Demon's Crest (Japanese: デモンズブレイゾン 魔界村 紋章編, Hepburn: Demonzu Bureizon Makaimura Monshō-hen, "Demon's Blazon: Demon World Village Crest Volume") is a side-scrolling platform video game developed and published by Capcom for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System. It is the third video game starring Firebrand (an enemy character from the Ghosts 'n Goblins series, known as "Red Arremer" in the Japanese version), following Gargoyle's Quest and Gargoyle's Quest II.
The game's story revolves around the Crests, six magical stones which preside over their respective elements (Fire, Earth, Water, Air, Time and Heaven). When all crests are combined, the Crest of Infinity will appear, allowing its holder infinite power and the ability to conquer all realms with it. The demons of the Demon Realm have long fought each other for possession of the Crests, five of which have since fallen into the hands of a red demon named Firebrand. Seeking infinite power, Firebrand challenges a Demon Dragon for the Crest of Heaven and is victorious, though badly wounded. In his weakness, a rival demon named Phalanx ambushes Firebrand and takes all the Crests except the Fire Crest which shattered into five shards.
World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War (2006) is an apocalyptic horror novel by Max Brooks. The novel is a collection of individual accounts narrated by an agent of the United Nations Postwar Commission, following the devastating global conflict against the zombie plague. Other passages record a decade-long desperate struggle, as experienced by people of various nationalities. The personal accounts also describe the resulting social, political, religious, and environmental changes.
World War Z is a follow-up to Brooks' "survival manual" The Zombie Survival Guide (2003), but its tone is much more serious. It was inspired by The Good War: An Oral History of World War Two (1984) by Studs Terkel, and by the zombie films of George A. Romero. Brooks used World War Z to comment on government ineptitude and American isolationism, while also examining survivalism and uncertainty. The novel was a commercial hit and was praised by most critics.
Its audiobook version, performed by a full cast including Alan Alda, Mark Hamill, and John Turturro, won an Audie Award in 2007. A film inspired by the novel, directed by Marc Forster and starring Brad Pitt, was released in 2013.
A phalanstère (or Phalanstery) was a type of building designed for a utopian community and developed in the early 19th century by Charles Fourier. Fourier named these self-contained communities, ideally consisting of 500–2000 people working together for mutual benefit, after the phalanx, the basic military unit in ancient Greece.
Fourier conceived the phalanstère as an organized building designed to integrate urban and rural features.
The structure of the phalanstère was composed of three parts: a central part and two lateral wings. The central part was designed for quiet activities. It included dining rooms, meeting rooms, libraries and studies. A lateral wing was designed for labour and noisy activities, such as carpentry, hammering and forging. It also hosted children because they were considered noisy while playing. The other wing contained a caravansary, with ballrooms and halls for meetings with outsiders who had to pay a fee in order to visit and meet the people of the Phalanx community. This income was thought to sustain the autonomous economy of the phalanstère. The phalanstère also included private apartments and many social halls. A social hall was defined by Fourier as a seristère.
Trance denotes any state of awareness or consciousness other than normal waking consciousness. Trance states may occur involuntarily and unbidden.
The term trance may be associated with hypnosis, meditation, magic, flow, and prayer. It may also be related to the earlier generic term, altered states of consciousness, which is no longer used in "consciousness studies" discourse.
Trance in its modern meaning comes from an earlier meaning of "a dazed, half-conscious or insensible condition or state of fear", via the Old French transe "fear of evil", from the Latin transīre "to cross", "pass over". This definition is now obsolete.
Wier, in his 1995 book, Trance: from magic to technology, defines a simple trance (p. 58) as a state of mind being caused by cognitive loops where a cognitive object (thoughts, images, sounds, intentional actions) repeats long enough to result in various sets of disabled cognitive functions. Wier represents all trances (which include sleep and watching television) as taking place on a dissociated trance plane where at least some cognitive functions such as volition are disabled; as is seen in what is typically termed a 'hypnotic trance'. With this definition, meditation, hypnosis, addictions and charisma are seen as being trance states. In Wier's 2007 book, The Way of Trance, he elaborates on these forms, adds ecstasy as an additional form and discusses the ethical implications of his model, including magic and government use which he terms "trance abuse".
Trance is an album by American jazz pianist and composer Steve Kuhn recorded in 1974 and released on the ECM label.
The Allmusic review by Thom Jurek awarded the album 4 stars stating "This is jazz that touches on fusion, modal, and the new spirit of the music as ECM came into the 1970s as a player. There is restlessness and calm, tempestuousness and serenity, conflict and resolution, and -- above all -- creativity and vision".
A trance is an altered state of consciousness.
Trance may also refer to: