Breaking Infinity

This memoir is set in the 1970s when divorce rates were at a historic all-time high in the United States, rising from 3.5 per 1000 in 1970 to 5.3 per 1000 divorces by 1979. Lina's world turned into a before and after when her parents divorced in 1978 and she was left to help her father raise the younger siblings. The guilt she felt and lack of control over her home environment internalized, developing into an eating disorder as Lina thought that food was the only thing she had control of in her life. Four years later, her father, at his wit's end, tells her, "Get the hell out of this house!" With only her backpack and guitar, she leaves home at the tender age of sixteen. She uses her beauty, wit, and charm to make it on the streets, thus becoming exposed to the darker side of existence. During this tumultuous time, Lina bounces from place to place, living where she can, and running away from herself. By the age of eighteen, she is living in Philadelphia alone and addicted to meth. She decides to transform her life upon awakening from a drug overdose coma in the hospital. She moves in with David, her older brother, but he continues to party. Lina is left with a decision-does she try to save her brother, or save herself?

The Genesis of Genesis is about the mytho-empiricism of creation—cosmogony. In its attempt to compare the mythologies of the ancient Eastern Mediterranean cultures—Egyptian, Greek, Judaic and Mesopotamian—the Judaic cosmogony of genesis, which is unique in its reliance on the word as creative agent, is contrasted with the Egyptian, Greek and Mesopotamian mythologies, which are more deterministic.

Since its inception philosophical thought has been fixated by death. Death, as much as life, has been the unrelenting driving force behind some of history’s greatest thinkers. Yet, for Emil Cioran, a Romanian-French philosopher, even philosophy cannot attempt to understand nor contain the inevitable unknown. Considered to be an anti-philosopher, Cioran approached and reflected on the human experience with a despairing pessimism. His works are characterised by a brooding, fatalistic temperament that reveals and defines itself in his irony, black humour and inimitable style. Although Cioran’s later works have received much scholarly recognition, little attention has been paid to the texts he wrote in his adolescent. Grounded in the historical context of interwar Romania, this book presents for the first time an analysis of the little-known works of this pioneering Romanian thinker. Deeply affected by his upbringing, this book offers a glimpse into Cioran’s first attempts to delve into philosophical enterprise, before turning its attention to his later works, On the Heights of Despair (1934), The Transfiguration of Romania (1936) and Twilight of thoughts (1940; written in France). Using both the French and Romanian editions of these works, but also their original manuscripts, this volume seeks to provide a re-reading that takes language rather than a social or political critique as its focal point. As an important and provocative contribution to the existing literature on Cioran, this book will be an essential point of reference for students and researchers, alike.

Filling the gap for a treatment of the subject as an advanced course in theoretical physics with a huge potential for future applications, this monograph discusses aspects of these applications and provides theoretical methods and tools for their investigation. Throughout this coherent and up-to-date work the main emphasis is on classical plasmas at high-temperatures, drawing on the experienced author's specialist background. As such, it covers the key areas of magnetic fusion plasma, laser-plasma-interaction and astrophysical plasmas, while also including nonlinear waves and phenomena. For master and PhD students as well as researchers interested in the theoretical foundations of plasma models.

Some theoreticians contemplate and formulate the physics of tachyons, which are hypothetical particles, that would always travel faster than light but which could never slow down to the speed of light just as they anticipate sublight speed massive particles never being able to achieve light speed. So my theoretical work on the physics and kinematics of light-speed massive systems sets me apart from general trends in the theoretical field of relativistic astronautics. This book is a continuation of how and why we may be able to, at some future time, travel at the speed of light.