital afterlife. So theyre like programmers who fork open a project because they cant agree with one another. Yeah, they walk away from the server where their code is running, but they dont walk away from all the knowledge they gained making it, or the individual talents theyve honed. They walk away to do something better.

Its a bit like the rationalist community, who are trying to find a way around our cognitive blind spots, to apply behavioral economics to get people to do what will be best in the long term, instead of what your emotions tell you is best in the short term. The reality is, when you look back on people who have done amazing things, they usually walked away from several failures in order to get there. If you want to triple your success rate, you triple your failure rate. Walt Disney had to walk away from Oswald the Lucky Rabbit, which was owned by the studio he worked with, so he created Mickey Mouse. And if it wasnt for that failure, he would have been a middling cartoonist drawing Oswald the Lucky Rabbit for the rest of his life. There are a lot of those failures in the lives of people who have very successful careers. Elon Musk was forced out of PayPal. That stings a lot when it happens. But everyone whos found true love, with very few exceptions, walked away from times when they thought they found true love, and it turned out that they hadnt.

You do have to write off a lot of failures on your way to success.

Today, theres a lot of big movement for successful people to admit their failures, rather than paper over them, and to talk about their other challenges, like depression and mental illness, as opposed to pretending to be super-people who have no problems. Thats part of it, helping people understand that you do have to write off a lot of failures on your way to success. In Walkaway, you also cushion the blow by having technology that makes it easier to salvage the best parts of the things you walk away from.

Streaming technology becomes vitally important in Walkaway, and theres a tension between the surveillance state, where the rich can track everyone elses movements, and the ability to broadcast your reality to get past news filtering and censorship, and show people whats really going on. Its notable that our government is simultaneously trying to keep us from recording things it doesnt want seen, and trying to record and examine everything we do.

I think that just tells you that their arguments are self-serving bullshit. When they say, Well, we dont want you to record the police because it puts them at risk, or it interferes with their job, or they have the right to privacy, and then they say, By the way, your privacy is totally worthless, theyre having their cake and eating it too. And theres another framing for this, which is that when you do the peoples business with a gun on your hip, the people have a right to know what youre doing. And when you are the people, the government doesnt have the automatic right to know what youre doing. Thats actually not a novel prospect. Thats a thing baked into the US Constitution. Transparency for the strong and privacy for the weak. Thats the Fourth Amendment.

On a lighter note, like one of the things that I really enjoy about the book is the emphasis that you put on people creating art even in the most crisis-ridden circumstances. There are a lot of details in that vein. What made that aspect of creativity interesting to you?

In every kind of adversity, you get people making art.

Well, thats certainly the world I inhabit. Everyone I know has laptops covered in stickers. When laser cutters first came along, everyone was engraving everything they could engrave. We do ornament our things, especially in times of adversity. Some of my very favorite art in the world, like vintage folk art, is trench art. Stuff that comes out of World War I, where people made things out of bullet casings. Prison art is amazing, and so are the paintings flyers put on the nose cones of their fighter planes. One of the things that was really formative to me was a book of poetry by children in Auschwitz that was circulated when I was a kid. I went to a socialist Yiddish school, and we read these poems that had been written in Yiddish by these kids who all died. They had teachers who convened classes to keep the kids occupied, and they wrote poetry. In every kind of adversity, you get people making art. It is really a universal trait, and it particularly manifests in times of extrema and adversity.

Activism is important right now, but so is optimism. What about the tech world right now gives you hope for the future?

Its really easy to focus on the terrible things people do with social media, for the same reason that its really easy to focus on the turd floating in the punchbowl. But when I reflect on my experiences of networks, communication, and media, over and over again, its people coming together to help one another. And its true that a few people acting very flamboyantly badly can make it easy to forget, or even cancel out some of the benefits there. But over and over again, when theres a disaster, when someone has a personal crisis, even the people who like, I look around on Tumblr and every now and again therell be someone who will write a post about their depression and then other people will come in and kind of comfort them and help them out. Its just such a motif thats easy to miss. When you see it its so obvious, and once you start looking at it, you see it everywhere. And so that I think thats a thing that gives me hope, that the evidence of our fundamental goodness is there on the network for us to see. You have to look past all of the shouting and the anger, which obviously loom large and it looms large for really illegitimate reasons. And Im not saying that it excuses, but the nobility should give you hope that the people who are kind and good are in the majority and its a matter of figuring out how to use the technologies but it doesnt create a false multiplier for the minority of bad actors, so that the rest of us can get on with the business of our ancient dream of our species, which is collaborating to make the world better.

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Cory Doctorow on technological immortality, the transporter problem ... - The Verge

In BriefEric Verdin, a world-leading researcher on aging, recentlyshared what he has learned about the future of growing old. WhileVerdin views immortality as a fairy tale, he said that manypromising methods for extending life are being studied. The Future of Getting Old

The Population Reference Bureau has projectedthat the percentage of the population over the age of 65 will rise from the current 15 percent to a staggering 24 percent by 2060. This means that research into aging has never been more important.

Eric Verdin is at the forefront of this research and has become thePresident and CEO of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging. The institute is the worlds biggest independent research facilitystudying the causes of growing old and how to combat them. Recently, he conducted an interview with Nautilus to discuss how aging is effecting our lives.

Verdin believes that the explosion in age-related research is due to researchers discovery in the 1990s that aging is not necessarily an inevitability. Instead, it is caused by mutations and scientists could make changes to the genome of other species that led to a lifetimes of up to twice as long. Verdin stated in the interview this resulted in a belief that there might be pathways to regulate aging, and if there are pathways that means there are proteins, and that means you can eventually develop drugs.

Despite this, he says, if you hear the word immortality, just run. There is no drug that can give you that. While Verdin believes we can increase the average human lifetime significantly, the fountain of youth is still just a fairy tale. Its just nonsense from my perspective, and I think we should really resist the I-word.

The best way to maximize your lifespan, he said in the interview, is to maintain your body well. Good nutrition and exercise are incredible anti-aging medicine. His general advice is to treat the cause rather than the symptom with a combination of lifestyle and pharmaceutical treatments to fight aging itself rather than dealing with Alzheimers, Parkinsons, or macular degeneration when they occur.

The human attraction to immortality has been present in our cultural landscape since the beginning of time the human mind seems to be unable to resist its lures. There are countless myths and stories based on it: the fountain of youth, the Wandering Jew, the philosophers stone, and the Bibles Enochare a few examples.

Recently, this mystical desire has birthed amyriad of promising methods forreversing the aging process which are currently underinvestigation: from transfusing young peoples blood into older people to give them more osteopontin, to digging into the role telemores play on the aging process, to developing anti-aging, bacteria-based pills.

However, when our increasing life expectancy is combined with the decrease in fertility that many nations are facing, the results arean aging population.In an interview with CNN, Elon Musk pointed out why this is undesirable, saying it causesa very high dependency ratio, where the number of people who are retired is very high relative to the number of people who are net producers an economically detrimental state of affairs.

Due to technological and therapeutic advancements, aging is looking less like an ugly inevitability of our condition and more likea new and exciting epoch in our lives. However,we must ensure that longer lives for people do not come at the expense of the environment, economy, orwellbeing of others.

Originally posted here:

We Will Extend Our Lives but Not Attain Immortality, Says Anti-Aging Researcher - Futurism

This combination of pictures created on January 29, 2017 shows Switzerlands tennis player Roger Federer holding up his 18 Grand Slam titles. 1st row, from left : Australian Open 2017, Wimbledon 2012, Australian Open 2010, Wimbledon 2009, Roland Garros 2009, US Open 2008. 2nd row, from left : US Open 2007, Wimbledon 2007, Australian Open 2007, US Open 2006, Wimbledon 2006, Australian Open 2006. 3rd row, from left : US Open 2005, Wimbledon 2005, US Open 2004, Wimbledon 2004, Australian Open 2004, Wimbledon 2003. / AFP PHOTO / STF

Five years after his last Wimbledon triumph, Roger Federer can capture a record eighth All England Club title Sunday and become the tournaments oldest mens champion of the modern era.

With his 36th birthday fast approaching, the evergreen Swiss will comfortably succeed Arthur Ashe, who was almost 32 when he won in 1975, as Wimbledons most senior champion.

Victory over Croatian giant Marin Cilic will also give him a 19th career Grand Slam title and second in three majors this year after sweeping to a fifth Australian Open in January following a six-month absence.

I was hoping to be in good shape when the grass court season came around, said Federer who, for good measure, also pocketed back-to-back Masters at Indian Wells and Miami as well as a ninth Halle grass court crown.

The first three, four months were just like a dream really. So this is something I was working towards, you know, Wimbledon, to be in good shape. Im happy its paying off here now.

Federer admits his form in 2017 has surprised even himself after he shut down his 2016 season to rest a knee injury in the aftermath of his brutal five-set semi-final loss at Wimbledon to Milos Raonic.

He has 30 wins and just two losses this year and he has reached his 11th Wimbledon final without dropping a set.

Sundays match will be his 102nd at the tournament and his 29th final at the majors.

It makes me really happy, making history here at Wimbledon. Its a big deal. I love this tournament, said Federer, who has been tied with Pete Sampras on seven Wimbledon titles since beating Andy Murray in the 2012 final.

All my dreams came true here as a player. To have another chance to go for number eight now, be kind of so close now at this stage, is a great feeling.

Yeah, unbelievably excited. I hope I can play one more good match. 11 finals here, all these records, its great. Im so close now.

While Big Four rivals Murray, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal failed to even make the semi-finals, Federer has been reborn.

He came into Wimbledon having radically pruned his playing schedule, skipping the entire clay court season.

Wimbledon is just his seventh event of the year; 28-year-old Cilic is in his 15th.

Federer, reveling in the spotlight of having played all his matches on Centre Court, has hardly been troubled on his way to the final.

He has lost serve just four times and spent four and a half hours less on court than Cilic.

