Difference between revisions of "M"

Revision as of 22:09, 12 June 2007

Macassar Oil
16; Macassar oil is an oil used primarily by men in Victorian and Edwardian times to smooth their hair. It was advertised as containing oil from Macassar, which is the former name of Ujung Pandang, a district on the island of Celebes in Indonesia. Exotic hair oil was quite the rage in the first half of the 19th century, another popular hair pomade being made from bear fat! (This gave rise to the curious practice of placing stuffed bears outside English barber shops.) ^[1]; Wikipedia entry

Macchiavelli, Niccolò di Bernardo dei (1469-1527)
669; an Italian political philosopher, musician, poet and romantic comedic playwright. He is a figure of the Italian Renaissance and a central figure of its political component, most widely known for his treatises on realist political theory (The Prince) on the one hand and republicanism (Discourses on Livy) on the other. In The Prince Macchiavelli describes the arts by which a Prince (a ruler) can retain control of his realm. He focuses primarily on what he calls the principe nuovo or "new prince", under the assumption that a hereditary prince has an easier task since the people are accustomed to him. All a hereditary prince needs to do is carefully maintain the institutions that the people are used to; a new prince has a much more difficult task since he must stabilize his newfound power and build a structure that will endure. This task requires the Prince to be publicly above reproach but privately may require him to do things of an evil nature in order to achieve the greater good; 669; Italian "facility for creeping about" 706; Wikipedia

Macedonian Question
690; The dispute between Greece and the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia (FYROM) is a symbolic struggle concerning legitimate rights over "Macedonia"-- the name, the territory, and the loyalty of its inhabitants. The dispute was created by two conflicting national narratives. In the Balkans, nation-building has emphasized particularistic over universalistic criteria. Local national narratives were instrumental in establishing the legitimate possession of a territory by a particular ethnic group. Historically, these narratives are tied to local nationalisms since their function is to designate a territory as the exclusive homeland of a particular nation. The Macedonian narrative views Macedonia as occupied by the Macedonian nation and suggests the existence of national minorities in Bulgaria and Greece. The Greek narrative does not acknowledge the existence of a Macedonian nation and considers the existence of a Macedonian minority within Greece to be a manifestation of Macedonian irredentism. The Macedonian narrative directly questions the Greek narrative's assumption of historical continuity. The strong Greek reaction against FYROM's declaration of independence is a response to this implicit threat to modern Greek identity ^[2]; 697; 845; 871;

Mach, Ernst (1838-1916)
412; 616; Austrian physicist and philosopher, best known as namesake of the Mach number. Mach number, M, is the ratio of the speed of flow of a gas to the speed of sound. When M = 1, it means the gas flow speed reaches the sonic speed; M > 1 the gas flows at supersonic speed and M < 1 subsonic speed. When Concord jetliner cruised at M = 2.2 that means she was flying at the speed of 2.2 times the speed of sound. Wikipedia entry.

"Macking for a mack"
359; a mack is slang for seducer, usually of women but in this case of potential investors; "mack" is also slang for a pimp. Reef is the bunco steerer, hence a mack in either sense. Stray is steering marks to him, hence acting as his mack.

Madali
756; This refers to Mohammed 'Ali Khan (1822-1841) who ruled the Central Asian state of Khanate of Kokand, ascending to the throne in 1821 at the age of 12. During his reign, the Khanate of Kokand reached its greatest territorial extent.

Madame Butterfly (opera)
567;

Magdika
802; "blond wife of a Hungarian cavalry officer" with whom Reef is sleeping

Magic Crystal
133;

magnetism
97; 121;

Mags and Nuncs and Matins
497; different types of canticles

Magyakan
143; "a shaman of great regional fame ... who has been active on behalf of the Ilimpiya" 775; disappears after Tunguska, 785;

Mahdi
29; "the expected one" - a Muslim leader who assumes a messianic role; The mahdi in V.

mail
173; DISCUSSION

Mainan Tant Gras Hall
369; concert saloon in New Orleans

Manufactures and Liberal Arts Building
24; at the Chicago World's Fair

Malus, Etienne-Louis (1775-1812)
126; "Napoleonic army engineer and physicist [...] looking through a piece of Iceland spar [...] discovered polarized light"; Wikipedia entry

Manicheans
437-39; Followers of Mani, who taught that the universe is controlled by two antagonistic powers, light or goodness (identified with God), and darkness, chaos, or evil. One of Mani's claims was that, though Christ had been sent into the world to restore it to light and banish darkness, His apostles had perverted his doctrine, and he, Mani, was sent as the Paraclete to restore it; Wikipedia entry

