Difference between revisions of "F"

Latest revision as of 21:29, 15 December 2013

Fabergé, Monsieur
435; Peter Carl Fabergé (1846-1920), Russian jeweller; Wikipedia

Fabrizio, Signor
858; Venetian hair stylist consulted by Yasmeen Halfcourt; parruchiere (Italian: male hairdresser) in Venice, 859;

Fame
276; girl at House of Mirrors

Fangsley
516; imagined ship's captain about to be torpedoed by the Stupendica

Fanshawe, Noellyn
677; at Girton with Yashmeen Halfcourt; in Vienna, 803;

Fantasia on a Theme by Thomas Tallis
896; The Ralph Vaughan Williams composition “Fantasia on a Theme of Thomas Tallis” was written for the Three Choirs Festival in 1910. The primary theme for the composition comes from the third of nine tunes Tallis composed in 1567 as part of a psalter for the first Anglican Archbishop of Canterbury, Matthew Parker. The words Tallis set to this tune are as follows:

Why fum’th in fight the gentiles spite, in fury raging stout?

Why tak’th in hand the people fond, vain things to bring about?

The kings arise, the lords devise, in counsels met thereto

against the Lord with false accord, against his Christ they go.

The work is set for three string groups, one a full orchestral string choir, another a smaller string group, the last a quartet. The work is composed in the manner of the fantasies for viol consort, such as those witten by John Dowland, Thomas Tallis, William Byrd and others during Elizabethan times.

Faraday, Michael, FRS (1791-1867)
98; English chemist and physicist (or natural philosopher, in the terminology of that time) who contributed significantly to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry. He established that magnetism could affect rays of light and that there was an underlying relationship between the two phenomena; Wikipedia entry

Farr, Ed
90; sheriff of Huerfano County in Colorado

fata morgana
19; a mirage and optical phenomenon

Faun
493; blond at Cambridge

favogn
656; local (western Swiss) name for föhn, foehn: a warm, dry, downslope wind descending the lee side of the Alps as a result of synoptic-scale, cross-barrier flow over the mountain range. The föhn is both enervating and alarming; firefighters go on special alert when it blows.

Fawcett, Phillippa
490

February chaffinch
1030; The Chaffinch, (Fringilla coelebs) is a small passerine bird in the finch family Fringillidae. Its large double white wing bars, white tail edges and greenish rump easily identify this 14-16 cm long species. The breeding male is unmistakable, with his reddish underparts and a grey cap. The female is drabber and greener, but still obvious. The breeding signal of song — if so it may be called — begins with the Chaffinch in February, though nesting does not actually take place till long after. Wikipedia entry

Feeley, Vang
464; Stray's "lover boy" in Fickle City "looking almost too legendary"

Fenian
370; (Fen-: probably in part from Middle Irish Féni freeholders, legendary settlers of Ireland, in part from Irish fiann, genitive singular féinne band of warriors + ian) The Fenian Brotherhood was initially founded in 1858 as the Irish Republican Brotherhood's American branch by John O'Mahony, James Stephens, and Michael Doheny, to overthrow the oppressive British Rule in Ireland. In the face of nativist suspicion, it quickly established an independent existence, although it still worked to gain Irish-American support for armed rebellion in Ireland. Initially, O'Mahony ran operations in the USA, sending funds to Stephens and the IRB in Ireland, disagreement over O'Mahony's leadership led to the formation of two Fenian Brotherhoods in 1865. The U.S. chapter of the movement was also sometimes referred to as the IRB. After the failed invasion of Canada, it was replaced by Clan na Gael. Wikipedia

Feodora
755; Klopski's ex-

Ferdinand I, Emperor
818; Austrian

Fez
832; "You cannot fool the Fez";

Fiameta
1077; Dally's friend with whom Kit has an "interlude";

F.I.C.O.T.T.
412; First International Conference on Time Travel;

Filtham
497-98; Hymn ridiculed as "Filtham's Tedium"

Finesse
276; girl at House of Mirrors

Finsterzwerg, Der
594; beer-hall where Cantorian cult meets in Göttingen; german: "Dwarf of Darkness" or "dark dwarf";

F.I.P.
714; Faradically Induced Peristalsis; "Faradically induced" would mean induced by a thyratron (a type of gas filled tube used as a high energy electrical switch) generating rectangular currents of short duration at a wide variety of frequencies; "Peristalsis" is a procedure which causes wave-like muscle contractions that spread or push food and liquid naturally through the digestive tract.