Federer also boasts a 6-1 career record over Cilic, the 2014 US Open champion who has made his first Wimbledon final at the 11th attempt.

However, Cilics game is made for grass and 12 months ago he led Federer by two sets to love and held three match points in an epic quarter-final which the Swiss superstar eventually claimed.

When Cilic won his only Slam in New York three years ago, he demolished Federer in straight sets in the semi-finals.

I dont want to say its more relaxed going into it because I have a good head-to-head record against Marin, even though the matches were extremely close, said Federer.

But its not like weve played against each other 30 times. You feel like you have to reinvent the wheel.

Its more straightforward, in my opinion. I think thats nice in some ways. Its a nice change, but it doesnt make things easier.

Cilic is only the second Croatian man to reach the Wimbledon final after Goran Ivanisevic, his former coach, who swept to a memorable title victory in 2001.

A win on Sunday would also make him the first Wimbledon champion outside of Federer, Murray, Djokovic and Nadal since Lleyton Hewitt triumphed in 2002.

However, he has only won one of his last 12 matches against a top five player at the Slams, even if that was over Federer in New York three years ago.

Cilic has fired 130 aces at Wimbledon this year and dropped just 10 service games.

This is Rogers home court, the place where he feels the best and knows that he can play the best game, said Cilic.

Obviously Im going to look back, 12 months ago I was one point away from winning a match against him here. But its still a big mountain to climb.

Federers defeated semi-final opponent Tomas Berdych sees only one winner on Sunday.

Idont see anything that would indicate Roger is getting older. Hes just proving his greatness in our sport, said the Czech.

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Federer on verge of Wimbledon immortality - Inquirer.net

London (AFP) - Five years after his last Wimbledon triumph, Roger Federer can capture a record eighth All England Club title Sunday and become the tournament's oldest men's champion of the modern era.

With his 36th birthday fast approaching, the evergreen Swiss will comfortably succeed Arthur Ashe, who was almost 32 when he won in 1975, as Wimbledon's most senior champion.

Victory over Croatian giant Marin Cilic will also give him a 19th career Grand Slam title and second in three majors this year after sweeping to a fifth Australian Open in January following a six-month absence.

"I was hoping to be in good shape when the grass court season came around," said Federer who, for good measure, also pocketed back-to-back Masters at Indian Wells and Miami as well as a ninth Halle grass court crown.

"The first three, four months were just like a dream really. So this is something I was working towards, you know, Wimbledon, to be in good shape. I'm happy it's paying off here now."

Federer admits his form in 2017 has surprised even himself after he shut down his 2016 season to rest a knee injury in the aftermath of his brutal five-set semi-final loss at Wimbledon to Milos Raonic.

He has 30 wins and just two losses this year and he has reached his 11th Wimbledon final without dropping a set.

- 'Unbelievably excited' -

Sunday's match will be his 102nd at the tournament and his 29th final at the majors.

"It makes me really happy, making history here at Wimbledon. It's a big deal. I love this tournament," said Federer, who has been tied with Pete Sampras on seven Wimbledon titles since beating Andy Murray in the 2012 final.

"All my dreams came true here as a player. To have another chance to go for number eight now, be kind of so close now at this stage, is a great feeling.

"Yeah, unbelievably excited. I hope I can play one more good match. 11 finals here, all these records, it's great. I'm so close now."

While 'Big Four' rivals Murray, Novak Djokovic and Rafael Nadal failed to even make the semi-finals, Federer has been reborn.

He came into Wimbledon having radically pruned his playing schedule, skipping the entire clay court season.

Wimbledon is just his seventh event of the year; 28-year-old Cilic is in his 15th.

Federer, revelling in the spotlight of having played all his matches on Centre Court, has hardly been troubled on his way to the final.

He has lost serve just four times and spent four and a half hours less on court than Cilic.

Federer also boasts a 6-1 career record over Cilic, the 2014 US Open champion who has made his first Wimbledon final at the 11th attempt.

However, Cilic's game is made for grass and 12 months ago he led Federer by two sets to love and held three match points in an epic quarter-final which the Swiss superstar eventually claimed.

- 'Roger's home court' -

When Cilic won his only Slam in New York three years ago, he demolished Federer in straight sets in the semi-finals.

"I don't want to say it's more relaxed going into it because I have a good head-to-head record against Marin, even though the matches were extremely close," said Federer.

"But it's not like we've played against each other 30 times. You feel like you have to reinvent the wheel.

"It's more straightforward, in my opinion. I think that's nice in some ways. It's a nice change, but it doesn't make things easier."

Cilic is only the second Croatian man to reach the Wimbledon final after Goran Ivanisevic, his former coach, who swept to a memorable title victory in 2001.

A win on Sunday would also make him the first Wimbledon champion outside of Federer, Murray, Djokovic and Nadal since Lleyton Hewitt triumphed in 2002.

However, he has only won one of his last 12 matches against a top five player at the Slams, even if that was over Federer in New York three years ago.

Cilic has fired 130 aces at Wimbledon this year and dropped just 10 service games.

"This is Roger's home court, the place where he feels the best and knows that he can play the best game," said Cilic.

"Obviously I'm going to look back, 12 months ago I was one point away from winning a match against him here. But it's still a big mountain to climb."

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Federer on verge of Wimbledon immortality - Yahoo Sports

Gifts left behind for the deceased are translated into tokens in an online setting.

For those who have lost their loved ones, social media platforms can allow for RIP memorials, and for recreating memorable visual and audio collections that keep those who have passed away alive in our imaginations.

In fact, digital immortality/virtual immortality that escapes the constraints of time and space is a hot commodity. From mobile apps that allow people to create digital avatars that can look and sound like your deceased best friend to those that allow you to relive shared memories through photographs, video clips and favourite tunes, your beloved remains present in your life. You can tell the digital avatar of your mother, who passed away before getting a chance to watch your children grow up, about the play your son is in or your daughter making the honour roll.

For the past six months, I have been examining the importance of virtual graveyards with a group of graduate students. We are looking at the significance of these virtual sites for marginalized identities in Canada. Virtual graveyards and cyber-memorial sites have become increasingly commonplace on the web.

This kind of technology can help people through the grieving process and help with the healing after a great loss. Indeed, neuroscientists have argued in favour of such technologies, suggesting that social networking sites like Facebook can help with the grieving process.

Yes, these are graveyards in cyberspace and they function much like the cemeteries in real life, with one exception you can go there at any time and from any place.

Thinking about Canada hundreds of years from now, what would such sites reveal about the everyday contributions of the countrys inhabitants? What stories of the nation could these sites tell us? As repositories that memorialize stories of common people leading common lives, virtual graveyards are potentially invaluable to historians and others seeking to understand the past.

What adds to their value is that they are accessible. For marginalized communities, printed obituaries may be inaccessible, structured as they are by criteria that demand remarkable personalities performing extraordinary feats or making singular contributions to the country; or, alternatively, notorious individuals whose deaths need to be publicized so as to appease our sense of a restored and balanced social order. Online memorials allow for a memorialization of the deceased in a public way, generating a sense of community.

These sites represent a shift in traditional rituals around death. Therapists are now recognizing that mourning does not end after one month or a year, but is rather ongoing, reflecting our continued attachment to friends and family after they have passed. Cyber-memorials and virtual graveyards assist with the healing process by providing space for ongoing grief.

In contrast to printed obituaries, which tend to be more descriptive rather than emotional, these virtual graveyards offer people a means to commemorate their loved ones in a less restricted way. We can write about our fathers unpublished poetry or our sisters generosity and more importantly, how much we love and miss them. We can celebrate their everyday lives and role in our communities.

Following the tradition of leaving tokens at a grave, these sites allow users to place virtual flowers or light candles for the deceased. One can upload pictures, video clips, songs, or a poem. By allowing mourners to interact with others who knew the deceased, or who are also grieving, these sites also provide the potential for building community support during the grieving process providing some relief from the pain of loss.

But these sites come at a price. It may be the invasion of privacy in the vein of Facebook using personal photographs posted by users for its sponsored stories content. The emotional cost could also be the constant reminder of loss, or confronting visual memories that are assembled in such a way as to focus primarily on positive and loving memories instead of addressing the pain and suffering one experiences while grieving. Add to this, the issue of ephemerality: sites are notorious for their temporary nature, here today and gone tomorrow. Your memorial could vanish within minutes.

The economic costs are also factors to be considered. Most virtual graveyards charge at least $50 a year and sometimes more. There are few Canadian sites that offer such services for free, and if they do, they are often tied to other economic costs related to death rituals, such as funeral costs.

On the plus side, though, these sites are accessible to those who are literate in the ways of the Internet.

Should the sites survive, theyll offer an archival treasure trove for those looking to see how ordinary people lived their lives and contributed to society. They could be a window into how marginalized groups lived, loved and struggled.

In that vein, virtual graveyards afford us an opportunity to reject a past based on erasure and ignorance. In Canadas future, they could become invaluable national assets that should be supported, but only if they are freely available to their users and regulated in the best interests of all people.

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Virtual graveyards: Algorithms of death and the cost of immortality - The Conversation CA

The Man has a thousand heads, a thousand eyes, a thousand feet. He pervades the earth everywhere and extends beyond for ten fingers breadth. The Man himself is all this, whatever has been and whatever is to be. He is the lord of immortality and also lord of that which grows on food. Such is his greatness, and the Man is yet greater than this. All creatures make up a quarter of him; three quarters are the immortal heaven. With three quarters the Man has risen above, and one quarter of him still remains here, whence he spread out everywhere, pervading that which eats and that which does not eat. When the gods spread the sacrifice, using the Man as the offering, spring was the clarified butter, summer the fuel, autumn the oblation. They anointed the Man, the sacrifice, born at the beginning, upon the sacred grass. With him the gods, Sadhyas, and sages sacrificed. With this sacrifice the gods sacrificed; these were the first dharmas. And these powers reached the dome of heaven where dwell the ancient Sadhyas and gods.

from Hymn 1.2 of the Rg Veda

The Rg Veda is a collection of ancient Vedic Sanskrit hymns. The title means, in Sanskrit, praise, shine (rg) and knowledge (veda). One of the four canonical texts of Hinduism known as Vedas, the book is organized into ten sections called Mandalas. In the eight earliest books, the hymns meditate on creation and the relationship between immortality and mortality, such as the above hymn indicates. It is thought that the Rg Veda was composed between 1500 and 1200 BC.

