Given the suspension of athletics in the county, the Daily Journal decided to dive into our 20-year archives to bring readers some of our favorite stories over the years.

AUG. 2, 2012 There are certain images that deserve a form of immortality.

At Carlmont High School, a quick lap around the small gymnasium will provide you with one such image. Its of Justine Record high off the ground and in the process of sending a missile over the net for a score. From 2005 to 2008, it happened over and over again, much to the chagrin of the opposition.

Fast forward four years, Record is taking her high-flying act overseas after a stellar career at Virginia Tech that included the programs first ever trip the NCAA tournament. Record, who graduated in May with a degree in English, announced shell be playing professionally for Toulon Provence Mediterranean Var Volleyball located in Toulon, France.

Im excited for this opportunity and the experience to go over there and the chance to continue to play, Record said. I mean, why not play the game you love for as long as you can? I remember I started playing volleyball when I was 14 in an area league and it never occurred to me that I would be playing professionally. I was just playing for fun. And I still am.

Much like her legendary leaps on the volleyball court, Records career appears to do nothing but ascend.

A starter for her four years as a Hokie, Record ended her career ranked fourth on Techs all-time service aces list with 176 and seventh all-time in digs with 1,238. She also concluded her career with 1,121 kills and 133 blocks.

She appeared in all 31 matches her senior season, missing just one start while playing in 115 sets. Her final year at Tech concluded with 257 kills, 48 aces, 380 digs and 51 blocks and a team-leading 12 double-doubles. Record was also a preseason All-ACC team member.

I think going away to college was probably one of the best opportunities that ever happened to me, Record said. I initially didnt want to be so far away from home, but I ended up going to a volleyball program that wanted me and offered me a full ride as a player at the Division I level.

It definitely wasnt an easy transition. But a lot of my teammates were from out of state which was nice because everyone was going through the same experience that I was and I think thats why our team was so close everyone was from a different area.

Record went to Tech after a jaw-dropping four years at Carlmont that included a 2006 Daily Journal Volleyball Player of the Year award.

They were coaches that I admire because they pushed me to play different positions that I never played before, Record said of her time as a Scot. I was an outside hitter at the high school level, but I also played right side during the club season. At one point I played middle in high school. And it was because of their coaching and their belief in me as a player that I realized that the only limitations you have are the ones you create for yourself.

Heading into Tech, there were questions about Records size. But Record said she was lucky to have coaches who believed in her regardless of her frame.

They embraced my role and I was really thankful for that because there arent a lot of coaches who view a left-handed player as an outside hitter, especially at 5-8, thats the big thing, she said. I was playing at the DI level and coaches dont expect a short lefty on the outside.

For most hitters, the biggest transition is the speed of the game and how big the block is. I definitely struggled with hitting around the block and hitting high-hand, finding ways to score that way.

But Records hard work and efforts helped the Virgina Tech program reach new heights.

I feel very proud to be a part of the first team to make the NCAA tournament, Record said. Our teams has improved and I think the program got better each year. I definitely think a lot of it has to do with the coaching. And I think I improved because my teammates, we pushed each other a lot. Its just kind of contagious.

Volleyball appears to be one of those good diseases Record cant seem to shake. As her career with Tech wound down, phone calls to friends playing overseas and the subsequent advice that followed landed her with the opportunity to continue to make French fans ohh and ahh with her explosive play in the future.

This is the right fit for now, Record said. After youre done playing for four years, some players dont want to play overseas and dont want to continue their careers. But for me, I love playing volleyball so much I just couldnt get enough. I think my main objective at this point is just taking this opportunity to gain life experience, to travel and to go play where I possibly can, reaching my full potential.

For Record, that potential is way up in the clouds. And given her reputation, Record definitely has the hops to reach it.

See more here:

From the sports archives: Record takes game to overseas - San Mateo Daily Journal

The Old Guard's Andromache the Scythian is over 6000 years old, and her friends are no spring chickens either. Here's how old the other immortals are.

Warning: SPOILERS ahead for The Old Guard.

The Old Guard's Andromache the Scythian a.k.a. Andy (Charlize Theron) is 6,732 years old according to the comic books upon which the Netflix movie is based - and her immortal companions are pretty ancient as well. Though Andy's age is deliberately kept ambiguous in the movie, marketing materials for the other characters in The Old Guardmake it possible to work out exactly how old they are.

Directed by Gina Prince-Bythewood and based on the comics by Greg Rucka andLeandro Fernndez, The Old Guard follows a team of warriors who have lived in the shadows for centuries, taking part in conflicts on whichever side they feel is right. The movie is set in the modern day, where a new immortal - soldier Nile Freeman (Kiki Layne) - joins the group after miraculously healing from having her throat cut. While she's still learning about her new family, they come under threat from a greedy pharmaceutical executive called Steven Merrick (Harry Melling), who hopes to discover the secret to their immortality, bottle it, and put a price tag on it.

Related:The Old Guard: How Old Andy Really Is

Unfortunately for Merrick, he's not the first bad guy that the Old Guard have run into during their very long lifetimes. Here's a breakdown of when each member of the group besides Andy was born, and how old they are in the modern day setting of the movie.

Seen only in flashbacks and in The Old Guard'sfinal scene, Quynh's (Veronica Ngo) age is perhaps the hardest to pin down out of all the immortals. In the comics she's called Noriko, and Andy recalls that they first metat the end ofAmr ibn al-As al-Sahmi's conquest of the Byzantine Empire in 642, at which point Noriko had already been an immortal for a century. That puts her date of birth some time in early 500 AD,which would make her around 1500 years old during the events of The Old Guard.

However, in the movie it's not specified exactly when or where Andy and Quynh met, except that Andy found Quynh when she was wandering through the desert, and that she was the first other immortal that Andy ever met. In the comics, Andy met Lykon (Micheal Ward) before she met Noriko, and they fought together for two thousand years before his wounds finally stopped healing during the Italian Renaissance. Lykon also appears briefly in a flashback in The Old Guard, with Andy and Quynh both being present at the time of his death. If Quynh has been aged up in order to have been born before Lykon, she could actually be several thousand years old during the events of the movie. Hopefully we'll learn more about her backstory - including her age - in The Old Guard 2.

According to his character poster, Joe (Marwan Kenzari) was born in 1066, making him 954 years old at the time The Old Guard takes place, andin his earlythirties at the time of his first death. Originally called Yusuf Al-Kaysani before he changed his name to Joe Jones (in order to attract less attention), Joe was a Muslim warrior during the First Crusade, who met the love of his life on the battlefield... and then killed him. Fortunately for both of them, fate chose them as the next immortals to join the Old Guard, and after repeatedly slaying each other they realized that neither they nor the enemy soldier could be killed - at which point their enmity turned to love.

Related:The Old Guard Cast Guide: Where You've Seen Each Actor Before

Younger than Joe by only a few years (which grew even less significant as the centuries pass), Nicky (Luca Marinelli) is 951 years old during the events of The Old Guard, based on a character poster that gives his year of birth as 1069. This means that he would have been in his late twenties - 30 at most - the first time he died. Like Joe and Andy, Nicky changed his name at some point from Nicol of Genoa to the more common name ofNick Smith, in order to aid his anonymity. Hailing from the city of Genoa, in what would later become the unified country of Italy, Nicky fought in theFirst Crusadeuntil he fell in love with one of the enemy, and instead began fighting new battles alongside him. After settling their differences, Joe and Nicky both met Andy and became part of the Old Guard alongside her and Quynh.

The baby of the group (at least, until Nile comes along), Booker (Matthias Schoenaerts) is 250 years old during the events of The Old Guard, with his character poster marking his year of birth as 1770. Born Sebastien le Livre (his nickname comes from his surname, which is French for "Book"), Booker was a soldier under Napoleon who deserted during the campaign into Russia. He was caught and hanged, but came back to life still hanging from the noose, being 42 years old at the time of this first death in 1812. As he lived on without ageing, Booker experienced the trauma of watching his sons die and being helpless to stop them, even as they grew to hate him for not sharing his gift of immortality. Being a young immortal,the 100-year penance that Booker is sentenced to at the end of The Old Guard would still be a significant amount of time for him.

A brand new member of the Old Guard, Nile Freeman is 26 years when she dies for the first time, having her throat cut while trying to save the life of a man she has just shot. After she wakes up in the infirmary without a mark to show for her injury, she's shunned by her fellow soldiers and about to be sent away for some probably very unpleasant testing when she's abducted by Andy. Nile has a military legacy to uphold, with her father having been killed in action, but also has a family that she's at first keen to return to. By the end of the movie, however, she has decided to stick with Andy and the other immortals, having seen the good that they've managed to do in the world.

More:The Old Guard Ending & Sequel Setup Explained

GI Joe Spinoff Movie Snake Eyes May Be Delayed

Hannah has been with Screen Rant since the heady days of 2013, starting out as a humble news writer and eventually clawing her way up the ladder through a series of Machiavellian schemes and betrayals. She's now a features writer and editor, covering the hottest topics in the world of nerddom from her home base in Oxford, UK.Hannah enjoys weird horror movies, weirder sci-fi movies, and also the movie adaptation of Need for Speed - the greatest video game movie of all time. She has lived and studied in New York and Toronto, but ultimately returned home so that she could get a decent cup of tea. Her hobbies include drawing, video games, long walks in the countryside, and wasting far too much time on Twitter.Speaking of which, you can follow Hannah online at @HSW3K

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The Old Guard: How Old The Other Immortals Are (Besides Andy) - Screen Rant

The human race is a diverse species. We come in all sorts of shapes and sizes, but there is one thing we all have in common: All who live will eventually die.

It is not a pleasant thought to dwell on. We seek to distract ourselves from death by surrounding ourselves with entertainment and busyness. If we can keep from thinking about it, then it is not real.

It was Woody Allen who said: I'm not afraid to die, I just don't want to be there when it happens.

It is a funny saying, and yet it may reflect an uncomfortable truth within many of us.

I need to be clear about what I am trying to communicate. The purpose of my words is not to scare people into a life of faith motivated by a fear of death. As a university student, some well-meaning Christians tried to get me to convert with threats of hell. It only delayed my spiritual journey.

My only goal is to remind us of the lie of a this-world immortality. Even with all our advances in medicine and improvements in the standard of living, we will all die at some point.

I once led a funeral for a man who died at 100 years of age. He lived a long and healthy life. He and his wife lived in their own home right until a few months before his death. He was sharp in mind and strong in body.

He seemed to have had the ideal life, and yet there were those who were shocked at his death. It was more than missing a man who was beloved; his death had seemed unexpected.

We will all experience last things. There will be our last time kissing our spouse. There will be our last time hugging our children. There will be our last time driving a car. There will be a last time going for a walk.

There are three ways for us to respond to death. One is to ignore it and hope it never happens. One is to live in fear of death so that we never truly live. But there is also the option to live a life of hope.

Hope is the ability to move beyond the negative feelings or experiences of the moment. In the context of death, hope can include a belief that we have done some good in the world or that our friends and family will be OK even after we are gone.

As a Christian, I also have hope that death is not the end of existence. I cannot say that I fully understand what that will look like. Will we recognize our loved ones? Will we even recognize ourselves?

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This is not about being so heavenly minded that we are no earthly good. A worldview that includes hope in the face of death should be a benefit to this world. This type of hope should help us to get out of bed and help others even when we are overwhelmed by life circumstances.

You are dying. Most people reading this will be dead within 80 years. Neither ignoring nor despairing are helpful options. But faith is. Now faith is confidence in what we hope for and assurance about what we do not see. (Hebrews 11:1)

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Faith Matters: Hope in the face of death benefits the world - StCatharinesStandard.ca

His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros

Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Matthew and Saint Paraskevi

July 26, 2020

Saint Paraskevi Greek Orthodox Church and Shrine - Greenlawn, NY

My Beloved Christians,

It is a joy to be with you today at this Temple and Shrine dedicated to the Great Virgin-Martyr Paraskevi, and especially on her feastday. We assemble as best we can in these days, when the pandemic has yet to abate in our land, and you all honor the Saint with your presence and prayerfulness today.

We honor Saint Paraskevi as a Martyr who bore witness to Christ through unimaginable suffering.

