Difference between revisions of "T"

Revision as of 17:18, 24 November 2006

P. G. Tait

324; Scottish mathematician who helped formulate "Knot Theory" (the study of the way a closed curve can be embedded in three dimensional space without intersecting itself. Intuitively, one may "make a knot" by tying a knot in an ordinary piece of string and then fusing together the free ends of the string. Associated with any knot is its knot group which is the fundamental group of the space obtained by removing the knot from the R3 in which it is embedded). He studied at the University of Edinburgh where he studied with James Clerk Maxwell. Beginning in 1854, he taught at Queen's College, Belfast. When Hamilton died in 1865, Tait took over the crusade to give quaternions a leading role in mathematical physics. Biography of P. G. Tait; DISCUSSION

Taklamakan War
444; The Taklamakan (also Taklimakan) is a desert of Central Asia, in the Xinjiang Uyghur Autonomous Region of the People's Republic of China. It is known as the largest sand-only desert in the world. Some references fancifully state that Taklamakan means "if you go in, you won't come out"; others state that it means "Desert of Death" or "Place of No Return". "Makan" is a Turkic word meaning "place", of Arabic origin: the word may mean something different if treated as original pre-Islamic native Turkic; It is crossed at its northern and at its southern edge by two branches of the Silk Road; Wikpedia entry

Talking Creatures
Parrot, 385, 387; rabbits, 579;

Tammanoid
150; creatures, 150; Tammany Hall was the name given to the Democratic Party political machine that played a major role in New York City politics from the 1790s to the 1960s. Wikipedia entry

Tancredi, Andrea
584; Anarchist in Venice, and painter; the "infernal machine" 586; City of Death was a four-part serial in the British science fiction television series Dr. Who, involving time travel and Scaroth. The character Tancredi is the sole surviving member of a civilization called the Jagaroth, and also their saviour. The Doctor has heard of the Jagaroth: they were an evil people who destroyed themselves in a war some 400 million years ago. Tancredi explains that a few escaped in a dilapidated spacecraft and found Earth in a primaeval, lifeless stage of its development. The ship disintegrated upon takeoff and Scaroth tells of how he was fractured in time, splinters of his being were scattered across time and space, all identical, none complete. Read the synopsis of City of Death

Tarahumare Indians
23; Indian tribe of Northern New Mexico, in the Sierra Madres; 388; About the Tarahumare Indians

Tarot
186; 253; Hanged Man (XII), 605-06; "Number XV, The Devil" 686;

Tate, Professor
131; three dimensions

Tatzelwurm
655; a stubby cryptid, a rumored animal two to six feet in length, possessing two front legs, while the rest of the body resembles that of a snake. Local folklore says the creature breathes deadly fumes that can kill a person. The creature has been said to exist for hundreds of years in tales of the Alps of Austria, Bavaria and Switzerland; "a snake with paws" 655; speaks, 659; Wikpedia entry

Tavernier-Gravet slide rules
497; Tavernier-Gravet were preeminent Parisian makers of logarithmic slide rules (an analog computer) in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Originally Lenoir, the firm became Gravet-Lenoir, then Tavernier-Gravet.

Tawil Balak
521; bar in Morocco

Tears of Job
"sky-pale translucent seeds" 394;

Teatro Malibran
355; in Venice

Telluric Interior
114;

Ten-Day Miner
302; The terms "ten-day miner," "ten-day man," "ten-dayer" and "ten-day stiff" are common names for the "hobo miner," who worked in a camp only long enough to get a roadstake before setting out for the next camp. Such miners are also commonly referred to as "boomers," "ramblers," and "floaters," and less commonly as "grubstakers." An older designation, dating from the early mining history of the West ... is "Overlander." From "The Folklore, Customs, and Traditions of the Butte Miner" by Wayland D. Hand, California Folk Quaterly, Vol. 5, No.1 (Jan 1946), pp.1-25.

Tennyson
535;

Terapia
570;

Teresa
87; girl Webb fancies on his way to Colorado

Terrorism
85; "monsters that Did the Deed" 85; innocent victims, 87; "radius of annihilation" 95;

Tesla, Dr. Nikola (1856-1943)
33; 97 - "Tesla logged in his diary on July 3, 1899 that a separate resonance transformer tuned to the same high frequency as a larger high-voltage resonance transformer would transceive energy from the larger coil, acting as a transmitter of wireless energy, which was used to confirm Tesla's patent for radio during later disputes in the courts. These air core high-frequency resonate coils were the predecessors of systems from radio to radar and medical magnetic resonance imaging devices." from this nice Tesla page - This information was later used to confirm his patent for radio which he received posthumously in 1946, 3 years after his death - from this Tesla page; Kit Traverse working for, 97; 326; tower, 401; 425; Wikipedia entry; Read this article about Tesla's Death Ray and the Tunguska Event...

Tesseract
633; four-dimensional analog of a cube;

Theign, Derrick
701; "tall and careworn fuctionary" in Vienna; In Henry James' novel The Outcry, there's a widowed Lord Theign, who to cover the gambling debts of his daughter Kitty Imber, is planning to sell his beautiful painting Duchess of Waterbridge by Sir Joshua Reynolds to American billionaire Breckinridge Bender; code name "Good Shepherd" in Vienna, 705; Cyprian Latewood's "field advisor" 705;

Theosophy
630;

They
410; 483; 719;

Thick Bush
8; town where Chick Counterfly was recognized as the son of "Dick" Counterfly

Thorn, Ryder
553; "one of the Trespassers" at ukulele workshop; Mr. Ace and "his people" 415; what if they are not benign? 416;

Thorvald
453; recurring sentient tornado at Candlebrow;