Read more:

Immortality in the Rg Veda - San Diego Reader

If a person were interested in knowing what it might be like to live in Paris, it would probably be more useful to seek out the opinions of those who actually spent a fair amount of time there rather than relying on the speculations and guesses of those whod never even made the trip.

In his column in the Faith and Reason section of July 8 Daily Item, my dear friend Kerry Walters takes us to a somewhat more exotic destination thats of interest to many of us the afterlife. Kerry outlines the view, expressed primarily by the ancient philosopher/theologians Theophilus of Antioch and Irenaeus, that only a portion of us those who had chosen to act in a Godly and morally-upstanding manner in this earthly life were destined for immortality; the rest of us, would simply cease to exist.

Unfortunately, at the time they wrote, neither Theophilus or Irenaeus had been to Paris. Their personal experience of the afterlife was nil. Fortunately, other sources do exist that we can turn to for more first-hand information.

From almost two decades of intensive research in this very subject (my book on the topic will hopefully be completed later this year) I can state that the consensus (closer to unanimous) opinion of those whove actually been there spirits whove finished their earthly life and made their journey to the other side is that those who believe in conditional immortality are, no pun intended, dead wrong.

Based on post-mortem communications from these spirits (144 of them, ranging from the famous to the infamous to just-plain-folks) delivered through some of the most highly-respected, intensively-observed, and scientifically-studied mediums of the 19th and 20th centuries plus communications from a 145th spirit (the Virgin Mary) the prevailing experience of the afterlife is that (1) its open to essentially everyone, that (2) the quality of ones initial afterlife experiences will be totally dependent on how one lived his or her earth-life, and (3) that learning, growth and development are not limited to our earth-lives, but continue on the other side.

Take if as you will, but this is the take from those whove actually been there.

Donald C. Porteous Jr.,

Milton

See the original post:

Letter to the Editor: Conditional immortality? - Sunbury Daily Item

These characters typically weren't born immortal, but they didn't let that stop them. They find or create an object, magical or scientific, that will grant them that which they seek. This trope happens whenever a character is immortal through the agency of a physical object. How the object works can be very varied. It may be Powered by a Forsaken Child, thus invoking Immortality Immorality, or it could be powered by harmless Techno Babble. The extent to which it works and what kind of immortality it bestows also varies. It might only work on a single character, or it could work on anyone in the vicinity. It may also have negative side effects, especially if it's a prototype or created by a Mad Scientist. Said object will often be an Amulet of Dependency: they will typically lose that immortality if the object is destroyed or sometimes just if they lose contact with the object, often resulting in No Immortal Inertia. In some cases, characters may try to merge with this item in order to gain its effects permanently. This may work, or it might backfire horribly, depending on the story and what the object is. There are typically three forms this trope can take: the object simply existing grants them immortality, the object must be used in some way periodically to keep them immortal, or the object must be worn or carried in order to make them immortal. Likely to be a MacGuffin or Plot Coupon. If the Immortality Inducer can be mass-produced, it may lead to a Society of Immortals. Supertrope to Soul Jar and Heart Drive. Subtrope of Immortality. Contrast Artifact of Death.

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This Witherless Rose will wither away instead of you... This Immortal Heart will cease to pump blood, instead of yours. This Diamond will turn to dust in place of your mortal body.

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Immortality Inducer - TV Tropes

Credit: DC Comics

Immortality lies at the center of Dark Nights: Metal. Not only is immortality the driving force behind the investigations being conducted by both Hawkman and Batman, but the event will feature a set of immortal characters in its cast - including one aptly named The Immortal Man.

In Dark Days: The Forge #1, readers discovered that Hawkman has been investigating Nth Metal for years, trying to unlock its abilities. During his studies, he comes to understand that its conducting powerful energy from somewhere beyond his understanding.

That powerful energy is also being investigated by Batman, and the story of its discovery - and the Dark Multiverse it reveals - is at the center of DCs summer event series Dark Nights: Metal, which launches in August and reunites writer Scott Snyder and his Batman co-creator Greg Capullo.

The Forge and its this week's upcoming counterpart Dark Days: The Casting are written by Snyder and James Tynion IV, serving as prequels to Metal and introducing concepts that will form the backbone of the events story.

The Forges Clues

Hawkmans investigation not only leads him to an understanding of energy, but it reveals a link to the Earths past. Hawkman says he got a glimpse of a historic clue - and by glimpse, he was probably referring to one of the visions that he says occur in his reincarnation process, like dreams during his time between lives.

He describes the glimpse as a story that began with the first men to walk the Earth - three tribes. Hes shown to also have some type of artifacts that represent what he discovered about these tribes, as readers are shown what appear to be the sign of a hawk, a bear, and a wolf.

In the same issue, readers were also introduced to the Immortal Man, a modern version of the character from DC Comics history. The character was first introduced in 1965 in Strange Adventures #177, in a story titled I Lived a Hundred Lives.

Immortal Origin

In various stories in Strange Adventures, the character's portrayed ase a modern man who has strange powers he doesnt understand. Raised as an orphan, his only clue to his past lies in an amulet he finds that was left with him when he was a baby. When he looks into the amulet, he remembers that he has lived hundreds of lives, from his time as a caveman until present day, and his body and mind have retained the knowledge they gained during those lives.

There it was before me in the amulet reflection, the character said in his debut. The explanation to all the mystery that plagued my present life! For then and there I realized I had lived not one life, but a multitude of lives.

Originally, the character was only shown to be from a race of powerful cavemen, but in later stories, the Immortal Man was given a more DC-centric origin.

He was Klarn Arg, the caveman leader of the Bear Tribe and archenemy of Vandar Arg of the Wolf Clan (better known as Vandal Savage).

In this origin story, Vandal and the Immortal Mans pre-historic origins were linked - they were battling each other when a meteorite hit the Earth 50,000 years ago.

The meteorite made Vandal immortal, but the Immortal Mans powers lie in an amulet he fashioned from the meteorite. Each time he is resurrected - sometimes as a baby and sometimes as an adult - he is an enemy of Vandal Savage.

Because of this connection between the two characters, and the use of the Bear Tribe and Wolf Clan in their past stories, its likely that the Dark Days: The Forge reference to tribes with the signs of a bear and a wolf refers to these two characters. The hawk that represents the third tribe is probably a sign of Hawkman himself, although its possible it could relate to other DC characters, including the Blackhawks, who are also in The Forge.

Team Player

In post-Crisis continuity, the Immortal Man worked with a team of heroes to stop the evil machinations of Vandal Savage. His team was called the Forgotten Heroes. Although none of those heroes seem to be involved in the current story of The Forge and Metal, a similar idea might be behind the formation of the Immortal Men." This team, also mentioned in The Forge, has been given their own DC title beginning in the fall. Among the team members announced by DC is Immortal Man.

Image from Dark Days: The Forge #1

The description of Immortal Men indicates that five siblings have eternal life, fighting foes in an eternal war. Its not clear whether the Immortal Man is one of these five siblings or not. But in The Forge, as hes discussing the Immortal Men, there are two people talking and four other individuals shown - a total of six. So Immortal Man, whos described in the issue as the great and powerful Immortal Man, may be more of a leader of the five siblings.

In this incarnation, Immortal Man is an older man, with a streak of white in his hair. He works in secret in a lair located a mile beneath Philadelphia. He reveals that he offered Elaine Thomas (mother of Bat-family teen hero Duke Thomas) the opportunity to become immortal somehow. Whether Elaine is one of the Immortal Men, reincarnated without realizing it, or whether the offer was a new one, is not clear.

One of the heroes shown in the Immortal Men scene in The Forge appears to be Native American, and her origin might be tied to the DC hero of the past known as Super Chief. This character, in his original incarnation, was also part of the Wolf Clan and was imbued with powers by a meteorite.

Crisis Tie

Another Bear Tribe member was Anthro, the first boy on Earth who played a key role in Grant Morrisons Final Crisis. Morrison also included the Immortal Man in his Mutiversity mini-series, although the hero was part of a group on Earth-20 and was there revealed to be Anthro, a hero imbued with powers from a meteorite.

Its possible all these meteorites and the energy within them can now be linked to Nth Metal and to the dark energy that will lead Batman to the Dark Multiverse.

Its also obvious, reading through Immortal Mans history, that his powers of reincarnation and flight can be easily connected to Hawkman and Hawkgirl, which seems to be the direction Snyder is heading with Metal.

In the three tribes scene in The Forge, Hawkman adds a fourth tribe - one with the symbol of a bat. This symbol can also be connected to Anthro and Final Crisis, as Batman was tossed back in time by the events in that story and its Morrison-penned follow-up, Batman: The Return of Bruce Wayne.

Struck by the space-bending Omega Beams of Darkseid, Bruce Wayne becomes stranded in time, jumping into different eras - beginning with the paleolithic era. During his time as a caveman, he fights against the tribe led by Vandal Savage.

The word Crisis is also used by Immortal Man himself in the issue, although it refers to future possibilities. He says the "world of public heroes is careening toward a crisis unlike anything they've seen before."

Looking at Immortal Mans history and the Metal possibilities for his Immortal Men and Hawkmans tribes, its pretty clear that Snyder is connecting many different dots in the history of the DCU. And although the entire picture wont become clear until readers get their hands on Augusts first issue of Metal, there are definitely some obvious lines being drawn related to immortality in the DCU.