We honor Saint Paraskevi as a Healer, particularly of the eyes. And by the liturgical rhythm of the Church, we read of the healing of the two blind men by our Lord Jesus Christ in todays Gospel.

We honor Saint Paraskevi, who was given this name by her pious parents, to give glory to God for the Friday, the Holy and Great Friday, (in Greek, ), the day on which our Lord Jesus Christ gave up His life, for the life of the world. But is not only the Day of Redemption upon the Cross of Golgotha, it is also the Sixth Day of Creation, when our humanity was created, according to the Book ofGenesis.[1]

Therefore, is the day of our creation and re-creation. It is the day of beginning, the beginning of life, purpose, and meaning. And it is the day of ending, the ending of the tyranny of sin, hades and death. Yet in both cases, it is a day of Preparation, for this is the most basic meaning of the word. is in fact the Jewish Day of Preparation in advance of the Sabbath, Saturday.

As the Sixth Day of Creation, it is the Day of Preparation for the reign of humankind as the pinnacle of creation. As the Fathers teach, the human being was formed by God on the last Day of the Creation. For the entire world and Paradise was made like a palace, in which the human person would reign as a monarch, in the image of Gods rule of the universe.

But this Sixth Day proved to be the day of our downfall. We were created for immortality, but through the love of only ourselves, which in Greek is, we deserted our divine calling, and we became subject to sin and death.

Thus, our day of preparation had to be drawn out over the millennia, and our salvation readied in the fullness of time.[2]The entire Old Testament, with all its laws and regulations, exists to bring about the pure and Holy Virgin. For she became the chariot that would carry our Champion, the Lord Jesus Christ. This was the preparation of the Gospel.

Then, on the Sixth Day of the Week of Holy Week, the Lord took our humanity, which was given up to death unwillingly by disobedience and pride. He took our human nature to the Cross to willingly die for each and every one of us. And by that willing death on the day of Preparation, he prepared for us to enter Paradise, as he promised the Thief who was crucified at His side.[3]

But even His death on the Cross was a preparation, a preparation for His Divine Rest on the Holy Great Sabbath. For this is the Seventh Day of the new creation, when the Lord Jesus Christ rested from His labors to remake us in His image, according to His likeness.

It was a Divine rest, a sleep in death from which the Lord arose on the First Day of the Week like a lion roused from slumber.[4]He arose and by His Glorious Resurrection He conquered once and for all sin, and hades, and death. He shattered the gates of hell and brought up from the grave all who had been waiting for redemption from ages past.

This moment of theAnastasisis nowhere more spiritually and more magnificently portrayed than at the Church of Chora. You all know the image, the Risen Lord aglow with light divine lifting Adam and Eve up out their tombs, as He tramples down death. But this Sacred, like our Hagia Sopha, has been seized and converted to an alien purpose, which I shall not name here out of respect and honor for these sacredof our Holy Orthodox Faith.

Therefore, I ask each and every one of you, as we honor your Saint : how will you prepare yourself?

How will you prepare to receive the great gift of salvation and eternal life, which is ever offered in our Churches through the Holy Eucharist?

How will you prepare your life to ultimately meet your death? For if the Lord and Creator of Life Himself submitted unto death, none of us can escape this passage to the next and everlasting world.

And how will you prepare to live your life as an Orthodox Christian, who knows their faith and is aware of, and alive to, the vital issues of the day?

We all bear the responsibility, the privilege, to live our lives as best we can, so that at the moment we shall all eventually face, we may hear the words: Well done, good and faithful servant![5]

My beloved Christians, as we honor your Matronal Saint, the Holy , I pray that through her inspired prayers, she may be the channel of divine grace to each and every one of you and your families. May you all receive her blessing and strength, and bepreparedin your life to be the Orthodox Christian that God has called you to be.

Amen.

The rest is here:

His Eminence Archbishop Elpidophoros Homily for the Seventh Sunday of Matthew and Saint Paraskevi - Homilies - Greek Orthodox Archdiocese of America

Until recently, it was a safe bet that people rarely noticed the statues around them. They stood, scattered all over the citys parks and public spaces: statues of people like Floyd B. Olson, Charles Lindbergh, Leif Erikson, or Nathan Hale in St. Paul; or Mary Tyler Moore, Kirby Puckett, Hiawatha, and Hubert Humphrey over in Minneapolis. Especially these days, with most noses buried in smartphones, theyve been the often-unseen background of everyday life.

Photo by Meg Spielman Peldo

Colleen Sheehy

I really dont think about statues that much, said Colleen Sheehy, when I asked the other day. Theyve really become a less important part of contemporary public art.

Sheehy is the executive director of Public Art Saint Paul, a nonprofit that has been dedicated to improving and maintaining art in the citys public realm. For Sheehy, statues are an old-fashioned idea of public art that does not reflect how she thinks about its role these days.

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Theyre upholding a longstanding tradition going back to ancient times of depicting people, most often historical leaders, and reifying official and authoritative perspectives on history, she explained. Public art has really moved away from that. Its not that treating a figurative sculpture never happens, but its not at the forefront of what public art is today.

Large statues of people are, indeed, a very old idea. They date back millennia the oldest life-size statue dates to 9,000 BC in modern-day Turkey but, as Sheehy describes, literal pillars of the community have mostly served the purposes of symbolizing power. For example, in a New York Times op-ed earlier this summer, art historian Erin L. Thompson defined a statue as a bid for immortality, a way of solidifying an idea and making it present to other people.

For some reason, maybe it was childhood memories from once being lost at Camp Snoopy, it wasnt the historical statues that bothered me. Instead, Ive always thought my least favorite St. Paul statues were the diminutive Peanuts characters scattered around the fringes of Rice Park. For years, Ive literally looked down at them as a clumsy attempt at placemaking, artificial vitality in a city that could use actual street life instead.

MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke

Snoopy statues along Rice Park in St. Paul. Leif Erikson and Floyd B. Olson statues outside the Minnesota State Capitol.

You rarely see children depicted in public space, Sheehy explained. Theyre iconic figures that people know around the world, and it is sort a democratic gesture to have these children from the Peanuts comic strip, who are very philosophical, and youre just at their level. It creates a different kind of atmosphere in downtown thats friendly, that incorporates humor.

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Perhaps the best part of the Peanuts statues, their democratic playfulness, is anathema to the history of Western monumental culture. Statues are typically placed on a high dais, out of reach and imposing, and surrounded by stony inscriptions like He Discovered America. But it doesnt have to be that way, and one of Sheehys favorite St. Paul statues is more down-to-earth.

MinnPost photo by Bill Lindeke

Michael Price's F. Scott Fitzgerald statue in Rice Park, St. Paul.

I love that its at ground level, said Sheehy, referring to the sculpture of F. Scott Fitzgerald in Rice Park. [Price] really captures Fitzgerald as a regular person. I like that he is looking over the panoply of life and activity in Rice Park, and you can almost imagine that he might be thinking of writing a short story about it .

The other issue, of course, is who is depicted by our figurative monuments. For example, other than the former Twins greats around Target Field, its all but impossible to find a person of color or nonfictional Indigenous person in a statue. According to Sheehy, statues and monuments have an important quality, and the way that they symbolize social values can be both inspiring and incredibly oppressive. The ambiguity is certainly a feeling that holds true for many of the Twin Cities Black public artists.

I never had a great concern about statuesbecause I never saw me in them, said Ta-Coumba Aiken, a visual artist based in St. Paul. What I mean by that is, I did not see my African-American self in them, so I refuse to look at them. I refuse to believe they were greater than me or my people, so I did not study them.

Walker Art Center/Bobby Rodgers

In keeping with its democratic spirit, Shadows at the Crossroads is accessible, even in the age of COVID-19.

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It is an unconventional yet contemporary approach to how a memorial is bestowed and defined, said Christopher Harrison, a Minneapolis artist, who cited Shadows at the Crossroads as his favorite statue-adjacent public artwork. For Harrison, the grounded approach makes the Walker piece particularly poignant, and runs counter to a history of symbolism that has long neglected the lives of people of color and other marginalized communities.

I see statues and other monuments as encased historical records, archival institutions within the communal space, Harrison explained. How statues speak to truth from antiquity to present and future time for me determines their power and validity, their potency lying in how accurately they represent the character of the subject and the life that they portray.

Perhaps its the notion of permanence that is really the difference between a classical statue and contemporary public art likely to challenge, rather than reify, power structures. How can we assume that any statue erected in 2020 will still be relevant in a century?

Photo by Christopher Harrison

Come Together, a mural series, 2020 on Nicollet Mall.

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Instead of statues, after the George Floyd killing, artists like Harrison spent the last few weeks and months creating temporary murals. And, for a while, Harrisons work sat on Nicollet Mall, depicting timely messages. With downtown often deserted these days, I imagine that there were times when their only audience was Mary Tyler Moore.

Go here to see the original:

Twin Cities statues: ubiquitous but 'not at the forefront' of public art - MinnPost

Thirty years ago this month (July 1990), President George H.W. Bush signed a rare bipartisan law that stillimpacts the lives of all Americans: the American Disabilities Act (ADA). For example, the ADA required curb cuts so wheelchair users could cross streets independently also benefit bicyclists and parents pushing strollers.

I am a public health physician living with both colon cancer and multiple sclerosis, so I greatly appreciate the benefits of the ADA. Unfortunately,as a result ofmy colon cancer, I can too easily imagine that my final days may bring great suffering. If that suffering becomes unbearable, I hope that I will be able to choose froma full range of care options, and I hope that such a choice will be available to all people in that situation.

Thatswhy I support legislation in 20 states nationwide that would authorize mentally capable, terminally ill adults to have the option to get prescription medication to peacefully end their suffering if it becomes intolerable. The states that have considered medical aid-in-dying bills during their 2019-2020 legislation sessions include:Arizona, Connecticut, Delaware, Florida, Georgia, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Kentucky, Maryland, Massachusetts, Minnesota, New Hampshire, New York, North Carolina Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Wisconsin, Utah,andVirginia.

Bothnational and state pollsshow voters across our country support medical aid in dying. AGallup Poll Social Surveyconducted in May showed that 74 percent ofU.S. residents agree that: When a person has a disease that cannot be cureddoctors should be allowed by law to end the patients life by some painless means if the patient and his or her family request it? Majority support included every demographic group measured in the survey: gender, ethnicity, age, education, and political party affiliation (if any), ranging from conservatives to liberals.

While there are no national polls of people with disabilities on this issue, Purple Insights conducted surveys in 2013 and 2014 showing that voters with disabilities inConnecticut,Massachusetts, andNew Jerseysupported medical aid in dying by 63 to 74 percent, very similar to the support level of voters overall in those states of 62 to 71 percent. Finally, a 2018Medscape surveyshowed that 58 percent of doctors nationwide saidthat physician-assisted dying should be made legal for terminally ill patients.

Medical aid in dying has been authorized in Washington, D.C., and nine states, starting more than two decades ago with Oregon in 1997, without one documented case of misuse.

In fact,Disability Rights Oregons (DRO)Executive Director confirmed in a letter last year that:

DRO has never to my knowledge received a complaint that a person with disabilities was coerced or being coerced to make use of the [Oregon Death with Dignity] Act.

In addition, according to a 2007Journal of Medical Ethicsreportabout this Oregon law:

Rates of assisted dying in Oregon...showed no evidence of heightened risk for the elderly, women, the uninsured...people with low educational status, the poor, the physically disabled or chronically ill, minors, people with psychiatric illnesses including depression, or racial or ethnic minorities, compared with background populations.

The purpose of the American Disabilities Act: is to make sure that people with disabilities have the same rights and opportunities as everyone else, according to theAmerican Disabilities Act National Network. Medical aid-in-dying legislation honors this historic laws mission, by providing people with disabilities the same autonomy and freedom as everyone else to make our own healthcare decisions at lifes inevitable end.

While medical science can seemingly work miracles, we need to remember that the thing most people want at the end of life is NOT one more try at immortality, but rather a peaceful death surrounded by loved ones.

------------------

Mary Applegate, MD, MPH is a clinical professor at the University of Albany School of Public Health.

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People With Disabilities Want Same Peaceful Dying Option as Anyone Else - Thirty years ago this month (July 1990) President George H.W. Bush signed a...

