22 November, LV A.S.

9sense Episode List, Year LV A.S. Episode List / / 9sense, Anton LaVey was an Atheist, Creature Feature, Infernal Informant, Michigan Constitutional Crisis, Reverend Campbell, Santa is Immune to COVID-19, The Devil's Advocate, The Immortality Key

1. The Devil’s Advocate

Time Stamp: 5:37

  • 9sense Letters: ‘Anton was just an atheist.’
    • I would like to know how I should respond to anyone who says Anton was just an atheist playing dress up. Go along with it and patronize them or defend it?
      • Satanism is an atheistic religion
      • Herr Doktor was a magician
      • Reframe atheist to itheist
      • There is no God, hence no Devil

2. Infernal Informant

Time Stamp: 25:10

  • Michigan House speaker floats possibility of ‘constitutional crisis’
    • https://www.detroitnews.com/story/news/politics/2020/11/22/michigan-house-speaker-floats-possibility-constitutional-crisis/6381960002/
    • The Board of State Canvassers meets Monday to consider certifying Michigan’s statewide election results, including President-elect Joe Biden’s 154,000-vote victory. But top Republican Party leaders have asked the board to delay certification in a bid to investigate “anomalies and irregularities” they claim occurred in the election.
    • The board features two Republicans and two Democrats. Many legal experts believe the panel has a duty, under Michigan law, to certify the results.
    • “If there were to be a 2-2 split on the State Board of Canvassers, it would then go to the Michigan Supreme Court to determine what their response would be, what their order would be,” Chatfield, R-Levering said on “Fox & Friends” Sunday. “If they didn’t have an order that it be certified, well now we have a constitutional crisis in the state of Michigan. It’s never occurred before.”
    • “The Board of State Canvassers participates in a very straightforward and perfunctory process,” John Pirich, a longtime elections attorney in Michigan, said in the groups’ press release. “Auditing the election is not within its scope of duties; the board is only responsible for reviewing the vote calculations and signing them.
    • “This process has nothing to do with discretion or the board members’ political leanings.”
    • If the board certifies the results, under state law, Michigan’s 16 electoral votes will go Biden, who won the state by 14 times the margin Trump won by four years ago. The Electoral College meets on Dec. 14.
    • Many legal experts believe if the board doesn’t certify the results, the courts will order the results be certified.
    • On Saturday, Michigan Republican Party Chairwoman Laura Cox and Republican National Committee Chairwoman Ronna McDaniel asked the state to conduct a “full, transparent audit” before certification, noting other states like Georgia “have taken discretionary steps” in determining their results.
    • But Secretary of State Jocelyn Benson, Michigan’s top elections official, has said an audit cannot be completed prior to the certification of results because “election officials do not have legal access to the documents needed to complete audits until the certification.”
    • Still, Cox and McDaniel have argued it’s possible to investigate some claims made in the affidavits and unbalanced poll books in Wayne County while still complying with the Dec. 8 deadline for certification. The states are required to certify by the “safe harbor” date or invite court or congressional intervention.
    • Senate Majority Leader Mike Shirkey, R-Clarklake, tweeted Sunday that the election process “MUST be free of intimidation and threats.”
    • “Whether the Board of Canvassers certifies our results tomorrow or decides to take the full time allowed by law to perform their duties, it’s inappropriate for anyone to exert pressure on them,” Shirkey said.
    • Chatfield, Shirkey and five other Michigan lawmakers traveled to Washington, D.C., to meet with Trump on Friday. Chatfield and Shirkey said they used their time with the nation’s leader to push for additional federal relief to help the state cope with the COVID-19 pandemic.
    • On Sunday, the House speaker said Trump didn’t ask lawmakers to interfere in the election certification process.
