There’s a bit of theater sometimes performed in hospital rooms: the play-acting of what’s known as a “slow code.”

A slow code is a half-hearted attempt at CPR. Maybe the doctors will walk, not run, to the room. Maybe they’ll push a little less hard on the person’s chest. Whatever the method, it’s pretend CPR. They are not trying to resuscitate the patient. Instead, they are trying to limit the harm and brutality that might otherwise characterize the inevitable death of the patient while also avoiding conflict with grieving families struggling to face the inevitable.

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Seeing a visibly ill avatar in virtual reality activates a neuroimmune pathway in brain areas related to peripersonal space and prompts an immune response, a small new study suggests.

I travel a lot by air — far more than is probably rational or reasonable. I’m on a plane at least every 8 to 10 days. And lately, I’ve been seeing something I haven’t seen in a long time, outside of the height of the pandemic: empty seats on airplanes.

Why Airfares Are Dropping and How You Can Benefit

While many flights are still packed, I’m consistently seeing available seats, especially on flights to Europe. Airlines are pulling back service left and right. Just recently, I saw an article about how many flights Southwest has been actively reducing, right in the middle of summer.

Normally, airlines don’t cut service until the traditional fall or spring schedule changes, but technology now allows them to make these adjustments even during peak season. They’re scrambling to get the supply of seats down because, frankly, there are just too many seats in the air.

This is particularly true for international travel. In preparation for discussing this, I was looking at seat maps for popular routes to and from Europe for flights departing tomorrow. I checked flights to and from London, Paris, and Rome, and it’s truly “freaky weird” to see so many available seats where you used to see none the day before a flight.

It’s absolutely a slump, and the airfares popping up for the fall show some panic. Especially out of New York, which I consider the bargain capital of America for flights to Europe, I’ve seen round-trip fares published in the $200s, $300s, and even $400s for fall travel. These are typically low, “winter-kind” fares showing up for fall travel, which is highly unusual. Eventually, airlines will pull planes out of service or reassign them to different routes, but for now, even domestic travel is soft.

Your Wallet’s New Best Friend: The Art of Re-Shopping Your Flights

I’ve been recommending this since spring: if you’ve booked a ticket in advance, re-shop that ticket! On most fares originating from the United States, even those going to other countries, there’s no penalty to change your flight. If you find a lower fare, you can rebook and get a credit toward future travel.

In fact, I have a trip coming up in September, and the fare dropped by 37% from when I originally booked it. I rebooked it in late June and got that much lower fare. You know what? I’m going to re-shop it again and again to see if the fare comes down even more. Then I’ll have a credit that I can use for other travel. I believe I have until March of next year to use that credit.

This re-shopping strategy is unusual for airfare but completely routine for car rentals and hotels. However, in this current slump, because of all the “tariff wars” (or rather, the supply-demand imbalance), you have the potential to get a lower fare for where you’re going. Try it! Your wallet may just thank you.

The Future of Flying: Standing Seats?

Speaking of your wallet, I know many people hate Ryanair, the largest airline in Europe. While they are an incredibly well-run company, they’re also always trying to “pick your pocket” with other fees. But there’s something they’re pushing that I know many people think I’m nuts about: Ryanair wants to sell standing seats on shorter flights, those up to 90 minutes.

They’d be able to put a lot more people on the plane, and it’s a fully safe thing. You’d wear a harness and kind of stand and lean against a support. They can get all these extra people on there, and honestly, I love the idea! Why not, if I’m on a flight for an hour or so? Being able to save money, I’d absolutely love to stand. Those of you who watch my YouTube show know I stand the whole time; I don’t sit. And sitting on your rear end isn’t great for your health anyway.

Would you do it if you could get a much cheaper fare? We may find out soon enough.

The post Why It’s a Great Time To Get a Cheap Ticket to Europe appeared first on Clark Howard.

Our perceptual relationship with the world works because we trust prior stories. We could not fully perceive a tree if we did not know (because others have told us) that it is the product of a long growth process and that it does not grow overnight. This certainty is part of our “understanding” that a tree is a tree, and not a flower. We accept a story that our ancestors have handed down to us as being true, even though today we call these ancestors scientists.

No one lives in the immediate present; we link things and events thanks to the adhesive function of memory, both personal and collective (history and myth). We rely upon a previous tale when, in saying “I,” we do not question that we are the natural continuation of an individual who (according to our parents or the registry office) was born at that precise time, on that precise day, in that precise year, and in that precise place. Living with two memories (our individual memory, which enables us to relate what we did yesterday, and the collective memory, which tells us when and where our mother was born), we often tend to confuse them, as if we had witnessed the birth of our mother (and also Julius Caesar’s) in the same way we “witnessed” the scenes of our own past experiences.

This tangle of individual and collective memory prolongs our life, by extending it back through time, and appears to us as a promise of immortality. When we partake of this collective memory (through the tales of our elders or through books), we are like Borges gazing at the magical Aleph—the point that contains the entire universe: in the course of our lifetime we can, in a way, shiver along with Napoleon as a sudden gust of cold wind sweeps over Saint Helena, rejoice with Henry V over the victory at Agincourt, and suffer with Caesar as a result of Brutus’ betrayal.

And so it is easy to understand why fiction fascinates us so. It offers us the opportunity to employ limitlessly our faculties for perceiving the world and reconstructing the past. Fiction has the same function that games have. In playing, children learn to live, because they simulate situations in which they may find themselves as adults. And it is through fiction that we adults train our ability to structure our past and present experience.

From Umberto Eco’s lecture “Fictional Protocols,” part of Six Walks in the Fictional Woods.

The removal counteracts the goals of the longitudinal study by “pretending that some aspects of adolescent brain development don’t exist,” says sex differences researcher Nicola Grissom.