Manning, Professor Henry Parker (1859-1956)
511; In 1889 he entered Johns Hopkins University to study mathematics, astronomy and physics. When he received his Ph.D. degree in 1891, his first printed paper had already appeared in the American Journal of Mathematics. He was appointed instructor in mathematics at Brown that same year, and “with his advent,” Professor Raymond C. Archibald would later write, “a new era in the development of mathematics at Brown was ushered in.” From 1893 to 1908 Manning offered courses in higher mathematics never previously available at Brown, courses with names like “Theory of functions: algebraic functions, Riemann surfaces, and Abelian functions,” “Substitutions and transformation groups,” and “Quaternions, non-Euclidean geometry, and hyperspace.” After 1908 there were others in the department able to teach higher mathematics. His publications included Non-Euclidean Geometry in 1901, the first English language text in this subject, Irrational Numbers and their Representation by Sequences and Series in 1906, and Geometry of Four Dimensions in 1914. [1]

Mantegna, Andrea (1431-1506)
725; an Italian Renaissance artist. A serious student of Roman archaeology and son-in-law of Jacopo Bellini. Like other artists of the time, Mantegna experimented with perspective as he thought best, e.g., by lowering the horizon in order to create a sense of greater monumentality. At the age of eleven he became the apprentice of Francesco Squarcione, Paduan painter. Squarcione, whose original vocation was tailoring, appears to have had a remarkable enthusiasm for ancient art, and a faculty for acting. Like his famous compatriot Petrarca, Squarcione was something of a fanatic for ancient Rome: he travelled in Italy, and perhaps Greece, collecting antique statues, reliefs, vases, etc., forming a collection of such works, making drawings from them himself, and throwing open his stores for others to study from, and then undertaking works on commission for which his pupils no less than himself were made available. As many as 137 painters and pictorial students passed through his school, established towards 1440 and which became famous all over Italy. Mantegna was Squarcione's favorite pupil. Squarcione taught Mantegna the Latin language and instructed him to study fragments of Roman sculpture. He also preferred forced perspective; Wikipedia

Mañuela
642; waitress at Doña Cecilia; also the name assumed by the prostitute Major Marvy is engaging just before his orchidectomy in GR.

Maps
town becomes an unreadable, 461;

maragogype
638; a kind of arabica coffee with grains twice to 3 times as big as arabica grains. In Mexico, it is grown at 1400 meters high in the chiapas State close to the Pacific coast and the Guatemala border; sweet and nicely shaped;

Marcello
667; with Ruperta

Marching Academy Harmonica Band
418-424; "aberration in [Chums of Chance's] history"

Mar-Fuad, Al
757; "noted Uyghur trouble-maker"; the Uyghur are a Turkic people of Central Asia. They are one of China's 56 officially recognized ethnicities. Wikipedia

Marin, Officer C.
477; reporting officer at cantina where Sloat was killed by Frank Traverse

Marinetti
584; Futurists; 587;

Marx, Groucho (Julius)
467-468; Wikipedia entrySee also Julius

Marx, Karl (1818-1883)
359; immensely influential philosopher, political economist, and socialist revolutionary. While Marx addressed a wide range of issues, he is most famous for his analysis of history in terms of class struggles, summed up in the opening line of the introduction to the Communist Manifesto: "The history of all hitherto existing society is the history of class struggles." 624. Wikipedia entry

Mascaregna
"piratically bearded youth" with Tancredi, in Venice;

Mascotte
3, 128

Maskelyne cabinet
571;

Mathematics
122; 147;

Matteawan
145; Matteawan State Hospital, originally the Asylum for Insane Criminals in Auburn, relocated to the village of Matteawan (between the Hudson River and the Fishkill Mountains) in 1891 and renamed the following year.

Mauve
226; 269; See also Color

Mavrovlachi of Croatia
870; "Vlado's own"; the Morlachs, aka the Mavrovlachi ("Black Vlachs"), were a population of Vlach shepherds that lived in the Dinaric Alps (western Balkans in modern use), constantly migrating in search for better pastures for their sheep flocks. They were probably a blend of Romanized indigenous peoples and Roman colonists. Wikipedia

The adjective "black" is used here with the meaning of "northern", this metaphor probably deriving from the Turkic practice of naming cardinal directions after colours.

