Abstract Given how rapidly the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has receded from public consciousness since 2021, time is ripe to revisit Samuel Beckett’s Waiting for Godot and Carlos Fuentes’s Aura inform our present historical moment, particularly both texts are concerned with large-scale disappearance, erasure repression of mass-dead by statist economic interests in wake national traumas – po...

Samuel Beckett’s play of 1949 is a landmark of modern theatre. Two tramps, Vladimir and Estragon, await the arrival of the mysterious Godot. He does not come, although other sinister characters pass through. The tramps pass their time in meaningless activities and talk. Described by Beckett as a ‘tragicomedy in two acts’, the play is conventionally regarded as a tale of existentialist angst foc...

We investigate an improvement to GSAT which associates a weight with each clause. GSAT moves to assignments maximizing the weight of satisfied clauses and this weight is incremented when GSAT moves to an assignment in which this clause is unsatisfied. We present results showing that this algorithm and its variants outperform one of the best known modifications of GSAT to date using two metrics:...

Eric Shanteau, who was a member of US Olympic Swim team, heard the three of the most chilling words just one week before the US Olympic trials: “You have cancer.” Regardless of his misfortune, he decided to compete in the 2008 Summer Olympics, where he posted a personal best time in the 200 meter breaststroke. After returning to his hometown, he underwent surgery and has become a legendary canc...

To wait is to live. Every aspect of our existence requires, demands and includes waiting. We wait for our research grants to be funded, our manuscripts to be accepted. For those of us who are on the way up, we wait to be promoted based on our scholarly involvement. Some of us, in fact, most of us are professors of various ranks and disciplines in universities throughout the world. Regardless of...

Let us not waste our time in idle discourse! Let us do something, while we have the chance! It is not every day that we are needed. Not indeed that we personally are needed. Others would meet the case equally well, if not better. To all mankind they were addressed, those cries for help still ringing in our ears! But at this place, at this moment of time, all mankind is us, whether we like it or...

BACKGROUND This study presents an alternative assessment method for establishing the demand for an old age home among a community-dwelling older population. The instrument, called 'orientation towards admission into an old age home', represents the intensity of the need for admission as expressed by older people themselves. Therefore it is indicative of the 'subjective demand'. METHODS Using ...