Continued here:

DARK NIGHTS: METAL 101: The Immortal Man & The Four Tribes - Newsarama

Credit: DC Comics

DC Comics released the first handful of pages from Dark Nights: Metal #1 and theyre a doozy. Not only do they feature DCs greatest heroes in a knockdown, drag-out battle on an alien planet befitting the rock n roll epic feel that Scott Snyder and Greg Capullo are going for, there are a number of fun cameos and Easter eggs hidden throughout.

The Symbols?

Page one opens with three symbols in the sand - a wolf, a paw, and a bird. The symbols echo what readers were shown in June's Dark Days: The Forge #1, which Snyder has described as a "zero issue" to the event. In Forge, Hawkman described a "glimpse" he experienced while investigating Nth Metal - a story that began with the first men to walk the Earth - three tribes. He was shown to have some type of artifacts that represented what he discovered about these tribes, as readers are shown what appear to be the sign of a hawk, a bear and a wolf.

Other clues in The Forge indicate that the three symbols probably refer to the following:?

It's worth noting here that Vandal Savage, the Immortal Man, and Hawkman were all three given immortality by a metal that fell from the sky (the first two from a meteorite and the last from a spaceship). With Metal's exploration of the "dark energy" in certain metals on Earth (which all seem to be connected to Nth Metal), it's likely that Snyder is connecting those pre-historic meteorites to the same strange energy in Nth Metal. After all, they all imbued earthlings with immortality.

Of course, this is just speculation, and the three tribes don't necessarily refer to these characters. This is a Batman story and Batman has been teaming with Vixen over in Justice League of America, who would lend herself well to symbols featuring animals. Also, considering the Grant Morrison connection that shows up elsewhere in the issue, maybe this is a reference to Animal Man and an opportunity for Snyder to make a more meta-statement about these DC heroes.

In the last couple panels of the "symbol" page, a shadow that looks like Batman's cowl appears, seemingly looking at the three icons. In the next panel, it looks like someone (Batman? Or an alternate version of Batman?) has wiped away the three symbols, spilling blood on top of them.

More symbolism, we presume?

Mongul's Warworld?

The next couple of pages show off the coliseum-like setting known as Warworld, introducing the Justice League and the villain Mongul. Warworld has shown up in past DC stories where Mongul forced heroes to participate in gladiatorial games, and this scene seems to go along with that premise. The heroes are wearing armor and, at least in the scenes we're shown, are not using all their powers.

Aside from Capullos excellent interpretation of Mongul, there are some interesting hints on the pages. We get close-ups of Supermans crest, what looks to be the Flashs foot, and Wonder Womans crest. Whats notable here is that Diana is sporting a golden snake on her breastplate. The snake could also be a clue about the involvement of some serpent-themed characters from Wonder Woman's mythos - maybe Medusa or Deimos (a minor god with something of a snake theme), or even some new god-like threat such as Apep or Apophis. Maybe Diana has called upon some dark power to aid in this fight?

Then again, the snake could just be an attempt by Capullo to make Wonder Woman's armored costume even more intimidating.

There's another character on one of the Warworld pages - a more generic-looking gladiator fighting near Aquaman. He could be fighting beside the Justice League, or he might just be one of Mongul's "gladiator handlers" who got caught in the crossfire.

Watching the fight, Mongul sits in a huge throne-type chair with a small human nearby. It appears to be Hiro Okamura, the young Toyman, who previously turned from being a menace to Superman and Batman to being the Justice League's helpful ally. It looks like Hiro is a prisoner, and maybe that's why the Justice League is being forced to fight. Or even more likely, the genius Toyman was forced by Mongul to design custom giant robots to fight each of the heroes, because...

There are a couple more pages of the League fighting giant robots that are matched to their costumes and, probably, designed to counteract their various skills and powers.

Mountain Invasion

The next page shows a mountain that has apparently risen up and destroyed part of a city (possibly Gotham, if that Wayne-like tower looming over other buildings means anything). The mountain resembles the Challengers of the Unknown mountain (which, honestly, we wouldn't have realized if not for the following page featuring the Challengers themselves).

Standing in the city, looking at the mountain, is the League, in their normal costumes. The Flash scouts ahead and finds a door that features an hourglass logo in a circle. That hourglass might be a reference to Hourman, but it's more likely a play on the Challengers of the Unknown symbol an "X" in a square.

However, the X symbol here is in a circle, and it indicates that time is passing. (In fact, the hourglass looks like there's very little time left.)

Blackhawks and Cameos?

The last two pages have a ton of cameos of fan-favorite heroes - but they're only in pictures that are being shown to the Justice League by the Blackhawks.

This isn't the old-school Blackhawks (although they show up in one of the photos). This is the new Scott Snyder Blackhawks - the group calling themselves the "Blackhawks" who showed up in recent issues of All-Star Batman, fighting against Batman. And someone calling herself "Lady Blackhawk" (but wearing a mask while piloting a jet) was seen in The Forge, talking about hiding something from Batman.

On these preview pages, a woman with dark auburn hair is showing League members photos from the past. Wearing a Blackhawk symbol on her uniform, this might be Lady Blackhawk.

The photos feature the Challengers of the Unknown, the old-school Blackhawks, Red Tornado, the Metal Men, their creator Dr. Will Magus and T.O. Morrow and Starman. They're all seemingly from the past (the Starman is the Will Payton one from the '80s). Also, keep in mind that DC is launching a New Challengers title (by Snyder and Andy Kubert) this fall when the "Dark Matter" line spins out of Metal.

And theres what leads us to a big reveal in all of this. One of the Blackhawks is holding the Map of the Multiverse, last seen in Grant Morrisons epic Multiversity.

Due to the nature of that event, readers werent able to look at every piece of the Multiverse - some earths were still unknown, left for other writers to explore in later stories. That might be an explanation for some of the strange Batman characters teased in upcoming Metal one-shots - they're from other worlds. This Multiversity map certainly indicates that's true.

However, we should remember that Scott Snyder specifically told Newsarama all the way back in May that Dark Nights: Metal is exploring the "Dark Multiverse" beyond Multiversity.

He made it clear that he was exploring something outside of the 52 universes that Morrison had established - in fact, he said the Dark Multiverse was 'beneath" the known Multiverse.

"I started thinking," Snyder told Newsarama, "what if the Multiverse essentially has these 52 universes, but has almost this ocean of possibility, this ocean of almost reactive matter beneath it that's like a Dark Multiverse."

The preview ties directly into the 52 universes, but as Newsarama readers know - and, apparently, Batman and Hawkman are discovering - there's something dark and sinister beyond them.

Do the Blackhawks know about the Dark Multiverse? Are they trying to hide it from Batman? Why are they telling the League about it? Why is Challengers Mountain suddenly invading the DCU? And what do the Metal Men and Starman have to do with it?

We can't even begin to guess on the answers to those questions. But we should emphasize that just about everything else we've said is just that - a guess. There's a reason comic books (generally) have words on them. Sometimes it's a little hard to know exactly what youre looking at. But theres no harm in guessing.

Excerpt from:

DARK NIGHTS: METAL #1 First Look - The Hints, Symbols, & 'Ocean of Possibilities' - Newsarama

Image: Peter Robinson

THERES A NEAPOLITAN phrase A carta vicino o fuoco sappiccia which literally means that paper close to a fire will inevitably go up in flames.

Of course, Diego Maradonas seven-year stint with Napoli did end tumultuously butamidst the cocaine and the mafia and the bastard son, there was a multitude of success too.

The city of Naples gritty, tough, uncompromising was and very much remains his spiritual home. He fled, in disgrace, 26 years ago but earlier this week, at a glitzy ceremony where he was granted honorary citizenship of the city, it was like he had never left.

Its understandable.

Maradona, after all, gave Napoli immortality.

He arrived in 1984 having tired of the endless kickings he received on the pitches around Spain. Memorably, his last appearance for Barcelona came in the Copa del Rey final against Athletic Club the league champions which culminated in a post-game free-for-all at the Santiago Bernabeu after Maradona retaliated to some verbal abuse with physical retribution.

With relations already strained between him and the club on account of his injury problems and the teams on-field struggles, there was certainly no going back after such a high-profile humiliation for Barcelona footballs most expensive signing and marquee name instigating a mass brawl in front of the King of Spain and millions of TV viewers.

When Maradona touched down in Naples for another world record amount (5m is the oft-quoted figure but in his superb biography of Maradona, Hand of God, author Jimmy Burns says it was, in fact, double that amount), it was treated like the Second Coming of Christ.

But Maradona would not just resurrect himself but, instead, an entire community. His signing became a symbol. Treated with disrespect and contempt by those in the north of the country, Naples was seen as the runt of the litter. To many in Italy it was a seedy, grim, unforgiving place. While it was left in the shadows in terms of politics and economics, it had struggled to compete on the football pitch also. Prior to Maradonas arrival in 1984, nine of the previous 10 championships had been won by teams based in just two cities Milan and Turin.

So, even when there were whispers about a possible deal for Maradona, supporters couldnt contain their level of excitement and anticipation. It would send a message to the rest of Italy.

When Barcelona demanded an extra couple of hundred grand during negotiations, thousands of local fans turned up a Naples building city to hand over their contribution to the pot. Within a day, the money was raised and not long after Maradona was unveiled.

Still, his time with Napoli is largely associated with the Camorra the citys mafia organisation. They were intrigued by what Maradonas signing could do for them: an increase in ticket sales (60,000 season tickets were sold for Maradonas debut campaign) would see exponential growth in touting a staple of the Camorra diet while there was also the economic value of Maradona coming to Naples and how it affected the Camorras other interests. Finally, they also took control of Maradona-related merchandise in the city. According to Burns, they made Maradonas agent, Jorge Cyterszpiler an offer he couldnt refuse.

Source: Peter Robinson

In many ways, it was an atmosphere that Maradona revelled in. In many ways, he saw the local gangsters as mirror images of himself. They had come from humble beginnings and graduated to positions of influence and power. They were rich and enjoyed nice things. Maradona slotted in quite effortlessly.

