Brazil ⁱ/brəˈzɪl/ (Portuguese: Brasil, IPA: [bɾaˈziw]), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: República Federativa do Brasil,  listen (help·info)), is the largest country in South America. It is the world's fifth largest country, both by geographical area and by population with over 192 million people. It is the only Portuguese-speaking country in the Americas and the largest lusophone country in the world.

Bounded by the Atlantic Ocean on the east, Brazil has a coastline of 7,491 km (4,655 mi). It is bordered on the north by Venezuela, Guyana, Suriname and the French overseas region of French Guiana; on the northwest by Colombia; on the west by Bolivia and Peru; on the southwest by Argentina and Paraguay and on the south by Uruguay. Numerous archipelagos form part of Brazilian territory, such as Fernando de Noronha, Rocas Atoll, Saint Peter and Paul Rocks, and Trindade and Martim Vaz. It borders all other South American countries except Ecuador and Chile.

Brazil was a colony of Portugal from the landing of Pedro Álvares Cabral in 1500 until 1815, when it was elevated to the rank of kingdom and the United Kingdom of Portugal, Brazil and the Algarves was formed. The colonial bond was in fact broken in 1808, when the capital of the Portuguese colonial empire was transferred from Lisbon to Rio de Janeiro, after Napoleon invaded Portugal.Independence was achieved in 1822 with the formation of the Empire of Brazil, a unitary state governed under a constitutional monarchy and a parliamentary system. The country became a presidential republic in 1889, when a military coup d'état proclaimed the Republic, although the bicameral legislature, now called Congress, dates back to the ratification of the first constitution in 1824. Its current Constitution, formulated in 1988, defines Brazil as a Federal Republic. The Federation is formed by the union of the Federal District, the 26 States, and the 5,564 Municipalities.

The Philosophy of Velocity is a 2006 concept album by the rock band Brazil. Many of the songs on the album are lyrical short stories and vignettes, focusing on themes of isolation, paranoia, anxiety, and the supernatural with an emphasis on absurdity, dark humor, and camp. It has been recently hailed by critics as a crucial maturation and vital realization of Brazil’s vision and artistic approach, which combines a variety of genres, eras, and sound sources into a unique but recognizably signature style. It is the first Brazil record listing the band as a co-producer.

The Philosophy of Velocity is conceptually a two-layered work. The meta-layer focuses on an unnamed author trying to write a novel but suffering a severe mental block. This is alluded to in the opening sequence with the sound of typing over a delicate piano etude. The author eventually falls into bouts of paranoia and delusional psychoses, episodes of which are illustrated in several places on the album including the backwards speech between The Vapours and Cameo, the haunting whispers and absurd lyricism of Strange Days, and the disconcerting sub-harmonic frequencies used in The Remarkable Cholmondley Chute System. The second layer focuses on the songs as individual short stories or small vignettes, the subjects of which form various fragments of the author’s reality. The album ends as it starts, with the nameless author continuing to type away at his novel that will never be completed. Singer and lyricist Jonathon Newby said his major influences on the album were Nick Cave, Tom Waits, Mark Smith, Captain Beefheart, Bob Dylan, and the poetry of Edward Gorey.

Paul Virilio (born 1932 in Paris, France) is a cultural theorist and urbanist. He is best known for his writings about technology as it has developed in relation to speed and power, with diverse references to architecture, the arts, the city and the military.

Paul Virilio was born in Paris in 1932. He grew up in the northern coastal French region of Brittany. The Second World War made a big impression on him as the city of Nantes fell victim to the German Blitzkrieg, became a port for the German navy and was bombarded by British and American planes. The "war was his university". After training at the Ecole des Metiers d' Art, Virilio specialised in stained-glass artwork, and worked alongside Henri Matisse in churches in Paris. In 1950, he converted to Christianity. After being conscripted into the army during the Algerian war of independence, Virilio studied phenomenology with Maurice Merleau-Ponty at the Sorbonne.

In 1958, Virilio conducted a phenomenological inquiry into military space and the organization of territory, particularly concerning the Atlantic Wall—the 15,000 Nazi bunkers built during World War II along the coastline of France and designed to repel any Allied assault. In 1963 he began collaborating with the architect Claude Parent and formed the Architecture Principe group. (Among the small group of interns were the architects Francois Seigneur and Jean Nouvel.) After participating in the May 1968 uprising in Paris, Virilio was nominated Professor by the students at the Ecole Speciale d' Architecture. In 1973 he became Director of Studies. In the same year, Virilio became director of the magazine L'Espace Critique. In 1975 he co-organized the Bunker Archeologie exhibition at the Decorative Arts Museum in Paris, a collection of texts and images relating to the Atlantic Wall. Since then he has been widely published, translated and anthologised.