The text explains the device without using a thyratron (which had not been invented at the time of the action anyway). I once built a similar device, though without the rectal probe; it was extremely cheap, ran on a flashlight battery (instead of Leclanché cells) and induced very satisfactory muscle contractions in my roommate's back. The technique is "Faradic" because it uses a capacitor to store and release energy.

Fisk
450; movie house proprietor in Audacity, Iowa

FitzGerald, George Francis (1851-1901)
32; professor of "natural and experimental philosophy" (i.e., physics) at Trinity College, Dublin. He is best known for his conjecture in 1889 that if all moving objects were foreshortened in the direction of their motion, it would account for the curious result of the Michelson-Morley experiment. FitzGerald based this idea in part on the way electromagnetic forces were known to be affected by motion; in particular, he drew on equations that had been derived a short time before by his friend Oliver Heaviside. The Dutch physicist Hendrik Lorentz hit on a very similar idea in 1892 and developed it more fully the in connection with his theory of electrons. The so-called Lorentz-FitzGerald contraction hypothesis later became an important part of Albert Einstein's special theory of relativity, published in 1905.; "shrinkage of dimension"; 565; Wikipedia entry

Fiume
529; 697; nowadays Rijeka (Croatia) Wikipedia

Flaco
371; with O'Rooney; 652; Reef's Simplon Tunnel companñero; 849; meeting Reef in Nice

Flagg
212; Governor of Jeshimon's "clemency secretary"

Flambo, Wilt
450; operates projector at Dreamtime Movy

Flannelette, Dodge
130; "American bucket-shop desperado";

Fletcher, Uncle
88; Webb Traverse's uncle

Floradora Girls
190; a female sextet in turn-of-the-century New York. In 1901, the musical Floradora was a great success and continued to be for years. Everyone saw it, everyone talked about it, and everyone followed the beauties in the Floradora Sextette. When the men chorus members got on their knees and sang to the beauties in the sextette: "Tell me, pretty maiden, are there any more at home like you?" the house came down in cheers and tears. After each performance crowds of "stage-door johnnies" hung around the exit with offers of presents, parties and proposals. Every Floradora girl had hundreds of admirers. One of the original Floradora Girls was Evelyn Nesbitt Thaw, whose jealous husband Harry K. Thaw had shot famous architect Stanford White; another original member was Daisy Dell;

Flores Magón brothers
381; , Enrico Flores Magón and Ricardo Flores Magón (1874-1922) were Mexican anarchists; Wikipedia entry

Flynn, Fireman Jim
189; Lake Traverse bets on him in a fight

Fomalhaut
521; steam trawler out of Ostend; from arabic Fum (or Fam)al-Hut, "mouth of the fish" or "mouth of the whale", Name of the astronomical constellation Psces Austrini Wikipedia

Fong Ding, Charlie
303; "does laundry for the parlor housegirls" in Telluride

food
845; "noodle-thin";

"here at Chunxton Crescent it’s barefoot or begone." 220; "I. J. & K. Smokefoot department store " 345; "nobody'll want to do nothing but be down at them famous little feet" 363; "Beneath the virginal tablecloth, she had lifted her foot, her shapely foot in its closely laced wine-cordovan boot, the tip of whose toe she now placed unambiguously against his penis. To his bewilderment, that hitherto disrespected member grew swiftly attentive." 722; "Her toes became objects of adoration, not always in private, requiring her to change soaked or laddered stockings sometimes three or four times in the course of an evening. Men were not her only admirers. Grown women, mad poetesses, beauties of photogravuredom, offered to abandon husbands, ponying up fistfuls of currency which even on a per-hour basis Dally couldn’t make sense of." 899; Note: In The Crying of Lot 49, there's the song by Sick Dick and the Volkswagens, "I Want To Kiss Your Feet"...; and, on Page 225 of Bleeding Edge (2013), there's a fullblown footjob scene.

