Difference between revisions of "Chapter 6"

Revision as of 13:39, 17 June 2014

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Tabloid of the Damned
tabloidofthedamned.com redirects to www.thomaspynchon.com
Who made this redirect, and why was it done? Many possibilities, of course. A site administrator, perhaps, neatly intertwining a fictional website in a Pynchon novel with a real site dedicated to studying him, a sort of "Easter egg" for those who cared to look. A casual fan who "just thought it would be cool." Or someone within Pynchon's "team" who slipped in a sly negative editorial comment ("we" are the "damned," reading nothing better than "tabloid" items when we visit such sites) about those who build and read the Pynchon pages, those who might be too obsessed with Pynchon himself or enabling those who are, a reopening of the CNN controversy and things of that sort? I like the first kind of flattering, positive interpretation, but the latter, cutting one could be true. Something to think about. Thanks for the person who made the detailed remarks to the chapter 11 annotation of "tabloidofthedamned" that started this line of thought.

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Carnegie Mellon
Carnegie Mellon University is a private research university in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania.

pari passu
Latin phrase that literally means "with an equal step" or "on equal footing." It is sometimes translated as "ranking equally", "hand-in-hand," "with equal force," or "moving together,"and by extension, "fairly," "without partiality." From WIKI.

Dr. Kriechman
In German, "kriechen" means "to creep" or "to crawl".

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Papa Doble
Known as the Hemingway Daiquiri, the Papa Doble is a drink made using white rum, lime, grapefruit, and maraschino liqueur.

March, who fights against civic fascism, aptly imbibes a cocktail popularized by Ernest Hemingway,
a writer who was famously involved in the Spanish Civil War.

Lincoln Center
A consortium of civic leaders and others led by John D. Rockefeller III built Lincoln Center as part of the "Lincoln Square Renewal Project" during Robert Moses's program of urban renewal in the 1950s and 1960s. Respected architects were contacted to design the major buildings on the site, and over the next thirty years the previously blighted area around Lincoln Center became a new cultural hub. From WIKI.

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chutzpah
Is the quality of audacity, for good or for bad. The Yiddish word derives from the Hebrew word ḥutspâ (חֻצְפָּה), meaning "insolence" or "audacity". The modern English usage of the word has taken on a broader meaning, having been popularized through vernacular use in film, literature, and television. The word is sometimes interpreted—particularly in business parlance—as meaning the amount of courage, mettle or ardor that an individual has. However in more traditional usage, chutzpah is invariably negative in context. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chutzpah

Hermann Göring was right
Hermann Göring was the Nazi founder of the Gestapo. He is credited as saying, "When I hear the word culture, I reach for my Browning!" But he probably didn't say this. The line comes from the play Schlageter by Hanns Johst: "Wenn ich Kultur höre ... entsichere ich meinen Browning!"

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Linus himself
Linus Torvalds (b. 1969) is a Finnish American software engineer, who was the principal force behind the development of the Linux kernel. His personal mascot is a penguin nicknamed Tux, which has been widely adopted by the Linux community as the mascot of the Linux kernel.

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packet monkey
Someone who intentionally inundates a website or network with data packets, resulting in a denial-of-service situation for users of the attacked site or network. Packet monkeys typically use tools created and made available on the Internet by hackers. Unlike a script kiddy, a packet monkey leaves no clues as to who is making the exploit, making the identity of a packet monkey more difficult to trace. In addition, a denial-of-service attack can be launched on a wider scale than attacks performed by script kiddies, making them more difficult to investigate.

Hackers look down on packet monkeys and often describe them as "bottom feeders." Because a packet monkey uses tools created by others, the packet monkey has little understanding of the harm that may be caused. Typically, packet monkey exploits are random and without any purpose other than the thrill of making an effect. Source

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Microsoft LM hash
LM hash, LanMan, or LAN Manager hash is a compromised password hashing function that was the primary hash that Microsoft LAN Manager and Microsoft Windows versions prior to Windows NT used to store user passwords. Support for the legacy LAN Manager protocol continued in later versions of Windows for backward compatibility, but was recommended by Microsoft to be turned off by administrators; as of Windows Vista, the protocol is disabled by default, but continues to be used by some non-Microsoft CIFS implementations. From WIKI.

Vice President in Charge of Rectal Discomfort
A pain in the butt

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"Doing business as Streetlight People"
Reference to this lyric from the American rock band Journey's "Don't Stop Believing," from 1981:

Strangers, waiting, up and down
the boulevard
Their shadows searching in the night
Streetlight people, living just to
find emotion

Hiding, somewhere in the night

Slagiatt ... losing the vowel at the end of his name
SLAGIATT is an acronym for "Seemed Like A Good Idea At The Time" often used by programmers when refactoring embarrassing software design decisions. And that's the real reason there's no vowel at the end of Rocky's surname!

"like lyrics in an opera"
Opera singers routinely fail to enunciate words or syllables in the interest of hitting notes or making it all sound better.

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Wayne Gretzky Principle
Steve Jobs: “There’s an old Wayne Gretzky quote that I love. ‘I skate to where the puck is going to be, not where it has been.’ And we’ve always tried to do that at Apple. Since the very very beginning. And we always will.”

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Wells notice
A letter the SEC customarily serves on a prospective defendant prior to bringing a civil enforcement action, providing the target an opportunity to respond. The letter owes its name to the SEC's Wells Committee, which recommended the procedure in 1972. Wikipedia entry

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Further Lane
Through the years East Hampton's wealth has evolved emanating out from the village taking over the farmland that had once been dominated by potato fields. The most dazzling row of mansions remains in the village of East Hampton on the closest road paralleling the ocean along Further Lane and Lily Pond Lane. Wikipedia entry

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che si duce
Italian greeting: "what's up?", "how's it going?".

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Nero d'Avola
A wine from Sicily.

Una furtiva lagrima
Famous aria (technically a "romanza") from the opera L'elisir d'amore, by Donizetti.

"Un gazz"
Italian, literally "dick," but used like the exclamation, "shit". Also employed by Pynchon in V.

Greylock
Greylock Partners is one of the oldest venture capital firms, founded in 1965, with committed capital of over $2 billion under management. The firm focuses on early stage companies in the consumer, enterprise software and infrastructure as well as semiconductor sectors. From WIKI.

Lucky Luciano
Charles "Lucky" Luciano was an Italian-born American mobster. Luciano is considered the father of modern organized crime in the United States for splitting New York City into five different Mafia crime families and the establishment of the first Commission. He was the first official boss of the modern Genovese crime family. He was, along with his associate Meyer Lansky, instrumental in the development of the National Crime Syndicate in the United States. From WIKI.

OSS
The Office of Strategic Services (OSS) was a United States intelligence agency formed during World War II. It was the wartime intelligence agency, and it was a predecessor of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA). The OSS was formed in order to coordinate espionage activities behind enemy lines for the branches of the United States Armed Forces. From WIKI.

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Longy Zwillman
Abner "Longie" Zwillman (July 27, 1904 - February 27, 1959), known as the "Al Capone of New Jersey," was an early Prohibition gangster, founding member of the "Big Seven" Ruling Commission and a member of the National Crime Syndicate, who was also associated with Murder Incorporated. From WIKI.