From humble beginnings as a New Zealand short film back in 2005, vampiric mockumentary What We Do In The Shadows has risen to become an unlikely multimedia franchise.

Not only has Taika Waititi and Jemaine Clement's story of the everyday trials and tribulations of the suburban undead spawned a cult favourite movie, but also a pair of TV shows (the other being oddball Kiwi cop show Wellington Paranormal). With consistent rumours of a further movie sequel or spinoff, the WWDITS cinematic universe is thriving like a Nosferatu newly feasting on virgin's blood.

And why shouldn't it when the New York-set TV show remains one of the most inventively funny things on the small screen? Coming on like an unholy mashup of Being Human, Flight Of The Concords, and Peep Show, the misadventures of ineffectual bloodsuckers Nandor, Laszlo and Nadja are full of amusing failures to navigate the complexities of the modern world; not to mention how the petty tensions of house sharing are hugely exacerbated by immortality.

Whether it's an age-old blood feud or just a night out on the town, our three night stalking heroes (plus energy vampire Colin Robinson and human familiar Guillermo) never fail to make a bizarre mess of things in unpredictably amusing ways.

With their show already picked up for a third season, let's take a look back at which episodes from the first two have already staked a claim for classic status.

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What We Do In The Shadows - 10 Best Episodes So Far - WhatCulture

The Hulk may struggle to defeat Thanos in a fistfight, but when he met his brother Starfox, the former Avenger almost killed him with one blow.

Since 1962, The Incredible Hulk has been a hero known for committing daring feats of strength and overcoming massive adversity. But nearly killing the younger brother of Thanos? That's a feat worthy of specific attention in Hulk's long, exemplified superhero career.

Bill Mantlo and Sal Buscema's The Incredible Hulk #300 was a crossover issue which saw Hulk, no longer coexisting with Bruce Banner, go up against every Earthbound Marvel superheroin New York City. That includes bouts with Spider-Man (wearing the symbiote), Doctor Strange, Human Torch, S.H.I.E.L.D., Heroes for Hire, and even Hulk's former colleagues The Avengers. But one particular Avenger who has the unfortunate turn of running into the green goliath is the brother of the Mad Titan Thanos, Eros a.k.a. Starfox. And he would never forget it.

Related: How Powerful The Hulk Really Is In Each MCU Movie

For those who may not know, Starfox and his brother Thanos are members of the Eternals race, with Eros being born the ideal Eternal in every way... while Thanos was created deformed and much more in line with the monstrous Deviant counter race. Though Starfox comes with the standard skill set of an Eternal such as super strength, super speed, flight, teleportation, and immortality, Eros' main asset is his pleasure stimulation technique. The technique allows Eros to make other beings feel pleasure by stimulating the brain's pleasure centers of those within about 25 feet of him, which backfires on Eros when the Eternal uses the power on the insusceptible Hulk, who responds by smashing Starfox into the arms of fellow Avenger Thor, nearly taking the brother of Thanos off the table completely.

Though Starfox's Eternal lineage ultimately saves his life in the end, the Hulk once more truly shows where his strength lies by defeating Starfox with relative ease. Without Banner anchoring the beast within, the Hulk is allowed to brawl with the Titan born hero without holding back. Similar to Spider-Man, who constantly holds back on his opponents for fear of potentially killing them, the Hulk's connection to Bruce Banner throughout the years somewhat restrains the raw potential of Hulk's power.

There are forces in the Marvel Universe that can easily match the power of The Incredible Hulk, but there is not a force that the Hulk cannot match in his own way. As far as opponents go, Hulk has faced several superheroes and aliens but defeating a royal Eternal as swiftly as he did Starfox is an impressive feat. While Thanos would prove much more of a worthy threat, the Hulk can at least mark off one Eternal as a win.

Next: Thanos vs Hulk: Who Would Win (in The Comics)?

Spider-Man Can Beat Up Superman (On ONE Condition)

Hello world, enter Bryce Morris. Bryce is currently a college sophomore attending Rowan University with experience in writing for an online blog as well as an advertising agency. One day in the not too distant future, Bryce aspires to become a comic book writer. Bryce has always had his sights set on writing and in his down time can be found either watching a Marvel movie, reading a Marvel comic, or writing for Screen Rant... either or is acceptable.

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Hulk Almost Killed Thanos' Brother With A SINGLE Punch - Screen Rant

True Blood was one of those shows that seemed to do the impossible: it did something new with the idea of the vampire. With its unique blend of genres, it managed to create a show that was, for its first few seasons, eminently watchable, even for those who didnt like vampires and stories about them. While it eventually lost control of its own narrative-wandering in all sorts of bizarre directions before its overdue finale-theres no question that the series still managed to produce some of the most fascinating characters on television.

RELATED:True Blood: 5 Best & 5 Worst Episodes, Ranked (According To IMDb)

And, looking at them through the lens of the zodiac allows for a more sophisticated appreciation of these individuals and their strange characteristics.

Played with inimitable flair by Denis OHare, Russell was a powerful vampire king who also developed a taste for fairy blood. Though he only appeared in two seasons of the show, he still managed to capture the imaginations of many fans, who responded to the ways in which he seemed to wield power with an effortlessness that was as beguiling as it was dangerous.

Unfortunately, his hard headed ways ended up getting him staked by none other than his old nemesis Eric.

For most of the series, Bill was the main character Sookies abiding love interest (for both better and worse). A Civil War soldier who was turned into a vampire against his wishes, he has a deeply conflicted relationship with his own immortality and with his need to feed on blood to survive.

RELATED:The Vampire Diaries: The Best Episode of Each Season, According To IMDb

Hes also notoriously stubborn, and this resulted in quite a few spats between him and Sookie (as well as with his own fellow vampires, including Eric).

Tara is a bit of a wild child. Its not really hard to see why, really, particularly since he relationship with her mother is, to put it mildly, deeply antagonistic.

Time and again as the series progressed she found herself caught up in forces that she couldnt control, and yet she still seemed to have a pathological desire to get mixed up with exactly the wrong sort of people. Like so many Geminis, she just couldnt seem to get her life in control.

Sooke Stackhouse is, at the beginning of the series, the main character around whom all of the action revolves. She soon makes it clear that, like many a Cancer before her, shes very concerned about her own feelings, and this often leads her to do and say things that are hurtful (and sometimes downright deadly) to the people that surround her.

Eventually she became one of those characters who audiences loved to hate, precisely because she seemed to only care about her own feelings.

Jason, Sookies brother, is about as different from her as it is possible to be. With his seemingly insatiable sex drive, Jason was always getting involved with some woman or other, usually resulting in all sorts of trouble for him (and for them).

Like any other Leo, however, he also had something irrepressibly charming and charismatic about him, which made it impossible for anyone, either in the audience or in the series, to really hate him or resent him for his actions.

With his cold demeanor, icy eyes, and blonde hair (all stemming from his Nordic ancestry),Eric is the quintessential Virgo.

Its not that he doesnt have feelings or emotions; its that, for the most part, he manages to keep them under a tight leash, only releasing them when he sees some advantage to do so. Its not hard to see why hes a compelling love interest for Sookie, since that cold Virgo exterior gives him all of the appeal of the unknowable.

One of the series ongoing conceits was Sookies ability to draw very handsome men to her, despite the fact that she almost always ended up breaking their hearts. No one suffered from this more than Alcide, the werewolf that pretty firmly gave his love to Sookie.

RELATED:True Blood: 5 Couples That Are Perfect Together (& 5 That Make No Sense)

As a Libra, he really does strive for balance in his life, both between his human and wolf sides and in his relationships with the various people in his life, including and especially Sookie.

Though she was originally just a side character in service to Eric Northman, it quickly became clear that Pam had that extra something that meant she was fated to be a fan favorite.

Part of it, no doubt, stems from the fact that she has some hard edges that no amount of immortality has been able to smooth away. Its also the fact that she seems to take a delight in being a vampire and, in true Scorpio fashion, bending humans to her will.

In the zodiac, the Sagittarius is known for being a bit of an unstable sign. Theyre not bad people, exactly, but they do sometimes make themselves hard to live with because of their penchant to make bad decisions.

This is a spot-on description of Jessica, the young woman that Bill is compelled to make into a vampire. Throughout her time in the series, Jessica just couldnt seem to decide what it was that she wanted from her immortal life.

Though she only appears in the first season, Adele, Sookies grandmother, casts a pretty long shadow over the series.

Alone among the many characters that appear, she seems to actually have a good head on her shoulders, and shes often been a source of stability for Sookie, both in childhood and in adulthood. Even after her death, Sookie looks back at the time that they spent together and appreciates all of the support that her grandmother gave her.

Lafayette was another of those characters that seemed fated to be a fan favorite, despite the fact that his character actually dies in the first novel that the series is based off of.

Its hard not to love Lafayette, with his signature sass and his willingness to speak truth to anyone who asks it (and even those who dont). Like most of those who are born under the sign of Aquarius, he does have a tendency to be a bit mystical as well.

Sam Merlotte is one of those characters who just cant seem to make a decision that isnt bad. Like every Pisces, he insists on seeing the world as he wants it to be rather than as it is, and this leads him to do some pretty terrible things.

Whats more, he seems to steadfastly refuse to accept the fact that, sometimes, its best to take the logical step rather than the one based on emotion.

NEXT:True Blood Characters Sorted Into Their Hogwarts Houses

Next Scooby-Doo: Every TV Series (In Chronological Order)

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Which True Blood Character Are You Based On Your Zodiac? - Screen Rant

Olivia de Havilland, an actress who gained movie immortality in Gone With the Wind, then built an illustrious film career, punctuated by a successful fight to loosen the studios grip on contract actors, died on Sunday at her home in Paris. She was 104 and one of the last surviving stars of Hollywoods fabled Golden Age.

Her death was confirmed by her publicist Lisa Goldberg.

Ms. de Havilland was both a classic Hollywood beauty and an honored screen actress whose very name and bearing suggested membership in a kind of aristocracy of moviedom. Though she was typecast early in her career as the demure ingnue, she went on to earn meatier roles that led to five Academy Award nominations, two of which brought her the Oscar, for To Each His Own (1946) and The Heiress (1949).

Those roles came to her in no small part because of the resolve she showed when she stood up to the studios and won a battle that helped push Hollywood into the modern era, surprising the movie moguls, who may not have expected such steel in an actress so softly attractive and, at 5-foot-3, so unintimidatingly petite.

She had shown similar grit a decade earlier, in her breakthrough role, when she held her own against her formidable co-stars Clark Gable, Vivien Leigh and Leslie Howard in Gone With the Wind.

The 1939 Civil War epic was briefly pulled from the HBO Max streaming service last month and returned with an introduction saying that the film presents the Georgia plantation at its center as a world of grace and beauty, without acknowledging the brutalities of the system of chattel slavery upon which this world is based.

As Melanie Hamilton Wilkes, the fiance and then wife of Mr. Howards Ashley Wilkes, she brought intelligence and grace to her portrait of a woman whose shy, forgiving, almost too kindly nature stood in sharp contrast to the often venomous jealousy of her high-spirited sister-in-law, Scarlett OHara (Ms. Leigh).

Ms. de Havillands performance led to an Oscar nomination as best supporting actress, though the award went to another member of the cast, Hattie McDaniel, who played Mammy, Scarletts housekeeper. (Ms. Leigh won in the best-actress category.)

Ms. de Havilland was under contract to Warner Bros. when the films original director, George Cukor, working for MGM, invited her to audition for the role of Melanie. (He was later replaced by Victor Fleming.) After getting the part, she had to plead with her studio boss, Jack Warner, to lend her to the MGM production, which was being overseen by David O. Selznick.

By then she had established herself at Warner as a familiar heroine in some 20 films and had begun a long collaboration with the prolific director Michael Curtiz, encompassing nine films. Most notable was a string of action features and costume dramas opposite the dashing Errol Flynn, among them Captain Blood (1935), The Charge of the Light Brigade (1936) and The Adventures of Robin Hood (1938), in which she played Maid Marian.

Ms. de Havilland and Flynn were such a popular onscreen couple that rumors flew of an on-set romance, fueled in part by Flynns reputation for bedding his co-stars and reports that he was infatuated with her. By all accounts there was no truth to the whisperings of an affair, though some years later Ms. de Havilland admitted to having had a great crush on Flynn and suggested that circumstances at the time he was married when they met stood in the way of a romance.