Force Publique
The Force Publique (FP) was the official armed force for what is now the Democratic Republic of the Congo from 1885, (when the territory was known as the Congo Free State), through the period of direct Belgian rule (1908-60), until the beginning of the Second Republic in 1965. Wikipedia entry

Ford, Bob (1860-1892)
89; Robert Newton Ford, was an outlaw sensationalized by assassinating Jesse James in 1882; 642; Wikipedia entry

Forrest, General
435; "fustest with the mostest"

Fotinga Huasteca, La
642; cantina and gambling den in Dona Cecilia, in Mexico

Four
564; four-space, 571; "hard to imagine a less interesting number" 591; "neo-Pythagorean cult of tetralatry" 591; Fourth Dimension, 602; 616; Quadri café in Venice, 732; "She's on the square" 733; quadratic, 776;

Four-Color Problem
325; Wikipedia entry

Four Corners Boys
284; bikers in Fickle Creek, 463;

Four-door farce
561; A farce is a light comedy, often employing "broad physical humour, and deliberate absurdity or nonsense." (Sound like anyone we know?) According to actor/director Charles Whitman, a farce is "characterized by a lot of mistakes, mistaken identities, near misses. You can always tell a farce, because the actors are always coming in or going out a door." Sometimes referred to as slamming- or banging-door farce.

fractals
575; self-similarity Venice; "High susceptibility to premordial variables" 801; infinite shoreline, 821;

Fram
138; Fridtjof Nansen's and Hjalmar Johansen's ship; Article about Nansen; Norwegian for Forward

Archduke Franz Ferdinand

45; Franz Ferdinand, Archduke of Austria-Este (German: Franz Ferdinand Karl Ludwig Josef von Habsburg-Lothringen, Erzherzog von Österreich-Este) was an Archduke of Austria, Prince Imperial of Austria, Prince Royal of Hungary and Bohemia, and from 1896 until his death, heir presumptive to the Austro-Hungarian throne. See the partial genealogy in annotations to p. 45. His assassination in Sarajevo precipitated the Austrian declaration of war against Serbia which triggered World War I; 680; 809; Wikipedia entry; J. Pasteur Web-Essay

Franz Josef Land
215; an archipelago located in the far north of Russia. It is found in the Arctic Ocean north of Novaya Zemlya and east of Svalbard, and is administered by Arkhangelsk Oblast. It consists of 191 ice-covered islands with an area of 16,134 km² and is largely uninhabited; Wikipedia entry

French drop
357; magic trick Wikipedia

Fresno, Sloat Eddie
Deuce Kindred's sidekick, 195; 261; killed by Frank Traverse, 395; 478;

Freud, Sigmund
624;

Frobenius, Ferdinand Georg (1849-1917)
511; mathematician at University of Berlin; German mathematician, best-known for his contributions to the theory of differential equations and to group theory. Frobenius was born in Charlottenburg, a suburb of Berlin, and was educated at the University of Berlin. His thesis was on the solution of differential equations, under the direction of Weierstrass. After its completion in 1870, he taught in Berlin for a few years before receiving an appointment at the Polytechnicum in Zurich (now ETH Zurich). In 1893 he returned to Berlin, where he was elected to the Prussian Academy of Sciences. Wikipedia entry

Fuchs, Lazarus (1833-1902)
511; mathematician at University of Berlin; Lazarus Fuchs attended the Friedrich Wilhelm Gymnasium in Berlin where his remarkable abilities at mathematics became very clear to his teachers while he was still young. Mathematics became the subject which, even at this early stage, Fuchs knew was going to dominate the rest of his life. Article about Fuchs

Fulvio
653; in Swiss Alps drilling, railroad map scar

Fung, Hop
339; "enterprising Celestial"

Furies
485; 620;

furoshiki
532; a type of traditional Japanese wrapping cloth frequently used to transport clothes, gifts, or other goods. Although possibly dating back as far as the Nara period, the name, meaning "bath spread", derives from the Edo period practice of using them to bundle clothes while at the sentō (public baths); Wikipedia entry