Maxim whirling machines
27;

Maxwell Field Equations
58; In electromagnetics, Maxwell's equations are a set of four equations, developed by James Clerk Maxwell, that describe the behavior of both the electric and magnetic fields, as well as their interactions with matter. Maxwell's four equations express, respectively, how electric charges produce electric fields (Gauss' law), the experimental absence of magnetic monopoles, how currents and changing electric fields produce magnetic fields (the Ampere-Maxwell law), and how changing magnetic fields produce electric fields (Faraday's law of induction). 318; 330; 438; 532; 533; Wikipedia entry

98; Scottish mathematical physicist, born in Edinburgh. Maxwell formulated a set of equations expressing the basic laws of electricity and magnetism and developed the Maxwell distribution in the kinetic theory of gases. He was the last representative of a younger branch of the well-known Scottish family of Clerk of Penicuik. He is also credited with developing the first permanent colour photograph in 1861. "Treatise on Electricity and Magnetism of 1873", 98; Wikipedia entry

Mayas
The "Mayas" mentioned on p. 389 are probably Mayos.

mayonnaise
284; thunderstorm-proof; 544; cult of, in Belgium; etymology, 545; 560; and potato salad, 1048;

McAdoo, Chevrolette
26;

McDivott, Katie
337; 505;

McGonigal, Bridget
365; a slide in the San Juans named after a mine owner's wife;

McHugh, "Jenny"
932; Ratty's wife, aka Jenny Invert

McHugh, Reginald "Ratty"
491; friend of Cyprian Latewood's; in Vienna, 700; 717-18; in Vienna, 808; in Venice, 865; aka "Reg" 932;

McKim, Mead and White
326; The most dazzling architect triumvirate in America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries was that of of New York City's Charles Follen McKim, William Rutherford Mead, and Stanford White. The brilliance of McKim, Mead, and White changed the course of American architecture. Of the three, it was the genius of Stanford White that most importantly influenced the architectural scene in Buffalo. McKim, Mead, and White was formed in 1878 when Charles Follen McKim (1847-1909) formed a partnership with William Rutherford Mead (1846-1928) and William B. Bigelow. Bigelow retired the following year when Stanford White (1853-1906) joined the firm and the firm's name was established.

McKinley, President William (1843-1901)
109; the 25th President of the United States; figurehead, 109; Wikipedia entry

McTaggart Hall
452; headquarters of Metaphysics Department at Candlebrow

McTaggart, John McTaggart Ellis (1866-1925)
239; a Fellow of Trinity College, Cambridge, from 1891 to 1925; an Idealist metaphysician of great range, invention, precision, and power. McTaggart developed his own, highly original, metaphysical system. In his two-volume Nature of Existence, the most famous element is his argument for the unreality of time. In a famous paper The Unreality of Time (1908), McTaggart had argued that our perception of time is an illusion, and that time itself is merely ideal, 412; professor at Cambridge, 749; "The senior combination-room of a college without a master" 933; Wikipedia entry

McVeety, Con
342; works for R. W. Vibe; "Olio of Oddities" 343; DISCUSSION

Meat
the Chicago Stockyards, 10; "those famous Chicago beefsteaks," 29; Meat Olaf, 129; Meat Olaf, 135; "details of his 'steak'," 182; steaks; "slab o' that bull meat," 337; Alonzo R. Meatman, 405; "the great Lard Scandal of the 80's," 406; "meat lozenges," 444; See also Shambles.

Meat Olaf
129; a fictional Norwegian dish, a variant of meatloaf, perhaps; 135;

Meatman, Alonzo R.
405; (first appearance misspelled "Meattman"); sold Zoot the time machine; 410; 412; lycopodium type, 413; Mr. Ace's tool, 414; at the Harmonica Academy, 419-422;

Meldrum, Bob
282; 383; aka Hair-Trigger Bob, in Colorado. Not much is known about the real life Robert D. Meldrum. Born in 1866 in England, Meldrum walked a fine line between gun-for-hire and law officer and was said to have shot over 14 men. He was employed by the Pinkerton's and was Deputy Town Marshal of Telluride during the early 1900s. Eventually arrested in 1912 for murder, although he only received a sentence of five to seven years in the Wyoming State Penitentiary. "Bad Man" Bob Meldrum

Merriwell, Frank
100; fictional, Yale attending, football playing, pulp magazine character created by Burt L. Standish, alluded to by Kit Traverse.