    • Chatfield said Republicans want to look into “irregularities” and these “reports of fraud.” However, there’s been no evidence released yet that calls into question Biden’s 154,000-vote victory in Michigan.
    • In an interview Tuesday, Shirkey said he doesn’t expect the results of the state’s presidential race to change.
  • Fauci says Santa Claus has ‘innate immunity’, won’t be spreading COVID-19 to anyone this Christmas
    • https://www.usatoday.com/story/news/nation/2020/11/20/covid-19-and-christmas-santa-immune-coronavirus-fauci-says/3777871001/
    • “Santa is exempt from this because Santa, of all the good qualities, has a lot of good innate immunity,” Fauci told USA TODAY this week.
    • It should come as no surprise. As children already know, Santa is superhuman. He flies around the world in one night, delivers millions of toys and eats his weight in cookies.
    • But with millions of Americans already sick with COVID-19, children have been worried about Santa, especially this Christmas Eve when he visits millions of homes. And there’s no denying that Santa, because he is older and overweight, would at first glance appear to be at higher risk of developing severe disease from COVID-19.
    • Fauci is telling kids not to worry, though. “Santa is not going to be spreading any infections to anybody,” he said.
    • Santa has also been taking coronavirus precautions. He’s been making few appearances this holiday season, and he is social distancing. For example, he’s taking more Zoom calls, and his limited visits to stores and malls will mostly be behind glass.
    • “Santa does not want the kids to line up waiting to see him because he doesn’t want to spread germs. Santa gets sad if the kids or their families are sick,” said Dr. Gina Song, a pediatrician at Northwestern Medicine Delnor Hospital. “So this year, Santa will be watching you from afar, giving you the gift of good health and will only visit when no one is around on Christmas Eve.”
    • History tells us that, even if Santa is in fact immune to COVID-19, he is vulnerable to a different illness: the flu. He’s gotten sick from it in the past. More than a hundred years ago, on Dec. 6, 1918, the St. Paul Daily News announced that “SANTA CLAUS IS DOWN WITH THE FLU.” That year, Santa was unable to attend many of his big department store visits.
    • So doctors say it’s important for Santa – and kids – to get the flu shot this year, as well as a COVID-19 vaccine, when one becomes available. That will help hospitals avoid a winter “twindemic” of the two illnesses, which would further strain health care professionals already stretched thin.
    • Dr. Peter Hotez, dean of the National School of Tropical Medicine at Baylor College of Medicine in Houston, said he hopes Santa gets vaccinated for the coronavirus when a vaccine is available, given his underlying risk factors and exposures.
    • “I hear the ventilation in Santa’s workshop is not the best, and opening windows in North Pole winters problematic. The good news is that mask compliance there is pretty good, and the elves are committed to social distancing. Mrs. Claus has implemented a program of regular testing and the reindeers now lead contact tracing,” Hotez said.
    • Dr. Greg Poland, director of the Mayo Clinic’s Vaccine Research Group, declared he had just gotten off the phone with the North Pole when he spoke with USA TODAY Thursday. There had been two infections among the elves, but “none of them serious,” he said.
    • “It was a good reminder to the elves about wearing the mask properly. They now do that. It’s mandatory in the North Pole,” Poland said.
    • There have been two rounds of testing, and the elves have spaced out their work stations, Poland said. Toy production is on schedule. No reindeer are sick because they cannot contract COVID-19, Poland said. Santa has canceled his annual Christmas Day celebration this year “because they want everybody to be safe,” Poland said. 
    • “Let’s do the same thing that Santa and the elves are doing. We stay home if we’re not feeling well. When we go outside of the home, we wear a mask and wash our hands,” he said.
    • It’s also important to maintain a positive outlook this holiday season, Poland said.
    • “Christmas is really about what’s in our hearts, and a pandemic can’t take that away from us,” Poland said.