And, relatively quickly, he found his feet on the pitch too. There was an eighth-place finish in 1985 but Maradona still managed 14 goals and Napoli were only 10 points fromunfashionable champions Hellas Verona.The following season they were better and finished third. Maradona hit double-figures again before heading to Mexico and captaining Argentina to World Cup success.

This was him in his pomp.

There is a neat geographical metaphor regarding Naples vicinity to Mount Vesuvius. Locals get a daily reminder of the threat however inexplicable of eruption and the possibility of destruction. Maradona is the personification of that. But, like the Camorra example, he seemed to take great comfort from the chaos, like it was reassuring. If things were quiet for too long, Maradona would get suspicious. The cyclical explosions became normal.

So, as he excelled with Napoli, his private life was in disarray. His marriage to childhood sweetheart Claudia was falling apart and for a four-month period between December 1985 and March 1986, hed had a fling with a 20-year-old local woman named Cristiana Sinagra.

Source: SVEN SIMON

But when she became pregnant with his child, everything changed. The relationship ended, Maradona ignored his responsibilities, concentrated on the World Cup preparations and gleefully repaired things with Claudia.

The child a son- was born in September 1986 and Cristiana called him Diego Armando after his father. Quickly, the media latched onto the story and Cristiana was open with the press. She had nothing to hide and had been shunned by Maradona. Publicly, he lied, believing ignorance would be bliss.

About this I know nothing absolutely nothing, he said.

It would take five long years and a legal case for Maradona to change his tune.

By that stage, he had been forced into exile and his time with Napoli had come to an end owing to a 14-month suspended sentence for cocaine possession. Simultaneously, he had been banned from football for 15 months and both his professional and personal lives were in free-fall.

Still, if the paper ultimately went up in flames, Maradona had exceeded expectations in Naples.

1987 was the beginning of an unprecedented period of dominance for the club. Maradona scored 10 times as Napoli lost just two games in the entire league season to be crowned Italian champions for the very first time. They had already claimed a Coppa Italia and the celebrations were like nothing the city had ever seen.

Source: Peter Robinson

Everything stopped for a week as people partied in the streets. Sleep was negotiable. Perhaps no one really wanted to wake up from the dream.

Least of all Maradona himself.

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Maradona, the mafia and immortality: three decades on from Napoli's Holy Grail - The42

As it were this time last year, grey clouds are hovering over Merewether Tower as the clock strikes 12 in the afternoon. Buses, cars and motorbikes halt for a group of pedestrians trying to cross the busy thoroughfare, II Chundrigar Road, to reach the decades-old Edhi Centre in Mithadar.

With the passing of Pakistans greatest philanthropist, Abdul Sattar Edhi, on July 8 last year, the centre like all others is now looked after by his son Faisal Edhi, while one of the foundations longest serving representatives, Anwar Kazmi, sits in the office managing the day-to-day activities.

Clad in a grey shalwar kameez, he sits behind a desk teeming with stacks of files and two telephone sets that ring almost incessantly. Kazmi, 72, had known Edhi since 1962 when he took a friend to the Mithadar dispensary.

Edhi called for a compounder to tend to my friend, while he sat down on a bench and spoke to the rest of us for a long time. We discussed local and world politics; I was quite politically charged at the time and was associated with the left. Over the course of that conversation, it turned out that we shared similar thoughts and he asked me to come by more often. That was the start of a bond that lasts to this day, he reminisced.

Referring to the famous strike by students in 1964 near DJ Science College in which many were injured, he said Edhi had stepped in personally at the time to tend to the victims. We had to strategise because had we taken those students to the civil hospital they would have been booked by the police. So we took them straight to Edhi sahab who tended to the injured.

Our friendship grew stronger because of our like-mindedness and finally in 1970, I started working with the Edhi Foundation; at the time, though, the foundation was much smaller in scale as compared to what we see today.

Speaking about the late humanitarian, Kazmi said that Edhis four core principles simplicity, truthfulness, hard work and punctuality were what catapulted him to greatness. His thoughts always translated into actions. Also, I dont remember him ever mincing his words; he couldnt care less about repercussions.

Against the tide

When Edhi pursued his mission, he was going against the norms of his community, said Kazmi.

He told the Memon community that he only wanted to work for humanity and wasnt interested in the dynamics of any particular community system, solely because they were controlled by men seeking profits. He said he didnt want to pave the way for those who would always be needy.

Known for his journey from an 8x8 dispensary to one of the worlds largest humanitarian organisations, Edhi had told the world that he would not seek donations because he was sure that common people would come forward to help him when they saw his efforts.

The people did help him. When they saw his tireless work ethic, they came forward in droves to donate. It was with their assistance that after a few years Edhi acquired a second-hand vehicle that he transformed into an ambulance. At the time that was our only ambulance and it went all over the city to help people in distress, Kazmi narrated.

Faith and fury

Though he was considered a man of few words who had an impassive expression, Kazmi recalled a time when he saw Edhi immensely angry.

One of the worst tragedies to have occurred in Karachi was the 1987 bombing in Bohri Bazaar, the first of its kind in the city. I was sitting with Edhi when the news started filtering in; within minutes calls were made to all units of the city and all ambulances were told to rush to the scene.

Kazmi recalled that all vehicles were soon out in the field, except for one that remained parked at the centre. We found out that the ambulance driver had gone to say his prayers. I seldom saw Edhi sahab as upset as he was when we told him the reason; he was incensed that the driver had chosen to go for prayers instead of helping those battling for their lives. His words at the time were, Any man who cant understand the essence of humanity cannot work with us.

A motorcyclist (R) pays his respects to Abdul Sattar Edhi (2nd L), as he travels to his office in Karachi.

He had also once called out the military dictator, General Zia-ul-Haq, for giving room to religious fanaticism, urging him to instead provide basic necessities for the people.

At the time, Edhi sahab spoke at a well-attended event and told all those present that neither did Pakistan need enforcement of religious laws nor did the people want it. He said the villages needed more schools and hospitals, not mosques and madrasas. The criticism against him after this speech was instantaneous but Edhi never did back down from voicing his opinion, said Kazmi.

Ignoring naysayers

It is hardly a secret that there was a widespread propaganda campaign against Edhi owing to his secular notions.

He was called chanda khor, dehriya, and other such names but he never responded to anyone. We were young and always itching to give a rebuttal but he said apna rasta khota na karo (dont add obstacles in your own path), Kazmi laughed.

Instead, he added, Edhi would always refer to an example of a beggar entering a village. He would say that a beggar carries a stick with himself to ward off stray dogs. If a dog comes too close, he just waves the stick to make it step back. Similarly if they would come near me I will signal them with the stick because I cant let them impede my path. If the beggar would waste his efforts in fighting all the dogs, he wouldnt be able to survive.

Passing the mantle

Over the course of the year that has passed since Edhis demise, many questioned the capability of his son, Faisal Edhi, to pick up where his esteemed father left off.

He raised Faisal to one day fill his shoes. Ever since his childhood, Faisal accompanied his father on relief work. He knew he would depart one day and while Edhi sahab is undoubtedly irreplaceable, he moulded Faisal in way that I am sure he would prove his mettle in a few years.

Yaar it only takes a minute, get more of them

Recalling the time when the charity foundations communications system was being transformed into a wireless one, a visibly amused Kazmi said Edhi had stopped talking to him owing to their disagreement over the new system.

Faisal Edhi

Edhi sahab was reluctant because he feared it would be costly and useless. We would be sitting right next to each other but he grew silent on me and refused to come near the vehicles after the system was installed. Finally, a Sri Lankan engineer took him to test the system and from the Tower centre Edhi was able to connect with the volunteers in different areas of the city. When he found himself speaking to Haji Iqbal from Moosa Lines or Raju in Korangi, Edhi sahab started laughing and turned to me and said, Yaar, it only takes a minute, get more of them.

He said Edhis chief concern was that public money would be wasted on what he thought would be a huge investment. To our luck, the person who took up the task felt he was indebted to Edhi sahab because he had found his intellectually disabled daughter through an Edhi home.

I cant dodge a bullet with my name on it

Going back to the time when the army patrolled the streets of Karachi, Kazmi said an incident in Aligarh Colony made them take the risk of venturing out during curfew time.

Nobody was stepping out because of the volatile situation in the city during the 90s. When we received the news about shootout and that causalities were feared, Edhi sahab and I headed to Aligarh Colony.

Soon, security personnel intercepted us and told us we could not proceed further. We tried to reason with them and, finally, a senior officer who recognised Edhi sahab told the men to let us through. It was a fierce clash between Mohajirs and Pakhtuns but both sides stopped as soon as we entered the area.

That was the kind of risk Edhi sahab was always willing to take. There were times when even we would advise him against a certain plan. However, his reply was always the same; if a bullet is fired with my name on it, no force on earth can divert it elsewhere.

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Reliving Edhi's journey to immortality | Pakistan | thenews.com.pk - The News International

As he neared the end of his life, American patriot and deist Thomas Paine turned his attention to the possibility of postmortem survival.

In a posthumously published essay, he conjectured that humans who had been exceptionally righteous would likely experience bliss and those who had been exceptionally wicked would suffer. But the rest of us, having done nothing in our lives to merit either eternal reward or punishment, would simply cease to be.

By his own admission, Paine wasnt much of a reader. So I suspect he didnt know that his defense of conditional immortality bears some resemblance to a position defended by the 2nd-century Christian theologian Theophilus of Antioch.

Before his conversion to Christianity, Theophilus had been a pagan philosopher steeped in the writings of Plato, who lived 6 centuries earlier. Plato taught that humans are born with immortal souls, a doctrine which gained widespread currency in the Greek-speaking ancient world before Christ. These souls, trapped in physical bodies, yearn to return to the blissfully immaterial realm whence they originated.