So naughty and so charming, she said of him.

Warner had signed Ms. de Havilland to a seven-year contract in 1935 on the strength of her performance that year as Hermia, the defiant daughter who resists an arranged marriage, in Max Reinhardts film adaptation of A Midsummer Nights Dream. (The year before, she had made her professional stage acting debut in the same role in a Hollywood Bowl production by Reinhardt.)

After her success in Gone With the Wind, Ms. de Havilland returned to Warner with the expectation of more challenging roles. For the most part, they did not materialize.

One exception was Hold Back the Dawn (1941), in which she played an American schoolteacher who is seduced in Mexico by a wily European exile (Charles Boyer). Her performance earned her another Oscar nomination, but this time she lost to her sister, Joan Fontaine, who won for Suspicion. The two were rarely on speaking terms after that. (They are the only sisters to win best-actress Academy Awards, and their sibling rivalry was called the fiercest in Hollywood history.)

The formula roles kept coming. When Ms. de Havilland complained, she was told that she had been hired because she photographed well and that she wasnt required to act.

The studio had misread her determination. She began to refuse roles she considered inferior. Warner retaliated by suspending her several times, for a total of six months, and, after her contract expired, insisting that because of the suspensions she was still the studios property for six more months.

Ms. de Havilland sued. The case dragged on for a year and a half but David finally beat Goliath when the California Supreme Court upheld a lower-court ruling in her favor in 1945. What became known as the de Havilland decision established that a studio could not arbitrarily extend the duration of an actors contract.

When she resumed her career, Ms. de Havilland appeared in four films in rapid succession, all released in 1946. In one, The Dark Mirror, she played twins, one good and one evil. In her Oscar-winning performance in To Each His Own, she was an unwed mother who must give up her infant son when his father, her lover, a World War I flying ace, is killed in action.

Ms. de Havilland soon took on one of her most demanding roles, that of a young bride who becomes mentally ill and is sent to an institution, in The Snake Pit (1948). The film, directed by Anatol Litvak, was an unflinching study of mental illness and the treatments available then, from narcotics to electroshock. Ms. de Havilland was nominated for a best-actress Oscar but did not win.

She captured her second Oscar the next year with The Heiress, directed by William Wyler and adapted by Ruth and Augustus Goetz from their Broadway play based on Henry Jamess Washington Square. Ms. de Havilland presented an affecting portrait of a repressed, spinsterish young woman dominated by her rigidly protective father (Ralph Richardson).

It was one of Ms. de Havillands favorite roles. The films I loved, she said in 1964, the great loves, are The Snake Pit, The Heiress and, of course, Gone With the Wind.

But she did not love Hollywood, and in the 1950s she startled the town when she abandoned it to live in Paris with a new husband, though she kept her American citizenship.

For Olivia, William Stadiem wrote in a profile of her in Vanity Fair magazine in 2016, there was a whiff of decay and disappointment about Hollywood.

Olivia Mary de Havilland was born on July 1, 1916, to British parents in Tokyo, where her father, Walter, a cousin of the aviation pioneer Sir Geoffrey de Havilland, ran a firm of patent lawyers, though he was not a lawyer himself. In 1919 her mother, the former Lillian Ruse, an elocution teacher, moved with Olivia and Joan, her younger sister by 15 months, to Saratoga, Calif., near San Francisco. The de Havillands divorced and Lillian married George M. Fontaine, a department store executive, whose surname Joan later took as her stage name.

Ms. de Havilland was married twice. Both marriages ended in divorce. The first, in 1946, was to Marcus Aurelius Goodrich, a Texas-born novelist, screenwriter and journalist; they had a son, Benjamin, and divorced in 1952. She married Pierre Galante, the author of military histories and at one point editor of the magazine Paris Match, in 1955 after the couple met in France. They moved to Paris, had a daughter, Gisele, and divorced in 1979. Ms. de Havillands son died of Hodgkins disease in 1991.

Before she was married, Ms. de Havilland had romantic relationships with James Stewart, Howard Hughes and the director John Huston, with whom she reunited for a time after her first divorce. By her account she also turned away a smitten young John F. Kennedy, who was visiting Hollywood after his PT-boat service in World War II.

She is survived by her daughter, Giselle Galante Chulack. Joan Fontaine died in 2013 at 96.

Though she had decamped to Paris, Ms. de Havilland remained a creature of Hollywood for most of her career. But she did try her hand at theater again, making her Broadway debut in 1951, to good reviews, as Juliet in a short-lived production of Romeo and Juliet.

She returned to Broadway in 1952 for another brief run in Shaws Candida and was last seen there in 1962, when she starred with Henry Fonda in A Gift of Time, adapted by Garson Kanin from Lael Tucker Wertenbakers book Death of a Man, about the last days of the authors husband, Charles, who died of cancer.

The movies kept calling, however. In 1952 she starred in My Cousin Rachel, based on the best-selling novel by Daphne du Maurier. She played the bride of an older man, and Richard Burton, in his Hollywood debut, played the son who thinks his attractive new stepmother may be capable of murder.

By the time she traveled to Italy to film The Light in the Piazza (1962), in which she played the protective mother of a beautiful but mentally impaired young woman (Yvette Mimieux), Ms. de Havilland had appeared in some 40 movies and was living in semiretirement in Paris. She also published a book in 1962, a collection of lighthearted observations about life in France titled Every Frenchman Has One.

Ms. de Havilland made only a handful of films after that. She was in her mid-40s by then, receiving fewer acting offers and finding many scripts too prurient for her tastes.

One she liked, however, was Hush Hush, Sweet Charlotte (1964), which gave her the opportunity to co-star with Bette Davis, another Hollywood legend nearing the end of her career.

The film, a weaker echo of the similarly gothic Bette Davis-Joan Crawford melodrama, What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, tells the tale of an increasingly demented woman (Ms. Davis) and a scheming relative who comes to live with her (Ms. de Havilland, who replaced Ms. Crawford after filming began).

From the mid-60s onward, Ms. de Havillands acting was largely confined to sporadic roles in television series like The Love Boat; television movies like The Royal Romance of Charles and Diana (1982), in which she played the Queen Mother; and mini-series like Roots: The Next Generation (1979). Her work in the 1986 NBC mini-series Anastasia: The Mystery of Anna, in which she played a Russian empress, brought her a Golden Globe Award and an Emmy nomination.

In 1965 she became the first woman to head the jury at the Cannes Film Festival.

She returned to feature films only occasionally, among them the hugely successful 1977 disaster movie Airport 77, in which she joined a ensemble cast of veteran actors. Her last Hollywood film was The Fifth Musketeer (1979), in which she played the mother of Louis XIV (Beau Bridges).

But even when she was well into her 80s, she had not entirely given up the idea of returning to the spotlight. She was a presenter at the Academy Awards in 2003. She narrated I Remember Better When I Paint, a 2009 documentary about the positive impact of art therapy on people with Alzheimers disease.

In Paris, Ms. de Havilland had lived in a five-story townhouse, built around 1880, since 1958 (in recent years next door to the former French president Valry Giscard dEstaing), all the while never missing Hollywood, she said.

I loved being around real buildings, real castles, real churches not ones made of canvas, she told Vanity Fair.

She maintained an active lifestyle there into her second century, defying her advancing years.

Olivia doesnt seem 99, Mr. Stadiem wrote in his 2016 Vanity Fair profile. Her face is unlined, her eyes sparkling, her fabled contralto soaring (only Orson Welles had an equally imposing instrument), her memory photographic. She could easily pass for someone decades younger.

She was in the news and in court once again in 2018, when she sued the FX network and Ryan Murphy Productions over her portrayal by Catherine Zeta-Jones in the mini-series Feud: Bette and Joan, about the rivalry between Davis and Crawford.

She maintained that her portrayal constituted unauthorized use of her name and likeness and showed her in a false light as a hypocrite with a public image of being a lady and a private one as a vulgarity-using gossip. A California appellate court dismissed the suit, ruling that the portrayal was not highly offensive to a reasonable person as a matter of law.

Ms. de Havillands readings of scripture on Christmas and Easter at the American Cathedral, on the Avenue George V, became annual events in Paris. In 2010, Nicolas Sarkozy, then the president of France, awarded her the Lgion dHonneur. And her association with a distant era of Hollywood glamour made her a living legend in her adopted city.

In 1999 she was honored with a party in Paris to celebrate the 60th anniversary of Gone With the Wind. At one point, one of the hosts recalled, with a glass in hand, she toasted the film and its leading actors, reminding the room that she was the last one still standing.

Let us raise a mint julep to our stars, she proclaimed, on that great veranda in the sky!

Allyson Waller contributed reporting.

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Olivia de Havilland, a Star of Gone With the Wind, Dies at 104 - The New York Times

A person named James was pronounced clinically dead following complications during surgery, before being resuscitated. However, while he was briefly dead, James believes he was offered a glimpse of the afterlife, and claimed it to be the most peaceful yet emotional time he has ever experienced. Writing on the Near Death Experience Research Foundation (NDERF), James said: The first thing I remember was seeing a huge, round, and colourful opening or pathway. At the end of the pathway was a white church and other small white buildings.

The sky was blue. I no longer felt anger, sadness, or regret. I also had a strange feeling that I cant explain. I dont know what love is, but I guess that this feeling ws tht someone loved me nd forgve me. I bdly wnted to sty.

The emotions were so strong. There were four mle figures on my left side. They were dressed in long grey overcots. They didnt hve fces s we know them. Rther, their fces were glowing with strong, bright light shining from their fce.

We didnt hve verbl communiction. We communicted through emotionl feelings. Three other figures ppered on my right side. They looked like the other figures with the sme colour cots nd fces of bright light. They cme towrds me in non-thretening wy.

Then I woke up. The doctor told me wht hppened, but I didnt cre becuse I wnted to go bck there.

Before, I didnt believe in life fter deth. But now, I m confused. This ws not hllucintion becuse it ws so rel. I cn never forget the feelings, wrmness, nd the knowledge tht I ws loved.

I did not wnt to tlk to nyone bout this, but I mde n ppointment to spek to priest.

I m not frid of deth now.

Some reserchers, however, hve sid these visions re norml phenomenon nd not necessrily sign of n fterlife.

Dr Sm Prni, director of criticl cre nd resuscittion reserch t NYU Lngone School of Medicine in New York City, told n Oz Tlk: People describe senstion of bright, wrm, welcoming light tht drws people towrds it.

They describe senstion of experiencing their decesed reltives, lmost s if they hve come to welcome them.

They often sy tht they didnt wnt to come bck in mny cses, it is so comfortble nd it is like mgnet tht drws them tht they dont wnt to come bck.

A lot of people describe senstion of seprting from themselves nd wtching doctors nd nurses working on them.

Dr Prni sid there re scientific explntions for the rection, nd sys seeing people is not evidence of the fterlife, but more likely the brin just scnning itself s survivl technique.

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Life after fatality: Male's shock experience of immortality 'I terribly wanted to remain' - Entertainment Overdose

A friend recently asked me where I was from. I said, New Hampshire. He seemed puzzled, so I told him what that meant.

I said, the people of New Hampshire are tough but kind, frugal but generous, honest, hard-working, and dedicated to our nation, and you better love the Patriots, Bruins, Red Sox, and Celtics or find another place to have a beer. He laughed and said I sounded proud. I said I am.

Four years after I graduated from Manchester West in the patriotic class of 1976, I joined the Air Force. Over the next 29 years, I was honored to serve with the greatest soldiers, sailors, airmen, Marines, and Coast Guardsmen the world has ever seen, living in 13 states and with duty in 75 countries. I retired as a brigadier general, grateful for every day I was privileged to serve my nation.

My service with so many great Americans in uniform affirmed what I learned growing up in New Hampshire. That character, based on integrity, human decency, physical and moral courage, and hard work is the foundation of sustained servant leadership. It is what our Constitution demands of our elected leaders, and it is what you and your children deserve.

The values that are found from Coos to Rockingham and from Grafton to Strafford and all counties in between, are the values that make New Hampshire citizens so similar to those who have served, fought, and died in uniform for our freedom. These values are the essence of character, and they have guided American servicemen and servicewomen in war and peace, around the world for decades.