3. Creature Feature

Time Stamp: 52:51

  • The Immortality Key: The Secret History of the Religion with No Name
    • https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250207142
      https://amzn.to/35UYSqF
    • Written by Brian C. Muraresku
      • He graduated Phi Beta Kappa from Brown University with a degree in Latin, Greek and Sanskrit. As an alumnus of Georgetown Law and a member of the New York Bar, he has been practicing law internationally for fifteen years. He lives outside Washington D.C. with his wife and two daughters. In 2016, Muraresku became the founding executive director of Doctors for Cannabis Regulation. Their work has been featured on CNN and ESPN, as well as The Washington Post and San Francisco Chronicle. In arbitration with the NFL in 2018, Muraresku represented the first professional athlete in the United States to seek a therapeutic use exemption for cannabis. The Immortality Key is his debut book.
    • Published by St. Martin’s Press
    • A groundbreaking dive into the role psychedelics have played in the origins of Western civilization, and the real-life quest for the Holy Grail that could shake the Church to its foundations.
    • The most influential religious historian of the 20th century, Huston Smith, once referred to it as the “best-kept secret” in history. Did the Ancient Greeks use drugs to find God? And did the earliest Christians inherit the same, secret tradition? A profound knowledge of visionary plants, herbs and fungi passed from one generation to the next, ever since the Stone Age?
    • There is zero archaeological evidence for the original Eucharist – the sacred wine said to guarantee life after death for those who drink the blood of Jesus. The Holy Grail and its miraculous contents have never been found. In the absence of any hard data, whatever happened at the Last Supper remains an article of faith for today’s 2.5 billion Christians. In an unprecedented search for real answers, The Immortality Key examines the archaic roots of the ritual that is performed every Sunday for nearly one third of the planet. Religion and science converge to paint a radical picture of Christianity’s founding event. And after centuries of debate, to solve history’s greatest puzzle once and for all.
    • Before the birth of Jesus, the Ancient Greeks found salvation in their own sacraments. Sacred beverages were routinely consumed as part of the so-called Ancient Mysteries – elaborate rites that led initiates to the brink of death. The best and brightest from Athens and Rome flocked to the spiritual capital of Eleusis, where a holy beer unleashed heavenly visions for two thousand years. Others drank the holy wine of Dionysus to become one with the god. In the 1970s, renegade scholars claimed this beer and wine – the original sacraments of Western civilization – were spiked with mind-altering drugs. In recent years, vindication for the disgraced theory has been quietly mounting in the laboratory. The constantly advancing fields of archaeobotany and archaeochemistry have hinted at the enduring use of hallucinogenic drinks in antiquity. And with a single dose of psilocybin, the psychopharmacologists at Johns Hopkins and NYU are now turning self-proclaimed atheists into instant believers. But the smoking gun remains elusive.
    • If these sacraments survived for thousands of years in our remote prehistory, from the Stone Age to the Ancient Greeks, did they also survive into the age of Jesus? Was the Eucharist of the earliest Christians, in fact, a psychedelic Eucharist?
    • With an unquenchable thirst for evidence, Muraresku takes the reader on his twelve-year global hunt for proof. He tours the ruins of Greece with its government archaeologists. He gains access to the hidden collections of the Louvre Museum to show the continuity from pagan to Christian wine. He unravels the Ancient Greek of the New Testament with the world’s most controversial priest. He spelunks into the catacombs under the streets of Rome to decipher the lost symbols of Christianity’s oldest monuments. He breaches the secret archives of the Vatican to unearth manuscripts never before translated into English. And with leads from the archaeological chemists at the University of Pennsylvania and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, he unveils the first scientific data for the ritual use of psychedelic drugs in classical antiquity.
    • The Immortality Key reconstructs the suppressed history of women consecrating a forbidden, drugged Eucharist that was later banned by the Church Fathers. Women who were then targeted as witches during the Inquisition, when Europe’s sacred pharmacology largely disappeared. If the scientists of today have resurrected this technology, then Christianity is in crisis. Unless it returns to its roots.
    • Featuring a Foreword by Graham Hancock, the New York Times bestselling author of America Before: The Key to Earth’s Lost Civilization.
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