Theophilus embraced Platos belief in inherent or unconditional immortality before he became a Christian. But after converting, his study of Hebrew scripture and early Christian writings convinced him that the doctrine was incompatible with both. Instead, Theophilus argued, soul-immortality isnt a given. The soul has the potential for immortality if certain conditions are met, but also for utter dissolution. Immortality, in other words, isnt an essential or inherent characteristic of human nature.

His argument is ingenious. Everyone, Theophilus asserted, acknowledges death to be an evil. God, therefore, couldnt have created humans as mere mortals doomed to die, because doing so makes God the author of deathwhich means that God, the supreme source of all goodness, is responsible for evil. This is logically impossible and morally repugnant.

On the other hand, if God had endowed humans with inherently immortal souls, freedom and self-direction, essential conditions for moral behavior, would be jeopardized. Theophilus reasoning is a bit murky here. But his point seems to be that a carte blanche bestowal of immortality on humans would somehow weaken our moral fiber, perhaps because we would take the gift for granted. If Im confident I can never die, why bother to do much of anything? Its our awareness of the fragile brevity of life that motivates us to make the most of the time we have.

In order to avoid both of these undesirable possibilities, concluded Theophilus, God created humans in neutral mode, as it were, when it comes to mortality and immortality.

If a person freely and conscientiously chooses to keep the commandments of God, those efforts will be rewarded with the emergence of soul immortality.

If, however, a person should incline towards those things which relate to death by disobeying God, then the consequence of this free choice is, literally, ceasing to be. No eternity in heaven or hell, no possibility of redemption, and no resurrection on Judgment Day, because no soul has emerged.

Today, Theophilus is largely forgotten except by church historians. But his better remembered contemporary, St. Irenaeus, was so impressed by the doctrine of conditional immortality that he defended a similar theory. He argued that humans are created as imperfect (mortal) creatures, but that we can grow souls and acquire immortality by how we deal with lifes adversities.

When faced with suffering, said Irenaeus, we can allow it to crush us spiritually, diminishing our capacity for soul-growth, or we can respond by cultivating soul-growing virtues such as patience, trust, humility, and fortitude. Irenaeus intuition is a religious version of the contemporary slogan, No pain, no gain.

Although conditional immortality remains a minority opinion in the Christian worldit was, in fact, condemned as heretical in 1513 by the Lateran Councilit has been defended by learned theologians such as Origen in the 3rd century, Anselm of Canterbury in the 11th, and John Hick in our own day.

But perhaps the best-known defense of conditional immortality is found in an 1819 letter by the poet John Keats, written when he was already suffering from the tuberculosis that killed him 2 years later. Life, he declared, with all its joys and vicissitudes, is a vale of soul-making capable of igniting the divine spark within each of us into a full-fledged soul.

Kerry Walters pastors Holy Spirit American National Catholic Church in Montandon. http://www.ancclewisburgpa.org. His video-essays may be found on the YouTube channel Holy Spirit Moments with Fr. Kerry Walters.

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Conditional immortality - Sunbury Daily Item

New Zealand v British & Irish Lions

Venue: Eden Park.

Kick-off: 7.35pm NZ time/8.35am Irish/UK time.

On TV: Live on Sky Sports

The Lions embarked upon a tour described as suicidal by Graham Henry and both they and their head coach were derided after a scratchy opening win over the Barbarians and a loss to the Blues, and at various points along the way. Come the final Saturday, they stand on the cusp of immortality.

Its been quite the journey; a rollercoaster ride up and down the Land of the Long White Cloud which scaled epic heights in Wellington last Saturday when they became the first side to beat the All Blacks in New Zealand in eight years.

For the momentous climax came the hardest part of all, ending the All Blacks 37-match winning run at Eden Park since France won 23-20 in 1994.

Sen OBrien has played 49 Tests for Ireland and four for the Lions. Hes been part of a Lions Test series win, been in an Irish Six Nations-winning team and three European Cup-winning squads with Leinster. So how does this rate?

The biggest, he says with a steely-eyed intent. This is the biggest game Ive ever been involved in, I think, this weekend.

The former All Blacks winger and Italian and Blues head coach, John Kirwan, said earlier this week that regardless of the third Test result, Warren Gatlands legacy is secure, and theres even been grudging respect from the New Zealand Herald.

Yet the portrayal of him as a clown amid an almost daily demonisation of him will not be easily forgotten. One of his assistants with Wales and here, Rob Howley, said: The way Warren Gatlands been treated, its been a disgrace, hasnt it? Its an absolute disgrace. We all love sport and rugby and you can be critical of technical or tactical elements of the Lions or New Zealand, but when that becomes personal criticism I think we all step over the mark and thats happened over the last four weeks of the tour.

Hes a Kiwi. You have to applaud what Warren Gatlands achieved as a Kiwi in the northern hemisphere and Ive no doubt what hell achieve when he comes back to New Zealand as well. Hes probably one of the best coaches in world rugby at this moment in time.

Asked if he envisaged Gatland being All Blacks coach one day, Howley said: Yeah, I got no doubt he will be. Citing Gatlands success with Connacht, Ireland and Wales, not to mention Wasps, where Howley played, he added: I learned more as a player when I was coached by Warren Gatland at the age of 31 than I had by any other coaches. And Ive been very fortunate to be coached by a lot of coaches.

He understands the games, he understands players, and I think thats the biggest asset that hes got, said Howley, which was perhaps a legacy of his time as understudy to Sean Fitzpatrick.

All the while, Howley said, Gatland remained calm and relaxed in steering the Lions through a relentless schedule. At the start of the tour you were going at 25mph and now were going at 18mph, said Howley.

Having their key decision-makers, Owen Farrell, Johnny Sexton and Dan Biggar all available for the pre-tour camp in the Carton House was key.

The emergence of the Sexton-Farrell axis may have contributed to the All Blacks recalling Julian Savea, and an indication that they would defend pretty flat.

I think they will revert to the kicking game, he added, and theyll come off 9. Its about making sure that our systems in place that were good last week are better than they were the week before.

If we can do that, its making sure that when weve got the ball, we take our opportunities. Its one game, as a coach and a player that you are going to be so excited because it is the ultimate challenge of creating history. Thats what weve got to look forward to.

New Zealand: Jordan Barrett (Hurricanes); Israel Dagg (Crusaders), Anton Lienert-Brown (Chiefs), Ngane Laumape (Hurricanes), Julien Savea (Hurricanes); Beauden Barrett (Hurricanes), Aaron Smith (Highlanders); Joe Moody (Crusaders), Codie Taylor (Crusaders), Owen Franks (Crusaders), Brodie Retallick (Chiefs) Samuel Whitelock (Crusaders), Jerome Kaino (Blues), Sam Cane (Chiefs), Kieran Read (Crusaders, captain).

Replacements: Nathan Harris (Chiefs), Wyatt Crockett (Crusaders),

Charlie Faumuina (Blues), Scott Barrett (Crusaders), Ardie Savea (Hurricanes), TJ Perenara (Hurricanes), Aaron Cruden (Chiefs) or Lima Sopoaga (Highalnders), Malakai Fekitoa (Highlanders).

British & Irish Lions: Liam Williams (Scarlets, Wales); Anthony Watson (Bath Rugby, England), Jonathan Davies (Scarlets, Wales), Owen Farrell (Saracens, England), Elliot Daly (Wasps, England); Johnny Sexton (Leinster, Ireland), Conor Murray (Munster, Ireland); Mako Vunipola (Saracens, England,) Jamie George (Saracens, England), Tadhg Furlong (Leinster, Ireland), Maro Itoje (Saracens, England), Alun Wyn Jones (Ospreys, Wales), Sam Warburton (Cardiff Blues, Wales, capt), Sean OBrien (Leinster, Ireland), Taulupe Faletau (Bath Rugby, Wales).

Replacements: Ken Owens (Scarlets, Wales), Jack McGrath (Leinster, Ireland), Kyle Sinckler (Harlequins, England), Courtney Lawes (Northampton, England), CJ Stander (Munster, Ireland), Rhys Webb (Ospreys, Wales), Ben Teo (Worcester Warriors, England), Jack Nowell (Exeter, England).

Referee: Romain Poite (France).

Previous meetings: Played 40, New Zealand 30 wins, 3 draws, Lions 7 wins.

Betting (Paddy Powers): 2/7 New Zealand, 22/1 Draw, 7/2 Lions. Handicap betting (Lions +11 pts) Evens New Zealand, 19/1 Draw, Evens Lions.

Forecast: The Lions to win.

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'Biggest game ever' for Lions as immortality beckons - Irish Times

How to quantify this one? Rugbys greatest series, to quote Sky Sport NZs advertising campaign and that hyperbole doesnt seem excessive has reached its first series-deciding showdown since 1993. Viewed in that light, its possibly the biggest game of the professional era outside of World Cups.

For the back-to-back world champions, its an opportunity for a somewhat remodelled, younger team, captained by Kieran Read in his 100th test, and marshalled by the world player of the year, Beauden Barrett, and his brothers, to emulate illustrious names of the All Blacks past in the post-Richie McCaw and Dan Carter era and cement their own status.

For the Lions its an even rarer chance to grasp a slice of rugby-playing immortality, and emulate something only one Lions squad has ever achieved before. Then it was the sepia-tinged class of Willie John, Gibson, an array of Welsh legends and others, back in 1971.

Thats all then. Truly, its a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, never to be experienced again.

The very nature of the tour and the series so far has set up the climax perfectly. The Lions were largely written off before this suicidal tour and from the outset. Gradually the quality of their players was honed into two strong teams, albeit one stronger than the other.

Even then, in the first test, they left opportunities behind, whereas the All Blacks clinically took theirs, whereupon the Lions defied expectations as 5/1 outsiders a week ago with a drama-filled comeback, admittedly against 14 men for 45 of the last 55 minutes on a raucous night in a rain-sodden Westpac Stadium. They were the clinical ones, with two nicely created and strongly finished tries. The Red Army were in raptures and are liable to be buttressed by further re-enforcements here. The All Blacks fans have been provoked into finding their voice. Another filthy forecast will only add to the drama.