Of values and character, our own native son, Daniel Webster said, What a man does for others, not what they do for him, gives him immortality. President Teddy Roosevelt said, Character is, in the long run, the decisive factor in the life of individuals and of nations alike. Vice President Joe Biden counseled, The American presidency is an office of immense power. That is why character matters. And President Eisenhower said, A people that values its privileges above its principles soon loses both.

Today, we are confronted with a growing gap between our values and the values of our elected leaders. For example, we value the American flag not as a prop or as a possession to be hugged; we value it as the symbol of our freedom. We all know people who have buried friends under that draped flag. I have done that. The people of New Hampshire understand what that means.

Likewise, the American people do not want to fall in love with a dictator who threatens our nation. The men and women I served with would never abandon Kurdish partners on battlefields, show disinterest in the possible release of ISIS prisoners into the heart of our European allies, or ignore intelligence that the Russians were paying bounties to Taliban fighters who kill our servicemen and servicewomen. These bounties may have targeted the moms, dads, brothers, sisters, and children of New Hampshire, and no one who shares New Hampshire values would ever let that stand.

I understand the people of New Hampshire want results. Some say that is what we are getting today. But are we really? Did Mexico pay for the wall or did you? Are North Korea, Iran, or Syria more stable? Is your health care fixed? Is the opioid crisis resolved? Are you and your neighbors really being led through this pandemic, or abandoned? To quote President Ronald Reagan, Are you better off than you were four years ago?

I hope every American citizen exercises his or her right to vote. Many sons and daughters of New Hampshire have shed blood for that right. I also hope that when that vote is cast, it is done with our values in mind. We are tough but kind, frugal but generous, honest, hard-working, and dedicated to our nation. That is why I will forever be proud to be from New Hampshire.

(Dan Woodward is a retired brigadier general in the United States Air Force. He grew up in New Hampshire.)

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My Turn: The New Hampshire qualities a president must have - Concord Monitor

(Ed. Note: With high school sports currently on hiatus, please join me in a look back at some of the finest teams our coverage area has produced this century. To help us get through the summer, each week, Ill present the top 10 teams from a different sportfour honorable mentions, then our Super Six, These rankings are put together with help from coaches and others, including a Twitter poll each week at twitter.com/foresports, but the final decision is mine. This week its field hockey. Volleyball is on deck)

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For years, while the likes of Skowhegan and York have stolen the field hockey headlines state-wide, there have been plenty of memorable moments produced by local squads, not to mention championships won.

The quality of play has long been excellent and there have been far more than 10 transcendent teams over the past two decades, but this list has room for only 10 and while winnowing it down proved to be a challenging task, heres one writers stab at the finest squads weve seen over the past 20 years:

Greely Rangers, 14-4, 2002 Western Class B champion

The Rangers shocked the world in 2001, winning a regional championship for the first time before losing on penalty corners to Winslow in the state final. In 2002, Greely proved that was no fluke, fielding an even better team which again got to the state final, only to run into the same team and suffer another painful loss. The Rangers featured Miss Maine Field Hockey finalist and Western Maine Conference Class B Player of the Year Amanda Chase, All-State selection Hayly Ross, league all-star Gessy LePage (now Greelys coach), top scorer Sara Dimick and a plethora of other top multi-sport athletes who knew how to have fun, as well as get serious and win games.

Greely roared out of the gate with wins in its first five games, outscoring the opposition, 17-2, in the process. After sandwiching one-goal losses to Cape Elizabeth and Gorham around a 4-0 win over Falmouth, the Rangers were victorious five more times, including an overtime win at Yarmouth, before falling at home to York in the final, 2-1, in double-overtime. As the top seed for the Western B tournament, Greely then avenged two of its losses en route to the regional title.

In the quarterfinals, the Rangers blanked Yarmouth, 2-0, behind goals from Chase and Maryette Stuart. Cape Elizabeth was next in the semifinals and Greely handled the Capers with surprising ease, 6-0, as Dimick scored twice, Julia Chase, Brigitte Demers, Lindsey McKay and Stuart each had one goal and Abby Chapman added two assists. Then, as now, York found its way to the regional final and more than 60 minutes were needed for the Rangers to advance. The Wildcats stunned the partisan Greely crowd with a goal 32 seconds in, but Chapman tied the score late in the first half. Neither team scored in the second half and the contest went to overtime, where Julia Chase set up Dimick for the winning goal and a 2-1 victory which sent the Rangers back to the state final. This time, only 60 minutes would be needed, but again, Winslow left Greely frustrated and heartbroken. The game would be decided on a Black Raiders penalty stroke early in the second half and despite nine shots on goal, the Rangers couldnt finish in an agonizing 1-0 loss. Greelys championship dream would have to wait for another year. Just one more year as it turned out.

Coach Robyn Thayer: We played well as a team. Our ultimate goal was to get to the state final. Last year was a lot easier for us. We just went out and played and when we won, that was great. This year, it was more like we thought about the expectations on us and halfway through the season, I think we had a breakdown. The kids had been focused very much on the win because they thought they needed to focus on the win, instead of how they were playing. After we lost a couple, we decided we had to focus more on playing the best we could possibly play and the wins would come.

Deering Rams, 16-2, 2003 Western Class A champion

After consecutive losses in the regional final, the Rams, in the midst of a phenomenally successful school year for the Deering athletic program, broke through and reached the state game for the only time. The Rams, paced by All-State selections Bronwyn Potthoff and Casey Smith, the teams lone returning starter, Sarah White, league all-stars Lauren Cash and Becky Nickerson, and goalie Megan Urban, embarked on a run that surprised almost everyone, stumbled just twice, in the opener and state final, and set a benchmark for the program which hasnt been matched.

Deering lost, 2-1, to Westbrook in the opener, then rattled off 13 straight wins, including several in close games. In the regular season finale, Smith scored her 15th goal of the season in the second overtime for a 2-1 victory over South Portland. The Rams earned the top seed for the Western A playoffs, then fought off three upset bids to reach the big stage for the first time.

In the quarterfinals, unheralded Portland gave Deering fits, taking the Rams to overtime, but Whites second goal of the game, on a penalty stroke, allowed Deering to advance, 2-1. In the semifinals, preseason favorite Massabesic battled the Rams for 60 minutes, but Potthoffs goal proved to be the difference in a 1-0 victory. That sent Deering to the regional final for the third straight season and after losing to Sanford and Edward Little the two previous years, the third time proved to be the charm against South Portland. White scored the lone goal, from Smith, and the Rams defense did the rest in a 1-0 victory, Deerings 16th in succession. The last obstacle for the Rams, Skowhegan (some things never change), proved to be insurmountable, as Deering went down to a 5-0 defeat. The Rams had finally met their match, but what a run it was.

Coach Andrew Gordon: This is something weve been waiting for for a long time. Maybe we learned some lessons from the past. We know what its like to lose (the regional final). I really wanted (the players) to experience winning one. Its a reward and they earned it. This was a lot more than we hoped to accomplish at the beginning of the season. I think we learned a lot from this experience. This is not something I anticipated from this team, winning 16 in a row. Im very proud of what they have done.

North Yarmouth Academy Panthers, 16-2, 2008 Class C state champion

The Panthers captured their first championship in over a decade in memorable fashion, on an overtime goal in the state final. NYA had reached the regional final the year before, but would have no peer in 2008. The Panthers featured All-State selections Nicole Fuller and Lucy Gerrity, fabulous freshmen Kylie Dalbec and Katherine Millett, big-game goalie Hayley Bright, as well as a player, Frances Leslie, who would score one of the biggest goals in program history.

NYA started with wins over Poland, Waynflete and Old Orchard Beach, then its offense went cold in back-to-back 1-0 setbacks to Sacopee Valley and St. Doms. The Panthers would close the season on a 13-game win streak, however, and won their final nine regular season contests by a composite 38-1 margin, along the way avenging their losses to Sacopee Valley and St. Doms. NYA finished third in Western Class C and would embark on a thrilling title run which featured three one-goal contests.

In the quarterfinals, the Panthers had their only easy playoff win, 6-0, over Lisbon, as Fuller and Millett each scored three goals. Livermore Falls, which upset St. Doms in its quarterfinal, allowing NYA to host in the semifinals, proved to be a challenge, but the Panthers eked out a 1-0 victory on Fullers goal (assisted by Leslie). NYA won by a 1-0 score again in the regional final, this time beating Jay, which had upset top-ranked Telstar to again give the Panthers an unexpected home game, as Millett scored in the final minute of regulation and Bright turned aside several golden opportunities. NYA then met Dexter in the state final, which proved to be another thriller which needed more than 60 minutes to complete. The Panthers took a 1-0 lead on a Dalbec goal early in the second half, but Dexter tied it and the game went to overtime. There, Leslie broke free, went one-on-one with the goalie and put the ball into the cage, giving NYA a 2-1 victory and setting off a wild celebration. A mini-dynasty (three state titles in a four-year span) had begun.

Coach Julia Littlefield: This is the most exciting day of my life. We played really, really well together and we deserve it. Its improbable because we had such a young team. We came this far and not many NYA field hockey teams have. We had that attitude. Ive been coaching for 25 years and this is the least nervous team Ive ever had. They just wanted it right from the bus.

Cheverus Stags, 13-5, 2010 Western Class A champion

It took the Stags until the postseason to truly hit their stride, but once they did, they embarked on a magical run to the state final, one that was documented by a television show, Varsity. Cheverus, which made a surprise trip to the 2009 regional final before losing to eventual state champion Scarborough, featured All-State players Emily Sawchuck and Sarah LaQuerre, as well as league all-stars Gabi Cardona and Taylor Witham, and made for appointment TV by seasons end.

The Stags opened with five straight wins, then was upset by South Portland. After two more victories, Cheverus was blanked by Gorham. The Stags then downed Marshwood and McAuley before apparently being put in their place by Scarborough, 6-1. Cheverus bounced back to beat Portland, then stumbled into the playoffs after a loss to Thornton Academy. Despite being 10-4 and ranked fourth, the Stags proved to be the best team in Western Class A when all was said and done after a dizzying postseason run.

In the quarterfinals, Cheverus held off Kennebunk, 3-2, as Cardona scored early, Brooke Flaherty tied the game just before halftime and LaQuerre won it with 17:18 to go in regulation. That sent the Stags to top-ranked Scarborough for what most expected would be their doom, but just 15 days after losing by five goals at the Red Storm, Cheverus enjoyed the programs biggest win to date, shocking Scarborough, 2-1, as Sawchuck scored midway through the first half and after the Red Storm pulled even, Flaherty won it with a goal with 3:33 to play. The Stags returned to Scarborough for the regional final versus Bonny Eagle and this time, there would be no down-to-the-wire heroics, as Sawchuck cemented her status as an all-time great with four goals and LaQuerre struck as well in a decisive 5-2 victory. Cheverus was a decisive underdog in the state game versus Skowhegan and this time couldnt pull the upset, losing, 3-0. The Stags didnt take the final step, but the only regional champion in program history certainly stole headlines.

Coach Amy McMullin: It was a great, fun season. Im really proud of the girls. They played their hearts out. I couldnt be more proud. We exceeded all expectations. We completely jelled in the playoffs and played well. We had a lot of ups and downs, but thats the story of high school athletics. We didnt want an undefeated season. We completely regrouped coming into playoffs. It shows it really is a team game.

6) North Yarmouth Academy Panthers, 17-1, 2010 Class C state champion

The second of three NYA champions in a four-year span was bound and determined to get back to the pinnacle after having its undefeated season end with a state game loss to Dexter in 2009. Thanks in part to the effort of All-State talent Katherine Millett, as well as 2008 heroes Kylie Dalbec and Frances Leslie and league all-stars Megan Fortier and Renee Lamoureau, the Panthers scored in double figures in seven different contests, wound up nearly perfect and this time, capped the season with the big prize, but only after a grueling state final.

NYA opened with 10-1 wins over Freeport and Traip Academy. After holding off highly touted Sacopee Valley, 3-1, the Panthers put up 11 goals in a blanking of Poland, then shut out Old Orchard Beach, 6-0. NYAs 28-game regular season win streak finally came to a close with a 2-1 loss to Class B powerhouse York, but the Panthers wouldnt stumble again and they closed the year on an eight-game streak, outscoring the opposition, 56-3, to wind up 13-1 and third in Western Class C. The road to the championship wasnt easy, but NYA would show its grit and heart as it wound up atop the heap.