Metaphor
230, "Death is a region of metaphor"; 299; "passing into metaphorical identities," 418; "some not strictly metaphorical way," 431;

Metropole
705; hotel in Trieste where Derrick Theign stays, previously known as Buon Pastore

Michelson
58; Michelson-Morley Experiment, 59; 132;

Midway Plaisance
29;

Mikimoto, Dr.
114; cultured pearls;

Miklós
913; desk clerk at Grand-Hôtel-Tisza in Szeged;

Minié ball
101; Prior to the development of the minie ball, rifles were not used in combat due to the difficulty in loading. The ammunition used by rifles was the same diameter as the barrel in order for the bullet to engage the groves of the rifled barrel. As a result the ball had to be forced into the barrel. The minie ball, originally designed by Captain Claude-Etienne Minie of France and improved on by manufacturers in the United States, changed warfare. Since the minie ball was smaller than the diameter of the barrel, it could be loaded quickly by dropping the bullet down the barrel. This conical lead bullet had two or three grooves and a conical cavity in its base. The gases, formed by the burning of powder once the firearm was fired, expanded the base of the bullet so that it engaged the rifling in the barrel. Thus, rifles could be loaded quickly and yet fired accurately; 620; From the Smithsonian website

Minkowski, Hermann (1864-1909)
324; mathematician who developed the geometrical theory of numbers and who used geometrical methods to solve difficult problems in number theory, mathematical physics, and the theory of relativity; Hilbert's co-adjutor; at Candlebrow, 458; Wikipedia entry

Mirrors
Isola degli Specchi (Isle of Mirrors), 244; symmetry, 337; 347; 351; 353; 354; Isle of Mirrors "in that Lagoon over in Venice" where they make the "finest conjuror's mirrors" 422; 463; 498; 537; 553; 564; 569; 651; 706; 728; 877;

Miskolci
713; vampirish

Miserere, Vincenzo
569; sales rep from mirror factory

Misha and Grisha
699; in Prater with Cyprian; in Sarajevo, 829;

Mitze
915; best friend of the "horrible little bourgeoise, Heidi" in The Burgher King

MKIV/ODC
541; "Mark Four something or other"; actually, it's the Mark IV Ohmic Drift Compensator, which "regulates how much light is allowed to enter the silvering of the mirror! Special kind of refraction! Calibrated against imaginary index! Dangerous! Of the essence!'" - a component of the Q-weapon; 565;

Modestine ("Moddie")
339; actress Dally's replacing, in New York City; 342;

Mahommedans
772; aka Muslims

Moises
521; "resident Jewish mystic" in Morocco

Moistleigh, Bevis
799; crytographer in Venice;

Mondragön semiautomatics
640; from Germany

Morgan, Blinky
59; "a walking interferometer", 62; Charles "Blinky" Morgan, fur store burglar and cop killer, arrested June 1887, hanged Columbus, Ohio, March 1888; From A History of the City of Cleveland by James Harrison Kennedy; execution of, 65;

Morgan, John Pierpont (J.P.) (1837-1913)
34; J.P. Morgan originally provided Tesla $150,000 (although he needed $1M) in 1900 to build the Wardenclyff laboratory, but abandoned Tesla when he found out what Tesla's true purpose for Wardenclyff was &151; Tesla's vision of free power did not agree with Morgan's financial worldview; From Educate-Yourself.com: "Undreamed of therapeutic applications to improve human health and to eliminate disease conditions could have been achieved fully 100 years ago had Tesla been allowed to complete his commercial development of Radiant Energy. But powerful barons of industry, chiefly in the person of John Pierpont Morgan, colluded to deny him the financial backing he needed and in doing so, effectively denied mankind one of Nature’s most abundant and inexhaustible gifts of free energy"; 326; "safe as the Morgan Bank" 379; a prince of capital, 734;

Morley, Professor Edward
62; and Blinky Morgan, 62;

Moss, Reverend
91; Webb Traverse's minister

Motorcycles
463;

mouchard
560; a police spy;

Mouffette
665; French: "skunk"; Ruperta's sexy poodle

Mount Kailash
769; a peak in the Gangdisê mountains in the Tibet region of China, the source of some of the longest rivers in Asia — the Indus River, the Sutlej River — is considered a sacred place in four religions: Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism and Bön faith. In Hindu mythology, it is considered to be the abode of Lord Shiva. The mountain lies near Lake Manasarowar and Lake Rakshastal in Tibet. Wikipedia

mousmée
560; a type of hydrangea (flower)

