Difference between revisions of "Chapter 4"

Revision as of 18:22, 2 August 2018

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Leuzinger High School
Leuzinger High School is a public high school (9th through 12th grades) in Lawndale, California. It opened on January 27, 1931, with an enrollment of 268. It was named after Adolph Leuzinger in recognition of his 25 years of service on the Board of Trustees of the Inglewood Union High School District. The school is in the Centinela Valley Union High School District. As Leuzinger's first senior class graduated while the 1932 Summer Olympics were hosted in and around nearby Los Angeles, the school's mascot became the "Olympians". From WIKI

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statues of the Buddha
The Buddhas of Bamiwam were two 6th century statues of standing buddha carved into the side of a cliff that were destroyed in 2001. Wikipedia

F#ckin rugriders
a "rug rider" is a derogatory term for a person of Middle Eastern / East Indian descent (as in flying carpet).

if the Buddha's in your way . . . it's OK to kill him?
A famous koan attributed to Zen Master Linji: "If you meet the Buddha, kill him."

"If You Meet the Buddha on the Road, Kill Him!"
is also the title of a popular psychology book from the early 1970s, written by a man with the Pynchonesque sounding name of Sheldon P. Kopp.

Wahhabists
Wahhabism is an ultra-conservative branch of Sunni Islam (though some people dispute that a Wahhabi is a Sunni). It is a religious movement among fundamentalist Islamic believers, with an aspiration to return to the earliest fundamental Islamic sources of the Quran and Hadith, with inspiration from the teachings of Medieval theologian Ibn Taymiyyah and early jurist Ahmad ibn Hanbal. From WIKI.

The Brady Bunch
When someone once asked Pynchon's sister, "What's your brother likely to be doing right now?", she reportedly said "Watching The Brady Bunch." Source The episode where Jan gets a wig is titled "The New Jan Brady." It's also discussed on Inherent Vice Wiki (page 310):

"What kind of wig?"

"Brunette, I think. She gets tired of being a blonde?"

"Tell me about that. Still not the same as changing your politics, I guess."

Here's the clip...

krav maga
Krav Maga is a tactical martial system developed in Israel that consists of a wide combination of techniques sourced from boxing, Muay Thai, Wing Chun, Judo, jiu-jitsu, wrestling, and grappling, along with realistic fight training. Krav Maga is known for its focus on real-world situations and extremely efficient and brutal counter-attacks. It was derived from street-fighting skills developed by Slovakian-Israeli martial artist Imi Lichtenfeld, who made use of his training as a boxer and wrestler, as a means of defending the Jewish quarter against fascist groups in Bratislava in the mid-to-late 1930s. In the late 1940s, following his immigration to Israel, he began to provide lessons on combat training to what was to become the IDF, who went on to develop the system that became known as Krav Maga. It has since been refined for civilian, police and military applications. From WIKI.

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Disrespect and The Contaminator
Other superheroes invented by Pynchon include Fatal Four in Gravity's Rainbow... any others?

krav maga... kidon
a martial art developed in Israel. Kidon is the name of an alleged secret department within Israel's Mossad. Wikipedia

Emma Levin, who's rumored to be ex-Mossad.
An allusion to the NCIS character Ziva David, an ex-Mossad, deadly, female agent?

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Shabtai Shavit
Shabtai Shavit was director general of the Mossad from 1989 to 1996. Shavit first joined the Israel Defense Forces, where he served in the Sayeret Matkal. From 1958 to 1959, he was military governor of the Southern Command. In 1964, he joined the Mossad, where he worked his way up to director general. From WIKI.

A store something like Fairway...
Fairway Market is an American grocery chain. Founded in the 1930s, it is one of the United States' highest grossing food retailers per square foot with 14 million customers per year. Fairway has had significant store expansion in the New York area, with 13 locations in the tri-state area including 13 food markets and 3 wine and spirit shops. The flagship store still occupies the original Broadway location at West 74th Street on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, with larger locations in Harlem; the Red Hook neighborhood of Brooklyn; Paramus, New Jersey; Plainview, Long Island; Pelham Manor, New York; Stamford, Connecticut; and Woodland Park, New Jersey. From WIKI.

Fresser
Glutton (German and Yiddish)

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What Giuliani would call quality-of-life issues
This being Spring 2001 it is the final days of the reign of Giuliani whose infamous application of "Broken Windows" theory of criminology still carries currency today.

For more information see Wikipedia "Broken windows theory" [1]

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what Bob Barker might call 'right'
Bob Barker hosted a TV game show called The Price is Right.

VC
Venture Capitalist. Someone invests money to support new companies or projects.

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Professionally D and D
Deaf and dumb. Could also be a pun on Dungeons & Dragons (D&D).

preempt
pre-emptive bid. Vyrva's company is presumably shopping itself around, planning to sell some or all of itself to the highest bidder. It looks like hashslingerz is hoping to avoid a competitive auction, and has made them a take-it-or-leave-it buyout offer for 100% of the company. This in turn would suggest that hashslingerz believes Vyrva's company has underestimated the true value of their software and hopes to do a deal for a price that seems generous but is actually a steal.

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IPO
Initial Public Offering. Up to this point, Vyrva's company has been privately owned by the founders and probably a handful of investors or venture capitalists who have lent them money while they were developing their software. The IPO would sell a large fraction (usually more than half) of the company to the public, with the shares being traded on a stock exchange such as NASDAQ. This is usually a cash windfall for the original investors. "red herring" suggests that the management does not want to become public just yet, and has been circulating false rumors about an IPO, possibly to get a better deal for more private funding from the venture capialists and private investors. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Initial_public_offering

Beneish model
A math model that identifies whether a company has manipulated its earnings using said company's financial statements.

tarball
a compressed archive containing all of the source code. Tar is the standard compression format for source code, rather than zip or rar. Often used in linux and other open source projects.

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…the Princess Diana Beanie Baby?
Beanie Babies are a line of popular stuffed animals, made by Ty Warner Inc., which was later renamed as Ty Inc. in late 1993. Each toy has an inner "posable lining" and is stuffed with plastic pellets (or "beans") rather than conventional stuffing (see PVC and PE), giving Beanie Babies a flexible feel.http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beanie_Babies

Diana, Princess of Wales died on August 31, 1997. Warner announced the Beanie Baby Princess on October 29, 1997 in honor of Princess Diana.[10] Warner said that all proceeds would be donated to the Diana, Princess of Wales Memorial Fund. The Princess Diana Beanie Baby was sent to vendors to distribute in the second week of December 1997. Some vendors had to wait until February 1998. Only 12 Beanie Baby Princesses were released to each vendor initially, but this changed due to strong demand.