In the quarterfinals, the Panthers had one final offensive explosion, blanking Waynflete, 10-0, as Fortier rattled the cage five times and Millett added four goals. The going then got tough, as NYA had to go to Livermore Falls and got taken into overtime before surviving and advancing, 1-0, on Milletts rebound goal. The regional final saw the Panthers battle Telstar. Millett set up Fortier for an early goal, but the Rebels tied the game on a penalty corner after time expired in the first half. Millett then scored twice in the second half and that proved to be just enough as NYA held on for a 3-2 victory.

This time around, it wasnt Dexter standing in the way in the state game, it would be a Foxcroft Academy squad which was every bit the Panthers equal. Neither team scored in 60 minutes of regulation or in two eight-minute overtime sessions. The contest would be decided on penalty corners and it appeared NYA had the title when Dalbec scored, but the Ponies answered and it was on to another set. This time, Fortier scored and the Panthers defense and goalie Mariah Farrell slammed the door on Foxcroft Academys chance giving NYA the championship. It would prove to be coach Julia Sterlings final game as coach. She gave way to assistant Tracy Quimby, who led the Panthers to one more crown in 2011.

Coach Julia Sterling: Its so exciting. It sure wasnt easy. Weve worked hard from beginning to end. We had more experience this year. The juniors were there as freshmen and again as sophomores last year. Theyve gotten better each year. The younger kids are stepping in because they see where were going.

5) Scarborough Red Storm, 16-1-1, 2013 Western Class A champion

The second of three straight Red Storm regional champions, Scarborough wasnt able to go unbeaten and untied in the regular season like the year before, nor win the title like its successor, but this team was pretty darn impressive nonetheless. After falling to Skowhegan, 4-1, in the 2012 Class A state game, the Red Storm, featuring all-state selections Maddy Dobecki, Abby Walker and Rachael Wallace, as well as league all-stars Mikaela Coombs and Kristen Murray, regrouped and overwhelmed their regional foes en route to another date with the states premier power in the Class A final.

Scarborough opened with a hard-fought 2-1 win at Marshwood (Maggie Carbin scored twice), then handled Massabesic, Noble and Sanford by a composite 20-1 margin. Close calls ensued, but the Red Storm passed them, beating Windham (2-0), Thornton Academy (2-1) and Westbrook (2-0, on goals from Murray and Dobecki). Scarborough then dominated South Portland, Biddeford, Bonny Eagle and McAuley by a combined 37-1 score before settling for a 1-1 draw versus Cheverus, which snapped its 35-game regular season win streak. The Red Storm then closed with a 4-0 win over Deering to go 13-0-1 and earn the top seed for the Western A playoffs. Scarborough would be tested in the regional tournament, but wouldnt be denied its date with Skowhegan.

In the quarterfinals, the Red Storm blanked Gorham, 5-0, as Murray scored twice. Scarborough only managed one goal in the semifinals versus Marshwood, but it came from Wallace and was enough to advance. In the regional final, played against Massabesic in the freezing cold in Saco, the Red Storm rolled, 6-3, behind two goals apiece from Carbin and Walker and one apiece from Murray and Ashley Levesque.

Scarborough wanted to avenge its prior state game loss when it met Skowhegan on the big stage in Yarmouth, but despite some promising early chances, the Red Storm couldnt get the jump and wound up losing, 4-1 (Murray would score the lone goal, as she would do again in the 2014 state final which produced a happier result). Scarborough had fallen short, but in the process, had taken another step closer to its championship destiny.

Coach Kerry Mariello: We wanted another opportunity to play Skowhegan. We knew we didnt give them as good a game as we could have last year. We wanted to get back and prove it. The score didnt indicate how well we played. Hopefully this motivates the girls to work even harder. Were young. Well bounce back. Hopefully well be here again.

4) Scarborough Red Storm, 17-1, 2012 Western Class A champion

The nearly perfect Storm. Scarborough didnt just win its first 17 games, it didnt surrender a goal along the way, but the Red Storm finally met their match in the state final, losing to Skowhegan, a setback which kept them from placing higher on this list. After being upset by Windham in the quarterfinals the previous year, Scarborough, which featured All-State talents Karli-An Gilbert, Mikaela Gove and Molly Whelan, league all-stars Maddie Dobecki, Lauren Russell and Rachael Wallace, and goalie Shannon Hicks, was simply unstoppable until the final day of the season.

The Red Storm set the tone with a 10-0 victory ver McAuley in the opener. They were only seriously tested four times in the regular season, downing Westbrook and Windham by 2-0 scores and edging Sanford and Marshwood by 1-0 margins. Scarborough essentially locked up the top seed in Western Class A with a 4-0 victory at Cheverus, then closed the regular season with decisive shutouts of Noble (6-0) and Kennebunk (5-0). The regional tournament saw the Red Storm continue their dominance and keep the opposition off the scoreboard.

Scarborough blanked Thornton Academy, 4-0, in the quarterfinals, as Elly Walker scored twice and Emily Bunting and Kristen Murray also found the cage. Next up was Westbrook and again Hicks didnt allow a goal, while Bunting, Walker and Whelan scored for a 3-0 victory. In the regional final, Cheverus hoped to upset the Red Storm for the second time in three postseasons, but Scarborough wouldnt be denied, getting goals from Bunting, Ali Pelczar and Abby Walker for a 3-0 win and the programs third Western A crown.

The final piece of the puzzle wasnt to be, however, as the Red Storm surrendered their first goal all season (after 1,053 minutes and 15 seconds of play), early in the second half, then Skowhegan added two more, going on to a 3-0 victory and leaving Scarborough just short of immortality. The Red Storm would be heard from again, however.

Coach Kerry Mariello: The 17 games that got us to (states) were the most gratifying and team-oriented games that I have ever coached. I believe each person that was involved, whether it be the players, parents, peers, or community members all felt that sense of wholeness that this team created. It will go down as a season of a lifetime and I have been blessed to be a part of it. The seniors are a special group and will make a positive impact in all areas of their future lives. They have impacted me and this program in a way that is immeasurable.

3) Greely Rangers, 16-1-1, 2003 Class B state champion

The Rangers third trip to the state final was unquestionably the charm and a phenomenal team, filled with tremendous multi-sport athletes, captured the programs first and to date, only title in dominant and memorable fashion. After losing to Winslow on penalty corners in the 2001 Class B state final and to the Black Raiders again, on a second half penalty stroke, in 2002, Greely, led by All-State players Julia Chase, Sara Dimick and Hayly Ross, simply wouldnt be denied.

The season started slowly with a 1-1 tie against Gorham, but the Rangers then embarked on a 10-game win streak which saw them score 35 goals and surrender only four. The run came to a close with a 1-0 home loss to always-tough York, but Greely wouldnt stumble again and closed by downing Cape Elizabeth, 3-2, in overtime (on Abby Chapmans goal) and Fryeburg Academy, 2-1, to wind up a program-best 12-1-1 and first for the Western B tournament. There, the Rangers passed some stern tests and went on to fulfill their destiny.

Greely got a scare from Falmouth in the quarterfinals, but advanced, 4-2, thanks to late goals from Chapman and Chase. The Rangers only managed one goal in the semifinals versus Leavitt (from Chase), but it was enough to prevail, 1-0. That set up a third consecutive regional final versus York and while overtime was needed in 2001 and 2002, it wasnt this time, as goals from Chapman, Dimick and Maryette Stuart produced a 3-0 victory. That spelled another trip to the state final and another showdown with Winslow. And this time, sweet victory.

The contest was scoreless at the half when the team released 40 ladybugs for luck. It worked like a charm, as early in the second half, Dimick scored on a rebound off a penalty corner for the only goal Greely would need and less than two minutes later, off another corner, Dimick set up Kelly Saucier for an insurance goal. The title didnt come without some anxious moments down the stretch, but one year after surrendering the decisive penalty stroke goal, Rangers goalie Kristen Walker faced another and this time, made the save to all but end it and Greely went on to an exhilarating 2-0 triumph. Seventeen years later, this Rangers team stands alone in program annals. Their triumph was a sight to behold.

Coach Robyn Thayer: You dont realize how much emotion goes into this. These are the kids Ive had from the start. Theyre now seniors and its so good to see it happen to them. What an outstanding bunch of kids. Seeing their emotions after we won it made it all worth it. We wanted Winslow. If we had a choice, after losing to Winslow two years in a row, we wanted to see them again. This year we were much more confident. We knew what was at stake.

2) Scarborough Red Storm, 18-0, 2014 Class A state champion

After consecutive state game losses to Skowhegan, Scarborough broke through and won its second championship in breathtaking fashion. The Red Storm, paced by eventual Miss Maine Field Hockey winner Maddy Dobecki, as well as All-State selections Kaitlin Prince, Abby Walker and Kristen Murray, who would score the biggest goal of the season, survived a challenging series of postseason games and worked their way back to the Class A pinnacle and also received the most votes in our Twitter poll.

Scarborough opened with statement-making 3-0 wins over Marshwood (behind goals from Lily Nygren, Gabby Farino and Murray) and Massabesic, then began crushing just about every foe. The Red Storm were pushed by Sanford (winning, 2-1, on Walkers overtime goal), Thornton Academy (again going to OT before Walker scored to produce a 1-0 victory) and Cheverus (a 1-0 road win behind Walkers second half goal), but over the 14-game regular season, they outscored the opposition, 82-2. For just the second time in program history, Scarborough posted a 14-0 record and the Red Storm would be the top seed for the Western A playoffs, where they would embark on their run to their elusive crown.

In the quarterfinals, Scarborough got goals from Dobecki, Nygren and Walker and beat Biddeford, 3-1. The Red Storm then defeated Thornton by the same 3-1 margin in the semifinals, thanks to goals from Nygren, Murray and Kristen Levesque. Marshwood was next in the regional final and again, the 3-1 score was the charm, as Scarborough won its third straight regional championship behind two goals from Murray (both set up by Dobecki) and another from Levesque.

To no ones surprise, it was once again Skowhegan awaiting in the state final and after back-to-back losses, the Red Storm werent about to be denied. While Scarboroughs defense and goalie Alyssa Souza pitched their lone shutout of the postseason, Scarboroughs prolific offense couldnt find the cage either. Until just two seconds remained. With everyone on hand thinking overtime, Murray scored out of a scrum and just like that, the Red Storm were champions. What could possibly top that? How about an almost identical Scarborough victory just a few years before.

Coach Kerry Mariello: This means everything for us. The girls got the fairy tale ending they deserved. To have a vision to get this dream started, the motivation, conviction and confidence to reinforce that vision and to finish in such explosive fashion is indescribable. Each time we took the field, the flame grew and eventually grew to a point where it had completely taken over these girls hearts and soul. They were not going to lose. These girls are at the top of any game, especially life. Theres no group more deserving.

1) Scarborough Red Storm, 18-0, 2009 Class A state champion

The first time was the sweetest, as Scarborough captured its initial championship, at Skowhegans expense, on an improbable overtime goal. After losing an OT heartbreaker to Skowhegan in the 2008 state game, the Red Storm regrouped and didnt lose a game in 2009, a familiar theme for Miss Maine Field Hockey finalist Brittany Ross and fellow All-State selection Ellie Morin, who enjoyed a perfect school year. Scarborough, which also featured All-State selection Heather Carrier and league all-star Ashley Anastasoff, started the season fast and never looked back.

The Red Storm opened by dominating Portland, 12-0, as Ross hinted at a huge season to come by scoring six times. Scarborough outscored the opposition, 80-9, in the regular season and reached double digit goals on three occasions. The Red Storm won 10 of 14 games by at least three goals and were tested only by Sanford (a 4-2 victory), Westbrook (a 2-0 win), Cheverus (a 3-1 victory) and Gorham (a 2-0 win). Scarborough wound up 14-0 for the first time and locked up the top seed in Western Class A for the first time. The Red Storm were far from finished.