Montennuovo, Count
681; "Emperor's chambermaid"

mufti
16; civilian dress worn by a person who is entitled to wear a military uniform

Mulciber, Victor
557; "arms tycoon" at the Kursaal, in Pera (Istanbul); No benign associations with "Mulciber"! Mulciber is an alternative name of the Roman god Vulcan, the god of fire and volcanoes, and the manufacturer of art, arms, iron, and armor for gods and heroes. Mulciber is also the name of a character in John Milton's Paradise Lost, the architect of the demon city of Pandemonium. In the Harry Potter books, Mulciber is a Death Eater, a minor Dark Wizard; 911;

Multiple Worlds or Dimensions
See Lateral World Sets.

Murray Hill
68; in Cleveland

Museums
"Museum of Hat History," 43; 145; "Museum of Museumology," 149-151; "Museum der Monstrositäten, . . . dedicated to the current 'Crisis' in European mathematics," 632; "museum of bad taste" (Hotel Neue Mutzenbacher), 702;

Museums, with their High Culture sensibility and insistence on removing artifacts from the dynamic ebb and flow of culture, serve as a direct contrast to the Chums' popular "dime novels."

Mushtaq
754; Auburon Halfcourt's "colleague of many years"

Music
ukulele: 15 (Miles plays it), 324, 408, 410, 451, 553, 567, 678 (quartet), 684; accordian, 49; 52; 57; 126; singing, 138; in The Inconvenience, 140; 160; 163; 178; 266; 315; "That Göttingen Rag" 324; Tin Pan Alley, 342; harpist, 347; "Her Mother Never Told Her" 347; "Oh, When You Talk That Talk" 349; "Funiculi, Funiculá" 349; La Forza del Destino, 352; in New Orleans, 368; "Jass" 370; "La Cucaracha" 375, 389; 399; song in Lollipop Lounge, 400; 418; "El Capitán" 419; "Whistling Rufus" 419; "My Country 'Tis of Thee" 419; "'Zo Meatman's Gone A-WOL" 420; "At a Georgia Camp Meeting" 423; "After the Ball" 425; 436; Joe Hill's "Pie in the Sky" 463; "For It Is Thou, Lord" 477; hymn-writing, 497-98; "five-pound note" song, 503; 510; 522; 524; "Quizzical Queer Quaternioneer" 534; and Q-waves, 566; Puccini's Madame Butterfly, 567; Borel-Clerc's "La Matchiche" 567; Günther's song, 598; "O Tempora, O Mores" and "The Black Whale of Askalon" 625-26; house band, 642; "Daisy, Daisy" 647; alpenborn figure, 665; Waltzing in Whitechappel 679; liebestod (German: "love death"), 681; "Chinese harmony" 682; "Singing Bird of Spitalfields" 684; "Ritter Georg Hoch!" (old German anthem), 700; Fiakerlieder, 703; Mozart Adagio, 712; 714; 716; "On the Banks of the Wabash, Far Away" 725; 746; 754; drums, 783; Tuvan throat singers, 786; 797; "Nimrod" from Elgar's Enigma Variations, 815; "La Gazza Ladra," "The Volga Boatmen," "Auld Lang Syne," Gonzalo and Millicent, 815; campanile bells, 818; "The Idiotic" 823; 831; "oud, baglamas, and a kind of hammered dulcimer called a santouri" 843; ukes - "I Love You Truly" 866; "Very nice, very nice, very jnice-in-deed, 888; accordians, 891; Brownian motion in waltzing, 902; Austro-Hungarian Blues, 915; Lydian mode, Phrygian mode, 940; Phrygian, 945; 946-47; "Jim Along " on a clarinet, 971; Chinese fourths, 1054; in Lake's dream, 1056; "Bicycle Built for Two" 1067; throat singing, 1079-1080; "jazz-inflected hopak" 1079;

Muspellheim
128; In Norse/Germanic cosmology, Muspellheim is the Land of Fire. It is one of the first two primal worlds created in a vortex around the World Tree, and the collision between Muspellheim and Niflheim - fire and water, fire and ice, heat and cold - created the energy that formed the basis for the other seven worlds; Website on Norse/German cosmology

Myrna
473;

References

1. ↑ Take Our Word For It Website
2. ↑ Victor Roudometof, Nationalism and Identity Politics in the Balkans: Greece and the Macedonian Question, Journal of Modern Greek Studies 14.2 (1996) 253-301