Whod have thought, at the outset, that coming into this climactic third test, the Lions would not only have the momentum, but would have an unchanged side in a test for the first time since 1993? And meanwhile, that the All Blacks would be making three changes in personnel, including a 20-year-old (Jordan Barrett) and 24-year-old (Ngani Laumpape) making their first test starts in an untried back three and new midfield?

Revenge is a powerful spur in rugby, not least when the matches come close together. Wounded pride, and a whiff of cordite and all that, and therell plenty in the Auckland air. The Lions had it last week, the All Blacks this, and Ireland felt the full, brutal force of this blacklash in November.

Yet Warren Gatland is adamant, as is Johnny Sexton, that this Lions team can be even better again.

We also still dont think were at our best, we still think we can improve. Obviously theres going to be an improvement in the All Blacks but its something we dont think is going to be a shock to us. Rory Best spoke earlier in the week about how the Irish felt they didnt handle the physicality that the All Blacks brought in the game two weeks after the Chicago game, even though theyd spoken about it. Were ready for it.

I think theyre going to try to dominate us up front, particularly in the tight five, and try and give some of their inexperienced backs some go-forward. If they dont get that advantage up front and were aware of making sure we try and negate the threat of their tight five it should make the game interesting.

Despite their Queenstown time-out, and satisfaction from last week, theres no sense that the Lions players are content with their lot, according to Gatland.

I havent witnessed that. I hope I dont see it on Saturday night because that would be pretty disappointing. Theres a group of players there who are incredibly competitive and realise this is a massive opportunity to win a series in NZ. It doesnt come round very often. These Irish players who played in Chicago know what it was like two weeks later; theyve another chance to make sure they dont get caught with their pants down.

As in the previous two tests, the lines in the sand are liable to again be drawn close in along the gain line. The All Blacks won the collisions in round one, the Lions with some tampering in personnel in round two. The personnel now largely remains the same, with Laumape on from the start after being the All Blacks most potent runner, but also their weakest defender, a week ago.

Sean OBriens availability is a game changer, or at any rate his nonavailability would have been. If the Lions can reproduce the same strength and accuracy in the tackle close in, and if OBrien, Sam Warburton and co can slow down the All Blacks customary high-tempo game in other words, if they can stifle Beauden Barrett, they have every chance.

With yet more biblical rain forecast, the scrums could be a significant factor, as again will the referee, in this instance Romain Poite. He showed in the series decider four years ago that, as ever, he is both a strong, thick-skinned personality and favours the scrum going forward, whatever the means. The All Blacks will assuredly go after the Lions at scrum time.

The Lions have lost the penalty count by a combined 24-15 in the tests to date, and Gatland clearly feels the Lions havent been given a fair deal yet, and particularly in this series. He will meet with Poite, his assistants Jerome Garces and the hitherto unsatisfactory Jaco Peyper, a description that could also apply to the TMO George Ayoub.

All Gatland wants is that they have an open mind.

Thats the message I will hopefully give to the officials tomorrow night when I meet them. Weve got the confidence and self-belief to win this Saturday and win the series, so all we ask of them is to be open-minded, not to be surprised by us being in front and good enough to win. Thats an important message I am trying to deliver. I am not questioning their integrity or anything. Its just that sometimes its a mindset. The message is just, if there are some 50-50 calls, to be open-minded.

To support Gatlands theory that there is more in this team, the Sexton-Farrell combo was at the heartbeat of the two tries that turned the game on its head and has given the lie to Warrenball while giving them a cutting edge, which has been sharpened by a brand-new back three who have only played two games together. They also have a core of proven Lions. They wont be fazed.

The All Blacks havent lost at Eden Park since France won 23-20 in 1994, and have won 37 tests in a row there. They are hot favourites, and could win well, but if opportunity knocks, these Lions have tries in them.

After all the verbal sparring up until this point a week ago, both Gatland and Steve Hansen assumed a more restrained, balanced mindset, culminating in them both being quite philosophical on Thursday. Indeed, both had the exact same choice of wordswhen maintaining this game will not define these players.

Nor should it. They all have or will achieve plenty more.

Nevertheless, immortality beckons, and all that.

NEW ZEALAND: Jordan Barrett (Hurricanes); Israel Dagg (Crusaders), Anton Lienert-Brown (Chiefs), Ngane Laumape (Hurricanes), Julien Savea (Hurricanes); Beauden Barrett (Hurricanes), Aaron Smith (Highlanders); Joe Moody (Crusaders), Codie Taylor (Crusaders), Owen Franks (Crusaders), Brodie Retallick (Chiefs) Samuel Whitelock (Crusaders), Jerome Kaino (Blues), Sam Cane (Chiefs), Kieran Read (Crusaders, captain).

Replacements: Nathan Harris (Chiefs), Wyatt Crockett (Crusaders),

Charlie Faumuina (Blues), Scott Barrett (Crusaders), Ardie Savea (Hurricanes), TJ Perenara (Hurricanes), Aaron Cruden (Chiefs) or Lima Sopoaga (Highalnders), Malakai Fekitoa (Highlanders).

BRITISH AND IRISH LIONS: Liam Williams (Scarlets, Wales); Anthony Watson (Bath Rugby, England), Jonathan Davies (Scarlets, Wales), Owen Farrell (Saracens, England), Elliot Daly (Wasps, England); Johnny Sexton (Leinster, Ireland), Conor Murray (Munster, Ireland); Mako Vunipola (Saracens, England,) Jamie George (Saracens, England), Tadhg Furlong (Leinster, Ireland), Maro Itoje (Saracens, England), Alun Wyn Jones (Ospreys, Wales), Sam Warburton (Cardiff Blues, Wales, capt), Sean OBrien (Leinster, Ireland), Taulupe Faletau (Bath Rugby, Wales).

Replacements: Ken Owens (Scarlets, Wales), Jack McGrath (Leinster, Ireland), Kyle Sinckler (Harlequins, England), Courtney Lawes (Northampton, England), CJ Stander (Munster, Ireland), Rhys Webb (Ospreys, Wales), Ben Teo (Worcester Warriors, England), Jack Nowell (Exeter, England).

Referee: Romain Poite (France).

Previous meetings: Played 40. New Zealand 30 wins, 3 draws, Lions 7 wins.

Betting (Paddy Powers): 2/7 New Zealand, 22/1 Draw, 7/2 Lions. Handicap betting (Lions +11 pts): evens New Zealand, 19/1 draw, evens Lions.

Forecast: The Lions to win.

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Lions have what it takes to claim immortality against All Blacks - Irish Times

The Hindu

The immortality of man The Hindu Subramania Bharati or Mahakavi Bharati hated the British for two reasons first, because they were colonisers and second, because they were responsible for his father's death, says PS Krishna Murthy, who is all set to play the titular character in a ...

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The immortality of man - The Hindu

Sky Sports get carried away an awful lot but last Saturday was understandable.

Professional rugby was brought in not long after Sky's launch and the pair have been tight for two decades now. One hype machine feeds into the next until we get to the stage where beating New Zealand brings men to within a step of immortality.

That's how it went down at The Cake Tin, in Wellington, as Sky Sports' Graeme Simmons caught up with Lions flanker Sean O'Brien. Looking ahead to the third and final Test, on July 8, Simmons proclaimed:

Simmons:"Immortality beckons. That's what it is. Immortality is beckoning.

O'Brien:"Sure that's what we're here for."

Carlow's finest handled the question well, refused to get carried away and focused on the task at hand. There was a quizzical look fired Simmons' way but O'Brien let the hype-man worry about the hype.

O'Brien ploughed off to join his victorious teammates and soak up the applause.

Ronan O'Gara feels 'The Tullow Tank' will be disappointed with letting that bombastic question slide quite so easily. The former Ireland and Lions outhalf toldThe Hard Yardsrugby podcast what O'Brien should have responded with. O'Gara commented:

"It was such a missed opportunity by Seanie. I'd say it was because he was so fatigued but normally he'd bury him!

"It was such a chance for him to go viral there. Seanie, he's an unbelievably good craic character. Very witty.

"It would ave been his style there to come up with an absolute cracker of a comment like,'I'm already a superstar in Carlow, I'm not too bothered anyway lads!'"

O'Gara added:

"That's Seanie though. He's an unbelievable character and that's why lads play for him.

"Je's got a thing about him now where you just need him in your team."

Immortality may be a tad over the top but imagine the comments if the Lions get the job done in Auckland. And imagine O'Brien's comments in return.

*Check out the full O'Gara chat on O'Brien from 36:00 below:

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Ronan O'Gara suggests how Sean O'Brien should have responded to immortality question - SportsJOE.ie

(CNN) "It's a real sharing experience, to be in the dark waiting for the light," says Clare Tuffy, manager of Br na Binne Visitor Centre in Ireland's Boyne Valley.

Last year, nearly 33,000 people applied by lottery for entry to the Newgrange passage tomb on the mornings surrounding the winter solstice.

Only 60 were chosen.

On the days between December 19 and 23, in a spectacular feat of Stone Age engineering, a dawn sunbeam strikes through the "roofbox" opening above the tomb's entrance, then creeps along the 19-meter passageway, to where a hushed group of visitors stand waiting in the blackness of the innermost chamber.

For around 17 minutes -- weather permitting -- the chamber is flooded with light.

"There are very few experiences you can share across five millennia, with your ancestors," Tuffy tells CNN Travel. "5,000 years ago, people were waiting in the exact same spot, for the same event."

Dubbed by UNESCO as "Europe's largest and most important concentration of prehistoric megalithic art," the World Heritage Site of Br na Binne lies less than an hour's drive north of Dublin, in the heart of what the country's tourism board has dubbed Ireland's Ancient East.

Here, three large burial mounds -- Newgrange, Knowth and Dowth -- and around 40 satellite passage graves lie in the rich, green hills of County Meath.