Throyle, Hastings
131; collegial nemesis of T. Blope

Thucydides
493;

Time
33; 54; 111; colonizing, 131; "at right angles to the flow of" 132; 143; 252, 256; 355; time travel, 398; Nasotemporal Travel, 408; "Chronoclipses, Asimov Transeculars, Tempomorph Q-98s" 409; River of Time, 410; 415; wave functions, 426; "our fate, our lord, our destroyer" 427; 428; conference at Candlebrow, 452; time machine, 453; bazaar of Time, 454; clock-wise/one-way time, 457; and gravity, 457; and ukuleles, 552; time-travel, 577; 602; 612; 616; "future, past, and present [...] all together" 617; 623; 636; Wikipedia Time Travel entry; Time in Old Japan

The Abduction of the Body of St. Mark

579; Tintoretto (real name Jacopo Robusti) was one of the greatest painters of the Venetian school and probably the last great painter of the Italian Renaissance; Abduction of the Body of St. Mark, 579; Wikipedia entry

Tiny
399; bouncer at Lollipop Lounge;

Titian
579;

Toadflax, Captain Q. Zane
425; Saksaul frigate, 434;

Toilet Travel
422;

tommyknocker
391;

tong war
340; in Chinatown in New York City toroidal dispensation
128;

Tonio
581; in Venice, hitting on Dally

Tovarishchi Slutchainyi
123; Russian counterparts to the Chums of Chance

Töpler Influence Machine

58; An electric machine consisting of the combination of two materials, which when rubbed together produce static electricity, and of a third material or object which acts as a collector for the charges. August Joseph Ignaz Töpler (1836-1912) was a German physicist known for his experiments in electrostatics. In 1864 he applied Foucault's knife-edge test for telescope mirrors to the analysis of fluid flow and the shock wave. He developed the Toepler machine, an electrostatic influence machine, in 1865 for use in X-ray photography. Improved versions were produced by Wilhelm Holtz, Roger and J. Robert Voss.

Toy, Yup
367; "ice-girl" in Denver

Trabants
45; German: satellite; The Trabant was an automobile formerly produced by East German auto maker VEB Sachsenring Automobilwerke Zwickau in Zwickau (today in Saxony). It was the most common vehicle in East Germany, and was also exported to other socialist countries. Wikipedia entry

tragedy at Mayerling
681; refers to the double suicide of Crown Prince Rudolf and his mistress at Mayerling in Austria. See Rudolf, Archduke, Crown Prince of Austria.

Traverse, Cooley
105; Webb's father

Traverse, Frank
90; Webb's son; 374; working at Empresas Oustianas, S.A.,376; dreams of a counterpart, 377; 380; shoots Sloat Fresno, 395; in Nochecita, "his own ghost" 461; back in Denver, 465; and Dally, 512; working out of Tampico, Mexico, 637; recurring dream of Webb, 649;

Traverse, Jesse
360; son of Reef and Stray (and a character in Vineland); with Willow and Holt, 646; 650;

Traverse, Kit
90; Webb's son who goes to Yale; vectorist, 97; 156; at Vibe Corp., 330; on Stupendica to Germany, and Dally, 510; to Bruges with Pino and Rocco, 562; attacked by Woevre, 563; dueling Günther, 600-01; in the Klapsmühle, 626-27; meets Reef in Switzerland, 664; seance, 671;

Traverse, Lake
90; Webb's daughter; and Deuce, 472; Child of the Storm, 487;

Traverse, Mayva
480; conversing with animals

Traverse, Reef
89; Webb's first-born son; Stray and Reef (now a card sharp) drifting from town to town, 358-61; dynamiting, 361; in Denver, 367; seen in New Orleans by W.T. Rooney, 646; with Flaco in Austria, 652;

Traverse, Webb
76; "sort of mine engineer in Colorado" 76; from South Pennsylvania, 87;

Trespassers
424; time-travellers from The Future;

Trilby hat
185;

Trouvé
28; screw unit;

Tsangpo-Brahmaputra
130; The Yarlung Tsangpo/Brahmaputra river drains a large portion of the eastern Himalaya and southern Tibetan plateau as well as the eastern Himalayan syntaxis, one of the most tectonically active areas of the globe.

Tsurigane, Miss Umeki
531; female Quaternionist; 560;

Tubby
161; trained pig

Tubsmith, Root
511; mathematician on Stupendica; in Ostend, 535;

Tucker, Benjamin
370; wrote of Land League;

Tungus Reindeer herders
23;

145, 782, 792, passim; an explosion that occurred at 60°55′N 101°57′E, near the Podkamennaya (Under Rock) Tunguska River in what is now Evenk Autonomous Okrug, at 7:17 AM on June 30, 1908. The event is sometimes referred to as the great Siberian explosion. Wikipedia entry; Read this article about Tesla's Death Ray and the Tunguska Event...

Turkish Corner
431;

Turner, Freddie
52; at Harvard

Turner, Joseph Mallord William (1775-1851)
578; English Romantic landscape painter and watercolourist, whose style can be said to have laid the foundation for Impressionism; Wikipedia entry

Turnstone, Willis
and Lake Traverse, 262;

Twin Vibes, The
102; Foley Walker and Scarsdale Vibe "in matching sport ensembles of a certain canary-and-indigo check"

T.W.I.T.
219; True Worshippers of the Ineffable Tetractys, headquartered in London, north of Hyde Park; The Tetractys is a triangular figure consisting of ten points arranged in four rows: one, two, three, and four points in each row. As a mystical symbol, it was very important to the followers of the secret worship of the Pythagoreans; 591; Wikpedia entry

Tzigane
18; (French: gypsy) Bindelstiffs of the Blue A.C.'s balloon-ship