In the quarterfinals, Scarborough blanked Thornton Academy, 2-0, as Ross scored a first half goal and Morin added another in the second half. The Red Storm then had no trouble with Bonny Eagle in the semifinals, rolling, 6-0, behind two goals apiece from Morin and Ross, one each from Akashia Gergler and Mo Hannan and three assists from Carrier. Scarborough then got all it could handle from Cheverus in the regional final, falling behind, 2-1, before rallying for a 3-2 victory. Anastasoff tied the game just before halftime and Kelsey Howards second goal of the contest provided the winning margin.

The Red Storm then got the rematch they hoped for in the state game, but fell behind Skowhegan, 1-0, on a goal early in the second half. Just over five minutes from getting its heart broken again, Scarborough responded like the champion it would become, tying the game on Ross 31st goal of the season, then winning it in overtime on an improbable, controversial goal. Off a long hit from Carrier from beyond the circle, the ball rolled into the cage. Skowhegan thought it had been untouched, which would have disallowed the goal, but instead Morin began jumping and down and celebrating because she got a piece of the ball en route to the cage. The goal stood and the Red Storm had the championship, 2-1. Scarboroughs first champion will long be hailed.

Coach Kerry Mariello: Its overwhelming. Its a great feeling. The greatest feeling ever, right here. We made some adjustments and had perseverance for sure. We dug deep and we knew we had it. We fought all odds. We had a goal at the start of the year and pursued it. Theyre a special group. They deserved every ounce of this. Im so glad for them. They had so much grit and tenacity. You want to win like this. The surge of energy you feel at the end is something you keep for a lifetime and Im glad the girls got to experience that.

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The Best of the Best- Field hockey - Press Herald

CD Projekt RED's Cyberpunk 2077 has become one of the most highly anticipated titles this generation of consoles, and everything the developers have shown about the upcoming title is solid proof of why; it is the most ambitious video game from the studio that delivered the insanely ambitious The Witcher III: Wild Hunt.

The developers have poured their hearts and souls into making Cyberpunk 2077 one of the best games out there, and this is one of the many reasons why the game has taking its sweet time to finally hit store shelves. On top of this, CD Projekt RED keep adding new features that will likely make the waiting more than worth it.

One of the new features that CD Projekt RED is introducing in Cyberpunk 2077 will, more than likely, be a game-changing mechanic, as it will allow players to finish the game without actually having to complete its main quest. That's right, you didn't misread that.

In a recent interview with Polish website Spider's Web,Cyberpunk 2077Lead Quest Designer Pawel Sasko explained that this new feature comes from their experience working on The Witcher III: Wild Hunt, and is what ultimately made them rethink their approach to sub plots

"Webuilt the Cyberpunk structure based on the conclusions we drew from The Witcher III. The Witcher had the main stem of history and side threads departing from it, and this was our main structure, which we call the ear," explained Sasko.

"So in Cyberpunks structure we have this wheat spike, which serves as its center, the main storyline with different subplots surrounding it, which can be triggered in various ways.

Those subplots allow us to do something that we have never done before they change the main plot of the game and they are doing that in such a way that you may not even finish the main plot, but still finish the game and get a completely different epilogue than the player with a different lifepath who made different choices, met different characters and formed relationships with them."

Getting a completely different ending based on the decisions made by the player is actually quite an appealing idea, and it seems that the developers at CD Projekt RED have given this a lot of thought. Cyberpunk 2077 is expected to launch in November, so we'll still have to wait a little bit longer to see if this innovative idea eventually works out.

In the most dangerous megacity of the future, the real you is not enough. Become V, a cyber-enhanced mercenary outlaw going after a one-of-a-kind implant the key to immortality. Customize your cyberware and skillset, and explore a vast city of the future obsessed with power, glamour and body modification. The choices you make will determine the story and shape the world around you.

Cyberpunk 2077 will be releasing for thePlayStation 4, Xbox One, and PC on Thursday the 19th of November; PlayStation 5 and Xbox Series X release date to be revealed.

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CYBERPUNK 2077: Players Will Be Able To Finish The Game Without Completing The Main Quest - GameFragger.com

Throughout history, longevity and eternal life have been the ultimate goal of humanity. From the king of the ancient Chinese Qin dynasty to the European alchemists during the medieval age, countless people have devoted their lives to unveil the secrets of immortality.

Although none of such efforts have been proven to grant eternal life, nowadays, modern scientists succeeded to elongate the lifespan of simple organisms, such as worms and flies, by a considerable amount with meticulous manipulation of our genes. Among many of those studies, there have been three main methods that held their significance even in the human body.

Enzyme regulation

Most notably, the Scripps Research team discovered that the disruption of enzymatic pathways by small molecules can affect the lifespan of an organism. The team used Caenorhabditis elegans, a type of a roundworm, to test their hypothesis.

According to Benjamin Cravatt, Gilula Chair of Chemical Biology at Scripps Research, C.elegans worms were used for their experiment due to their relatively short lifespans (typically lives only a few weeks). Cravatts research involved about 100 compounds that were known to inhibit serine hydrolases in mammals.

In his experiment, Cravatt used each of the 100 molecules to block the enzymatic pathway and observed their effects on the lifespan of the C.elegans. When the team treated the worms that were 1 day into adulthood with the inhibiting compounds, they found that some of the compounds extended the average lifespan of the worm by at least 15%, according to Alice Chen, a graduate student in the Cravatt lab.

Chen elaborated that among the compounds, a carbamate compound called JZL 184, even extended the lifespan by 45% when treated at the optimal dose. Through further analysis, the team concluded that JZL 184 extended the worms lifespan by inhibiting fatty acid amide hydrolase 4(FAAH-4), which is known to break down a molecule called 2-AG, a molecule linked to aging in mammals.

Whats fascinating about this finding is that monoacylglycerol lipase was not present in C.elegans worms. MAGL usually breaks down the 2-AG molecules in mammals, but in the case of Chens experiment, FAAH-4 substituted the role of MAGL.

While the findings only apply to C.elegans worms as of now, the team stated that the FAAH-4 and 2-AG pathways will suggest a new path in extending human life.

Calorie Regulation

In addition, a research team led by David Sinclair, assistant professor of pathology at HMS, found that calorie regulation extends the lifespan of yeast cells. According to Sinclair, the PNC1 protein regulates a vitamin called nicotinamide, which is an inhibitor of the Sir2 molecule. Sinclair further hypothesized that since Sir2 typically extends the lifespan of yeast cells by stabilizing the ribosomal DNA, the regulation of nicotinamide, which is its inhibitor, will consequently prolong the organisms lifespan.

While the team believed that such a regulation process was initiated by the severe calorie restriction in yeast cells, they later discovered that calorie restriction had no impact on the Sir2 level. Thus, Sinclairs team tested the effect of the molecule NAD on PNC1 levels to confirm that NAD was responsible for altering the Sir2 level. It turned out: NAD had no effect on the PNC1 level.

Undeterred, with more in-depth analysis, the team finally reached the conclusion that nicotinamide, which is one of the products of the reaction between Sir2 and NAD, was responsible for the change in Sir2 level. Based on the correlation they found between Sir2 level and nicotinamide facilitated by calorie restriction, Sinclairs team is now investigating human genes that play the same role as PNC1, according to Harvard Medical School.

Mifepristone

Finally, the research team led by John Tower, professor of biological sciences at the University of Southern California, found that the drug mifepristone extends the lives of female flies that have mated.

Before the experiment, Tower had set a premise that the sex peptide in female flies from male flies reduces the lifespan of the female flies as it causes inflammation. In his study, he and his colleagues discovered that the drug mifepristone, also called RU-486, blocked the effects of the sex peptide during reproduction, which retained the female flies health and thus extended their lifespan.

What played the most significant role in the reaction was, according to Tower, a molecule called the Juvenile hormone.

According to Towers research team, the juvenile hormone is responsible for the growth and development of fruit flies throughout their life. The sex peptide, they elaborated, boosts the effect of the juvenile hormone, which causes harmful inflammation in the flies body and enervates the male flies by shifting the metabolic pathways.

Therefore, the inhibition of the sex peptide by mifepristone also regulates the level of juvenile hormone, consequently extending the lifespan of the flies. With their further testing of the drug on C.elegans, which has similar genes as those of humans, Tower suggested that their findings may be applicable to extending the lives of humans.

The life-extending technology is still in its burgeoning stage, as it only applies to simple organisms, such as worms and flies. However, while eternal life still seems improbable, humanity will proceed one step further to unveiling the secrets of longevity with scientists perpetual efforts.

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Opinion: The secrets behind longevity HS Insider - Los Angeles Times

Confident Beram Kayal reckons Neil Lennon being in place to mastermind Celtic's title tilt means there's "no doubt" his former team will secure 10 In A Row this season.

The Israeli international was a key player under the Irishman and played a vital role in securing the first three league triumphs.

And Kayal believes the Irishman's managerial ability leaves rivals Rangers facing a tall order in stopping Celtic securing Scottish football immortality.

Speaking to the Herald, he said: I enjoyed my time. We started something there and I think they will finish it this season by completing 10 In A Row.

"I have been really pleased to see the boys continue to do so well.

It hasnt been easy for them to change manager from Ronny Deila to Brendan Rodgers and now the main man Lenny is back.

"Neil Lennon is a super guy, he is hungry, he wants to win. I have no doubt Celtic are going to do it."

Despite the 32-year-old believing a title success for the ages is coming for his former team, the combative midfielder has nothing but praise for new Rangers defender Leon Balogun.

Kayal is certain Steven Gerrard has landed a player capable of competing for regular game time as Nigerian international inked a deal at Ibrox on Friday.

He said: Obviously, Rangers have made progress in the last few years. I havent been surprised by that. That is what happens when you bring in a legend like Stevie G.

"They are building something very good there at Ibrox.

I know Connor Goldson. He was with Brighton when we were in the Championship. He is a great talent and I havent been surprised that he has done so well at Rangers in the last couple of seasons.

"But a team like Rangers needs more than three centre backs, they need four or five. Competition has to be high.

But if Leon proves himself he should feature in the first team there. He is aninternationalfootballer who has played at a very high level in his career. He will be pushing hard to be in the starting XI in the new season.

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Beram Kayal sounds ominous Rangers title warning as Celtic hero reckons there's 'no doubt' about 10 In A Row - Daily Record

Marvel has confirmed the return of the Externals to the X-Men books for X Of Swords, with this teaser for Excalibur #11. Didn;t we say Excalibur was the book to watch?

In June, Bleeding Cool suggested that The Externals were returning to Marvel after being abandoned in the nineties.

First named inX-Force#10 fromFabian Nicieza, Rob LiefeldandMark Pacella. The Externals are all mutants with the additional gift of immortality and, as expressed by Cable, they play an important role in the future and Apocalypse's rise to power. Externals typically cannot die, but seem to possess an immortal healing factor rather than invulnerability. They suffer injuries just like any other person, and can even appear dead if mortally wounded, but will eventually restore themselves to life and health. Each External was claimed to represent an intangible concept

You can only kill an External again by running a blade through their heart. Ten swords. Ten hearts. Ten arcane energies to be absorbed. But could this also be a way in which they resurrect Kate Pryde? Could she also be an External rather than Cannonball? Could that explain how the Krakoan portals and rejuvenation rejected her? She's always been a sucker for a sword as well.

Here is the current list of Exter. sorry, High Lords.

AbsalomdespairBurke fortitudeCandra guileCruleferocityGideonopportunityNicodemus wisdomSaulpatienceSelenecorruptionCannonball hope however, Selene and more recently Cable, had stated that Cannonball is not an External.Apocalypse evolution or destruction taken away by the Celestials, his status as an External is still unclear. But Powers Of X #3 named him such in the backmatter.

EXCALIBUR #11MARVEL COMICSMAR200915(W) Tini Howard (A) Marcus To (CA) Mahmud AsrarBLOOD OF THE CHANGELING!The Citadel has committed an act of war and Excalibur must respond. While they lick their wounds deep in Otherworld, Apocalypse takes steps toward his ultimate goal.Rated T+In Shops: Aug 19, 2020SRP: $3.99

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Marvel Comics Confirms The Return Of The Externals - Bleeding Cool News

Twitch dominated the livestream industry in Q2 2020, with over 5 billion hours spent watching content on the platform.

This comes from StreamElements, who alongside its analytics partner Arsenal.gg, has released its Q2 livestreaming report, State of the Stream.

