Affinity Chaos

******************* "Grey, elemental affinity, zero" The Elder announced the result loudly On hearing this, it was like a bolt of lightning struck Grey, he stood there dumbfounded and just stared at the Elder. Shocked voices could be heard from the people and there was some which were also filled with scorn. Grey stood dazed amidst all the noises without any reactions. One word was constantly reverberating in his head, 'How?'. 'Why, why did this happen to me?' Grey asked himself over and over again **************** Unbeknownst to Grey, something greater lies in wait in his body.... *************** Check out the book, leave a review after reading, and also your powerstones. Hope you enjoy this, and Thanks for reading ^_^ P.S: When I started this book I had zero writing experience, so the first chapters aren't that great, although, my writing quality has improved over time. Also, English isn't my first language, so there are some instances where my choice of words are not good enough for what I'm trying to portray. A heads up, the book will be using a medieval setting. My world building is not the best, but it gets better over time, so bear with me on the early chapters! P.S: Cover art not mine I just edited it. If you're the owner and want me to take it down you can notify me.

This volume, in conjunction with the two volumes CICS 0002 and LNCS 4681, constitutes the refereed proceedings of the Third International Conference on Intelligent Computing held in Qingdao, China, in August 2007. The 139 full papers published here were carefully reviewed and selected from among 2,875 submissions. These papers offer important findings and insights into the field of intelligent computing.

Gilles Deleuze once claimed that ‘modern science has not found its metaphysics, the metaphysics it needs.’ The Force of the Virtual responds to this need by investigating the consequences of the philosopher’s interest in (and appeal to) ‘the exact sciences.’ In exploring the problematic relationship between the philosophy of Deleuze and science, the original essays gathered here examine how science functions in respect to Deleuze’s concepts of time and space, how science accounts for processes of qualitative change, how science actively participates in the production of subjectivity, and how Deleuze’s thinking engages neuroscience. All of the essays work through Deleuze’s understanding of the virtual—a force of qualitative change that is ontologically primary to the exact, measurable relations that can be found in and among the objects of science. By adopting such a methodology, this collection generates significant new insights, especially regarding the notion of scientific laws, and compels the rethinking of such ideas as reproducibility, the unity of science, and the scientific observer. Contributors: Manola Antonioli, Collège International de Philosophie (Paris); Clark Bailey; Rosi Braidotti, Utrecht U; Manuel DeLanda, U of Pennsylvania; Aden Evens, Dartmouth U; Gregory Flaxman, U of North Carolina; Thomas Kelso; Andrew Murphie, U of New South Wales; Patricia Pisters, U of Amsterdam; Arkady Plotnitsky, Purdue U; Steven Shaviro, Wayne State U; Arnaud Villani, Première Supérieure au Lycée Masséna de Nice.

Wilhelm Furtw ler left not only some of the greatest interpretations of operatic and symphonic music on record, but also expressed his views on musical issues of the moment in a number of outspoken essays and talks. His writings range from practical matters of performance and interpretation to aesthetic reflections on what he saw as the alarming direction in which music was developing in the wake of Schoenberg and the twelve-tone system of composition. Professor Ronald Taylor has here, for the first time, translated and annotated a selection of Furtw ler's writings covering the four decades from the First World War to the conductor's death in 1954, and prefaced them with an essay on Furtw ler's controversial career and complicated personality. The result is a collection of stimulating pieces with a claim on our attention, made all the greater for reflecting the musical and philosophical ideals of one of the great conductors of the twentieth century.

Hermann Gunkel was a scholar in the generation of the origins of Assyriology, the spectacular discovery by George Smith of fragments of the “Chaldean Genesis,” and the Babel-Bibel debate. Gunkel’s thesis, inspired by materials supplied to him by the Assyriologist Heinrich Zimmern, was to take the Chaoskampf motif of Revelation as an event that would not only occur at the end of the world but had already happened at the beginning, before Creation. In other words, in this theory, one imagines God in Genesis 1 as first having battled Rahab, Leviathan, and Yam (the forces of Chaos) in a grand battle, and only then beginning to create. The problem with Gunkel’s theory is that it did not simply identify common elements in the mythologies of the ancient Near East but imposed upon them a structure dictating the relationships between the elements, a structure that was based on inadequate knowledge and a forced interpretation of his sources. On the other hand, one is not entitled to insist that there was no cultural conversation among peoples who spent the better part of several millennia trading with, fighting, and conquering one another. Creation and Chaos attempts to address some of these issues. The contributions are organized into five sections that address various aspects of the issues raised by Gunekl’s theories.

The modern world is filled with debate and controversy, and science and technology—the most characteristic features of the modern world—are not immune. Science and technology are implicated in many if not all of the issues, troubles, and problems students are likely to come across in their classes and in their everyday lives. Science and technology serve as a primary pathway to understanding front page headlines on everything from war to AIDS, and from oil exploration to global warming. Battleground: Science and Technology examines the most hot-button issues involving science and technology and provides a balanced assessment of the arguments on all sides of the often strident debates. The approximately 100 issues examined in Battleground: Science and Technology include topics in the brain sciences, including the controversies over the cause of autism and the reliability of memory, as well as the debates over parapsychology; debates surrounding information technology, such as only privacy, the impact of video games on social behavior, and the advent of virtual reality; the complexity over drugs and medications, such as the testing of the efficacy of medications, the war on recreational drugs, and the costs of pharmaceutical research; and hot-button topics that are constantly in the news, such as evolution and creationism, DNA testing, stem-cell research, and genetically modified organisms. Each entry provides a list of accessible resources useful for further research.