The valley is as fertile now as when the monuments were built using tools of stone, bone and wood by a farming community in 3,200 BCE, some 500 years before the great pyramids of Giza.

Newgrange is the most famous.

This grass-covered, quartz-ringed hump, some 86 meters across and 13.5 meters high, covers an acre of land. Its smooth exterior belies the mysterious hidden chambers; only a fraction are open to the public.

The solar aligned roofbox above the entrance is unique to Newgrange.

These communal passage tombs proliferated across western Europe in the Neolithic era, linking the ancient communities with immortality.

"Their own houses would be very simple, ephemeral things of wood and clay, so for the dead they built houses that would last forever," Tuffy says.

Examples today include Gavrinis in France, Maeshowe in Scotland and Bryn Celli Ddu in Wales.

"As they got more and more sophisticated, they included the solar alignments," says Tuffy. They grew in scope also -- in their day, they would most likely have been the largest monuments in the world. But there's a reason UNESCO says that the passage grave is "brought to its finest expression" in the Boyne Valley.

"About 12% of passage tombs have a significant solar alignment," explains Tuffy, "but Newgrange is unique in that it is the only one that has a special opening to allow the sun to enter."

"We think for the people who built it, it was far more than just a tomb," explains Tuffy. The monuments had social, economic, religious and funerary functions.

"It would have been a place where people gathered, it would have been a place where the ancestors were honored. It is a symbol of the people's wealth, and it is a place probably where they interceded between the living and the dead."

Many of the 97 boulders -- or "kerbstones" -- that ring Newgrange are decorated with obscure carvings of spirals, circles, zigzags and triangles, which may have astronomical as well as religious significance.

in his 2012 book, "Newgrange, Monument to Immortality," Irish journalist Anthony Murphy argues that the Newgrange and Knowth were enormous calendars used by the Neolithic farmers to measure years, leap years and more.

Newgrange is better known, but Knowth has more layers of history to explore.

"Eventually the building was such a drain on the resources of the community that they stopped building them," says Tuffy. "New ideas came to Ireland with bronze, We began to see shiny gold metal, and we all wanted to be buried in individual graves, and be buried with the good stuff. So the whole tradition changed. The monuments then were abandoned, but still honored."

Newgrange was sealed after its original use had come to an end.

It remained so until the passage and chamber were rediscovered in 1699 by one of William of Orange's men, nine years after the Dutch Protestant William of Orange's forces defeated those of King James II of England at the history-defining Battle of the Boyne.

While the Newgrange group is purely prehistoric, there are "far more layers of activity" at the Knowth group of 30 monuments, which has features dating from the Neolithic period to the Middle Ages.

The Hill of Tara archaeological complex, ancient seat of the High Kings of Ireland and used from the Neolithic period to the 12th century, is a short distance away beside the River Boyne and can be combined with a day trip to Br na Binne.

"In the autumn and winter months, the monuments stand out far more in the landscape and they're far more imposing, because all the vegetation around them falls away."

Access to the moments is via guided tour only, and visitors are capped at 150,000 a year. Entrance fees range from 4 euros ($4.50) for entry to the visitor center to 13 euros ($14.70) for entry to the center and to Newgrange and Knowth.

Although only a lucky few get inside, crowds of several hundred gather outside the tomb on those special winter days.

"It's always wonderful to be at Newgrange whether you're inside in the chamber waiting for the sunbeam or whether you're on the outside," says Tuffy. "It makes you think about life and death and rebirth and about our place in the world and about continuity. It's certainly a better way to pass those days before Christmas than out shopping."

32 BEAUTIFUL REASONS TO VISIT IRELAND: Poulnaborne is a Neolithic portal tomb in the Burren region of Clare, dating back to as early as 4,200 BC. It attracts around 200,000 visitors each year.

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Newgrange: Ireland's amazing feat of Stone Age engineering - CNN International

We arent worthy of immortality. Indeed, weve already passed our sell by date. Photograph: VCG/VCG via Getty Images

Last week, as the Senate was still trying to deny healthcare to 22 million fellow Americans, a friend asked me whether I would choose to live forever if I could. We were discussing Silicon Valley billionaires and their investments in new biotechnologies that they hope will enable them to do what no human has ever done: cheat death. The technology includes some dubious treatments, such as being pumped with the blood of much younger people.

Both of us agreed we do not wish for immortality, though we are both extremely happy with our lives and healthy. Wanting to live forever is fundamentally selfish. Its obvious why immortality appeals to billionaires such as Peter Thiel. It obviously wouldnt to the millions in the US who wont have health insurance if the Republicans pull out the vote on their bill.

Peter Thiel, the PayPal founder who is a friend of Trump, is one of the Immortalists. Lucky that he will never run out of money, especially since the Senates version of repeal-and-replace Obamacare is such a generous giveaway to the billionaire class.

The only reason its getting any Republican votes is that, as the New York Times reported a few days ago: The bills largest benefits go to the wealthiest Americans, who have the most comfortable health care arrangements, and its biggest losses fall to poorer Americans who rely on government support.

It should be called the John Galt Bill after the hero of Ayn Rands Atlas Shrugged, the doorstopper of a novel that is akin to the Bible for certain conservative politicians, including House speaker Paul Ryan, who hands out copies of the book to newly elected Members (the House version of the healthcare bill is even more Galtian than the Senates). Its the only book Im aware of that Donald Trump claims to have read.

Keep in mind that at her funeral in New York in 1982, Ayn Rands body lay next to the symbol she had adopted as her own a six-foot dollar sign, according to Susan Chira who covered the service for the Times. A few years ago, The Atlas Society, which keeps the Rand flame alive, urged Senate majority leader Mitch McConnell to unleash our inner John Galt. They must be celebrating because even they could not have come up with a more hard-hearted piece of legislation.

If the White House actually fights for the bill, it will be because it repeals the higher taxes on estates and the Medicare surcharge that helped fund Barack Obamas expansion of healthcare to cover the poor. Although he has said the House version of the bill is too mean, hes happy to see his billionaire friends evade the governments hand in their pockets. (Hey, wed certainly like to see your taxes so we can figure out how you would make out, Mr President.)

In an effort to reduce the meanness of the bill somewhat, McConnell is reported to be considering something wealthy Republicans hate, preserving the Obama laws 3.8% tax on investment income in order to provide more money for combatting opioid addiction and other services to the poor. Its unclear whether that would unlock enough votes to pass a bill.

The Presidents 71st birthday a few weeks ago made him one of the oldest surviving boomers, those of us born between 1946 and 1964 a generation that is notoriously selfish and also physically fit (though the presidents recent photos on the golf course raise questions about the latter). In the presidents case, the typical baby boom self-centeredness has blossomed into a raging form of megalomania.

In 2020, the president may be running for re-election and I will be one of the many boomers who have officially become senior citizens. More importantly, it will also be the year that the number of those over 65 will be larger than those under 5. Thats unhealthy for many reasons, not least of which is the pressure it will put on Medicare and Social Security.

The billionaire class does not need to worry, however, because their tax savings from the repeal of Obamacare, if it ever passes, will easily pay for a lifetime of concierge medicine (well, maybe not, if Thiels plan to live forever works out).

Since modern American politics is always a revenge cycle, one way to look at the Republican health repeal measures is as payback to Chief Justice John Roberts, who infuriated Republicans in 2012 when he sided with the supreme courts four liberals to uphold the Affordable Care Act. He finessed his decision by defining the individual mandate as a tax, citing congressional power to levy taxes. Now McConnell & Co are using that same power to repeal them and make the billionaires richer.

Healthcare is not the only area in which supreme selfishness guides the Trump administration. Washington Post columnist David Ignatius had a strong piece on Wednesday showing many examples of other countries adopting Trumps America First mantra and adapting it to themselves.

In the Middle East, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates bully Qatar into bending to their will, as the Kurds forge on with their independence drive, both selfish moves that dont even consider how they may destabilize the rest of the region. Pulling out of multi-lateral treaties, like the Paris and Trans-Pacific accords, because Trump says they dont put US interests first is also supremely selfish, as Ignatius rightly points out.

Its no wonder theres something called Boomer Death Watch. We arent worthy of immortality. Indeed, weve already passed our sell-by date.

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Billionaires dream of immortality. The rest of us worry about healthcare - The Guardian

British and Irish Lions head coach Warren Gatland has urged his side to seize immortality after naming an unchanged matchday squad for Saturdays decisive final Test against New Zealand in Auckland.

A first series win over the All Blacks since 1971 beckons after the Lions restored parity in the three-match showdown with a 24-21 victory over the world champions in Wellington on Saturday.

Gatland cited the need to hand the players who had dragged the Lions level the opportunity to administer the knockout blow at Eden Park, where New Zealand have not lost a Test match since 1994.

This is a huge chance for this group of players to show their abilities and reap the benefits of the work everyone has put in, said Gatland. It is their chance to make Lions history.

We are all aware of how big this game is and we are expecting a backlash from the All Blacks. But the pleasing thing about the second Test is just how strong we were in the last 10 or 15 minutes, in terms of energy and enthusiasm so we still feel there is another level in us.

Just as he did at the Westpac Stadium at the weekend, flanker Sam Warburton will lead the Lions, who have named an unchanged starting XV for consecutive Tests for the first time since 1993.

We felt we should reward the players for the result and the courage that they showed in coming from behind, from 18-9 down, digging themselves out of a hole and then finishing strongly in that last 10 to 15 minutes, added Gatland.

There are some players who are pretty disappointed not to be selected and I understand that. It is what you would expect from competitive top athletes, they back themselves.

New Zealand, meanwhile, have made three changes to their XV for the series clincher. Jordie Barrett and Ngani Laumape are set to make their first starts for the All Blacks at full-back and inside centre respectively, while Julian Savea returns on the left wing.

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British and Irish Lions 2017: Warren Gatland tells Lions to seize immortality after naming unchanged side for third ... - City A.M.