The report contains further good news for Twitch Overall hours watched on Twitch jumped 56 per cent from Q1, with views on the platform peaking in April, at 1.8 billion hours watched.

This is also a year-on-year increase of 60 per cent, based on comparing June 2019, at 939 million hours watched, with June 2020, at around 1.5 billion hours watched.

Twitch isnt alone in seeing increased engagement during lockdown. Facebook Gaming had significant momentum, with a 75 per cent increase in hours watched in Q2 2020, compared to Q1 2020. Hours watched in Q2 peaked on Facebook Gaming at 342 million hours watched in May.

Facebooks streaming platform also saw 200% year-on-year growth, based on comparing June 2019, at 111 million hours, with June 2020 at 334 million hours.

Twitchs most popular channel remains one totally unrelated to video games the social channel Just Chatting, which increased 94 per cent in hours watched from January to June 2020, jumping from 86 million hours watched to 167 million. The channel also grew 175 per cent from 181 million hours in Q1 of 2019, to 498 million in Q2 of 2020.

The now almost 7 year old title Grand Theft Auto V continues its seeming immortality as the third most popular channel, with hours watched not dipping at all in 2020, making it the years most viewed action game so far.

Call of Duty: Modern Warfare got a huge boost from the March 10 release of battle royale mode Call of Duty: Warzone, placing it at 76 million hours watched in June 2020, compared to just 7 million in January the same year.

Music & Performing Arts have also seen a huge boost in views, now in 16th place with a 268 per cent increased in hours watched from January to June 2020, with a peak viewership of 25 million hours watched in May. Additionally, amid the social distancing measures brought on by COVID-19, viewers are getting their nature hit on Twitch, with the Travel & Outdoors category increasing 183 per cent in hours watched from January to June 2020.

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Twitch sees 5 billion hours watched in Q2 2020 and Facebook Gaming grows 75%, as livestreaming boost from the pandemic continues - MCV/Develop

Oh, I used to be disgusted and now I try to be amused.

Those lyrics from the Elvis Costello song (The Angels Wanna Wear My) Red Shoes are an apt description of the journey that my perspective has trekked since my ALS diagnosis was delivered.

The initial pronouncement was maddeningly surreal. The imagery of what lay ahead of me was mortifyingly disgusting. That revulsion quickly became anger as the predicted symptoms began to manifest themselves.

The rage within me only intensified with each stage of my bodys devolution. From limping unaided to stumbling with assistive devices, to struggling in transferring myself to a wheelchair, to becoming fully immobile, my irritation redoubled. As my speech made its way from occasional slurring to labored, guttural utterances, my rancor boiled.

But by far the greatest accelerant of my fury were the unanswerable questions. Why ALS? Why me? Why now? The vacuum created by seemingly having no meaning or purpose was absurdly overwhelming.

In fact, there was little separating me from characters introduced by writers of the Theatre of the Absurd (TOTA) drama genre. Unwittingly, I had come to exemplify the French writer Albert Camus take on life as expressed in his essay, The Myth of Sisyphus. Camus draws on the Greek fable of a man eternally condemned to roll a rock up a mountain only to have it roll back down, ad infinitum. Camus argues that this is a metaphor for the human condition in a senseless world. Our best option is to accept the inherent absurdity and bear it as best we can.

Indirectly, Camus suggests that anger is not the correct response. After reflection and some research, l came to agree with him.

The health downsides of anger are numerous. Obvious ones like depression, high blood pressure, and increased risk of heart attack readily come to mind. One previously unknown to me really caught my attention. Anger causes the hormone cortisol to be produced. Elevated cortisol causes neurons to accept too much calcium through their membrane. A calcium overload can make cells fire too frequently and die, noted the National Institute for the Clinical Application of Behavioral Medicine. The modus operandi of ALS is advancement through cell death. No need to aid and abet the enemy.

Then there is the popular notion that anger like mine, given the circumstances, is justifiable. While that may be true societally speaking, it has no basis biblically. In his study on human anger, Jeffrey Gibbs describes finding nothing in the Bible to support righteous anger. Among his conclusions are that anger quickly becomes sin, and we simply must think in those terms, and while human emotions, including anger, are not intrinsically sinful, it is not a justification to remain angry.

So, what does one do with an accumulation of unhealthy and misplaced emotion? In my case, convert as much of it as possible to laughter.

The TOTA playwrights often provided comedic interludes. Absurd happenings can be humorous, even hilarious. However, the overriding theme isoften interpreted as a response to the challenges of living in a 20th-century world that seems devoid of meaning [and] is frequently far more nightmarish than funny.

To that I turn to the comedy team of Laurel and Hardy. Absurdist theater icon Samuel Becketts play Waiting for Godot contains portions that closely mirror scenes Laurel and Hardy created on screen, theIndependent points out.Becketts absurd tragi-comic characters have so much of Stan and Ollie about them. After escaping any of the all too frequent ALS perils, I borrow from their catchphrase (Ollie to Stanley): Well, heres another nice mess youve gotten me into. Only my brain is Hardy, and my feeble body is Laurel. Thus, anger quickly dissipates into mental laughter.

Similarly, when my attempts at verbal expression invariably fail, I try to replace a scowl of frustration with a calm smile. Remembering the comic misadventures in communicating that resulted from entering the cone of silence, as depicted in the 1960s sitcom Get Smart, always serves to placate me. The dialogue handicaps that fictional bit of gadgetry presented have nothing on my Neanderthal-like banter.

Somewhere between disgust and amusement, I rediscovered meaning and purpose to life. The key is the word itself. Life is to be lived. It is a gift. Like any gift, it is up to the recipient as to how it will be used. I choose to live life as fully as possible, acknowledging that what is possible for me is incessantly eroding.

In the aforementioned song, Costello infers that angels are offering immortality in exchange for red footwear. Oh, the absurdity! I believe that everlasting life is conveyed through faith in God. That, for me, is the meaning of life. That is my purpose.

Note: ALS News Today is strictly a news and information website about the disease. It does not provide medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. This content is not intended to be a substitute for professional medical advice, diagnosis, or treatment. Always seek the advice of your physician or other qualified health provider with any questions you may have regarding a medical condition. Never disregard professional medical advice or delay in seeking it because of something you have read on this website. The opinions expressed in this column are not those of ALS News Today or its parent company, BioNews Services, and are intended to spark discussion about issues pertaining to ALS.

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The Absurdity of a Progressively Debilitating Terminal Illness - ALS News Today

In the nineteenth century, poetry was immensely popular, a deeply revered art form, and one of the most highly regarded American poets was William Cullen Bryant. Among other things, school children across America read and recited his poems "Thanatopsis" and "To a Waterfowl"widely regarded as classics. Although he was from Massachusetts and lived most of his adult life in New York, he was also familiar with central Illinois and had family members that he visited in Jacksonville and, later, Princeton. So, a few of his poems relate to our state.

But I have also noted, over the years, that poems by him appeared now and again in the "Macomb Journal." His focus on coping with death was clearly one theme that engaged many readers, but in fact, there was controversy over whether he accepted the traditional Christian belief in immortalityand that provides a glimpse into the mindset of people during his era.

Bryant was born in 1794 at Cummington, Massachusetts, and he started publishing poetry in periodicals while in his early teens. His first small book, titled "Poems" (1821), appeared two centuries ago, when he was 17. He eventually moved to New York, where he edited the "New York Evening Post" from 1829 until his death in 1878and became a revered American poet.

In 1832 he came west to visit brothers who lived in Jacksonville, and with one of them he rode to Springfield and then north along the Illinois River. That experience provided inspiration for "The Prairies," a poem that celebrated our states most famous topographical characteristic and was often reprinted in newspapers and books. In it, he not only views the Illinois wilderness in mythic terms, as an Edenic garden of dazzling beauty, but also meditates on the mysterious "mound builders"who had lived here centuries earlier but had "vanished from the earth."

Bryant visited on other occasions and wrote Illinois-inspired poems called "The Painted Cup" and "The Hunter of the Prairies." The latter associates freedom with the prairie landscape and presents the white hunter as a kind of American Adam, united with the unspoiled wilderness.

Later, after Lincolns assassination, Bryant wrote a notable tribute poem, "Abraham Lincoln," which was read to the throng of mourners in New York City on April 24, 1865. He declares that the great mans "proudest monument shall be/ The broken fetters of the slave."

But his most famous poem was, and still is, "Thanatopsis" (which means, "meditation on death"). It appeared in the "North American Review" in 1817, when the poet was in his early 20s. As that reveals, the theme of death was already important to young Bryant, and it remained so throughout his life. Influenced by British Romantic poets, he often wrote to commune with nature and the divine spirit that lay beneath it all. In a poem called "The Death of the Flowers," for example, he links human mortality to the cycles of the natural year, and in yet another often-reprinted poem, "A Forest Hymn," he declares that wooded areas were "Gods first temples," and they are still a "Fit shrine for a humble worshipper to hold/ Communion with his maker."

Raised in an old New England family, Bryant was aware of the frightening Calvinistic view of death taught by the Pilgrims, which emphasized the Judgment and everlasting punishment for sinners, so he sought a more positive relationship to God by appreciating His creation and understanding humanitys relationship to it. Thats why he says, in "Thanatopsis,"

"When thoughts

Of the last bitter hour come like a blight

Over thy spirit, and sad [death] images

Of stern agony, and shroud, and pall,

And breathless darkness, and the narrow house

[i.e., the dark, narrow grave]

Make thee shudder, and grow sick at heart,

Go forth under the open sky, and listen

To Natures teachings. . . ."

And he asserts that death is a reaffirmation of our interconnection with everything else, not a condition of ultimate separation. For after all, at death each of us will "mix forever with the elements," and beyond that, we will join with all other past humans, who now lay within the earth, "the great tomb of man." And remember, he says, that all who are living "will share thy destiny," for the old and the young "Shall one by one be gathered to thy side." So, death should not be approached with fear, as he indicates at the close of his famous poem:

"So live, that when thy summons comes to join

The innumerable caravan, that moves

To the pale realms of shade, where each shall take

His chamber in the silent halls of death,

Thou go not, like the quarry-slave at night,

Scourged to his dungeon; but sustained and soothed

By an unfaltering trust, approach thy grave. . . ."

Bryant does not specifically refer to God in the poem, but after all, the creator of everything is the one who inspires the "trust" that he mentions. Nevertheless, some Christian readers felt that the noted poem did not affirm immortality like it should have. For that reason, someone wrote a poem called "Vision of Immortality," labeling it as a "sequel to Thanatopsis," and signed Bryants name to it, and that was printed in a great many American newspapers. Of course, it is a kind of "Hymn to Immortality," talking about how the dead shall awaken to "the dawn of the immortal day." Among the periodicals that carried it, in 1852, not realizing that Bryant never actually wrote it, was Macombs first newspaper, the "McDonough Independent."

Of course, that reveals how much the 19th-century mind was focused on affirming the afterlife. And in a sense, while "Thanatopsis" remained very popular, that issue continued. In fact, after Bryant died on June 12, 1878, the "Macomb Journal" carried a front-page article in which noted preacher Henry Ward Beecher criticized "Thanatopsis" as "pagan poetry." But on June 27 the "Journal" editors also printed a little-known poem of Bryants titled "The Two Travelers," in which a person who is heading toward death affirms that he "Shall sleep, to rise, refreshed and strong/ In the bright day that yet will dawn." So, the editors wanted to reassure Macomb readers that the great poet, who had a lasting impact, did affirm immortality.

And it was such a huge public concern that, on July 4, 1878, the "Journal" reprinted an article from "Harpers Weekly" titled "He Believed in Immortality." It quotes an 1876 letter from Bryant to one of his readers, which declares, "I believe in the everlasting life of the soul." And he also affirms "the life to come of those who are dear to us here." So, it was reassuring.

It would be impossible today for any American poet to create such a stir, but in the death-haunted, poetry-loving, overwhelmingly Christian 19th century, whatever a beloved poet thought about such a key aspect of religious belief was obviously a matter of deep concern.

Writer and speaker John Hallwas is a columnist for the "McDonough County Voice." Research assistance was provided by WIU archivist Kathy Nichols.

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Looking at nature, death, and immortality with a famous poet - McDonough Voice