Difference between revisions of "T"

Revision as of 21:13, 25 June 2007

Tabor, Horace Austin Warner ("Haw")
274; Became mayor of Leadville in 1878, the year of the Colorado Silver Boom, in which he made his fortune. Owned the Matchless silver mine, which, after his death in 1899, his widow, Elizabeth "Baby Doe" Tabor maintained for 36 years. She lived in a shack beside the mine until she froze to death in 1935. Wikipedia entry

tableau vivant
344; French for "living picture", a kind of performance [1], recalls Zoyd's fake-glass-breaking show in Vineland.

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; reindeer, 785; dog, 969;

Tamerlane
tomb of, 761; Tīmūr bin Taraghay Barlas (Chagatai Turkic: تیمور - Tēmōr, "iron") (1336 – February 1405) was a 14th century warlord of Turco-Mongol descent, conqueror of much of Western and central Asia, and founder of the Timurid Empire and Timurid dynasty (1370–1405) in Central Asia, which survived in some form until 1857. Perhaps, he is more commonly known by his pejorative Persian name Timur-e Lang (Persian: تیمور لنگ) which translates to Timur the Lame, as he was lame after sustaining an injury to the leg in battle. More from Wikipedia...

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

584; Anarchist in Venice, and painter; the "infernal machine" 586; 738;

Tancredi is a time-traveling character in City of Death, a four-part serial in the British science fiction television series Dr. Who which involves time travel and bilocation. Tancredi is the sole survivor of the Jagaroth race, 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 primeval, 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. Whereas, in City of Death, Tancredi, one of the Scaroff "splinters" living in Renaissance Italy, is plotting to create multiple Mona Lisa's for fraudulent purposes, Against the Day's Tancredi is fighting art fraud. Read the synopsis of City of Death; The name "Andrea" could be a reference to the protagonist Andrea Marsh, a time-traveler in the 1889 novel, Timeless Love by Judy Hinson (synopsis).

tantum dic verbo
447; typically translated to English as the imperative "only say the word," appears in the Vulgate Matthew 8 (the Centurion's response to Christ) as well as during the Liturgy of the Eucharist (at least in Catholic Liturgy.)

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

Tarot
186; 253; Hanged Man (XII), 605-06; "Number XV, The Devil" 686; The Waite Tarot Deck with Illustrations by Pamela Colman Smith

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

planetary axis-long intra-planetary shortcut that the Chums use to travel from the South to the North Pole, 114-118; "a mythical Interior," 128; Wikipedia entry for Tellurium. Cf. "the Ulterior," 130;

89; The Town of Telluride is a Home Rule Municipality that is the county seat of San Miguel County in the southwestern portion of the State of Colorado in the United States. The town is a former silver mining camp on the San Miguel River in the western San Juan Mountains. The town was named after the chemical element Tellurium, which was never actually found in the mountains of Telluride. Tellurium is a metalloid element that is associated with rich deposits of gold and some silver. An alternate theory for the naming of Telluride is that it is a contraction of "to-hell-you-ride." Telluride's mines were rich in zinc, iron, lead, copper, silver, and, of course, gold; 260; 383; Wikipedia entry

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; 732;

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; Wikipedia entry

Theign, Derrick
701; "tall and careworn fuctionary" in Vienna; Book: Anglo-Saxon Theign: The collapse of Roman rule in Britain was not so much a sudden catastrophe as a long and drawn-out decline. The 'Celtic' Britons retreated gradually to the highland areas of Wales, Cornwall and the south-west of Scotland. Control of the fertile eastern lowlands was lost to warriors of Germanic origin who migrated from the Continent. These Germanic conquerors have become known to history as the 'Anglo-Saxons'; and Spongiatosta, 731; in Trieste, 800; "He has gone mad" 864; "Rogue Elephant" 867; R.U.S.H., his "shadowing unit" 951; "the Future known to Italian Futurist" 1070;

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; "A formal definition from the Concise Oxford Dictionary describes Theosophy as 'any of various philosophies professing to achieve a knowledge of God by spiritual ecstasy, direct intuition, or special individual revelation; esp. a modern movement following Hindu and Buddhist teachings, and seeking universal brotherhood.' Madame Blavatsky's theosophy would, however, not fall under this definiton, as it is non-theistic." -from the Wikipedia entry

They
design the world to have unequal water distribution, 393; 410; 483; 719; 727;

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

Thiel Detective Service Company
171; a private detective agency formed by George H. Thiel, a former Civil War spy and Pinkerton employee Wikipedia entry

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; "ancient Greek historian, and the author of the History of the Peloponnesian War, which recounts the 5th century BC war between Sparta and Athens to the year 411 BCE. This is widely considered the first work of scientific history, describing the human world as produced by men acting from ordinary motives, without the intervention of the gods." --from the wikipedia entry

Time
33; 54; 111; colonizing, 131; "at right angles to the flow of," ""possibility of linear time becoming circular," "immunity to Time," 132; "Christian time," 143; "Time itself was disrupted, a thouroughgoing and merciless foreswearing of Time," 148; New Yorkers' belief that "'there would always be time,'" 151; "[i]n a metropolis where Location was often the beginning, end, and entire story in between," 153; "the invasion of Time into a timeless world," 223; "'some disposition to the echoic . . . perhaps built into the nature of Time,'" 227; "Victoria's unbending refusals to consider the passage of Time," "impervious to the passage of Time," "immune to Time," "a flow that Time will never touch," "poles of a temporal flow between England and Hanover," 231; 252; 256; 355; "'d' toime machine,'" 397; the Time Machine described, 402; time travel, 398; First International Conference on Time-Travel, "Mr. H. G. Wells's novel The Time Machine," 407; Nasotemporal Travel, 408; "Chronoclipses, Asimov Transeculars, Tempomorph Q-98s," "the safe harbor in Time," 409; "River of Time," 410; "Time did not so much elapse as grow less relevant," 412; "dismissing altogether the existence of Time as really too ridiculous to consider," 412; 415; "immersed at Candlebrow in the mysteries of Time," 418; wave functions and, 426; "'flight into the next dimension,'" "our fate, our lord, our destroyer," 427; 428; "travel backward or forward through Time," 438; conference at Candlebrow, "siegecraft of," 452; time machine, 453; bazaar of Time, 454; clock-wise/one-way time, "vulnerable to force of gravity," 457; and ukuleles, 552; time-travel, 577; "recognize the futuristic vehicle which had borne him to safety from the devasted City so long ago" 585; 602; 612; 616; "future, past, and present [...] all together" 617; 623; 636; time machine, 745; Tunguska, 782; 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; Wikipedia entry

Toadflax, Captain Q. Zane
425; Saksaul frigate, 434; also the name of an invasive plant species

Toilet Travel
422;

tommyknocker
391; Tommyknockers are the spirit creatures of the underground. No one knows exactly when or where these tales began. They were present by medieval times in the area that is now Germany and Austria. Germans call them Berggeister or Bergmännlein, meaning “mountain ghosts” or “little miners.” They watch over the earth’s precious ores and metals. They look like men, but are two feet tall or less. They wear the traditional miner’s outfit. They are believed to be active in gold, silver, and other metal mines. These spirits can be good or bad, helping or hurting miners. More BLM info on Tommyknockers

tong war
340; in Chinatown in New York City; Wikipedia entry for Tong

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; Töpler influence machine

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
Main Entry: tra·verse Pronunciation: 'tra-v&rs also -"v&rs, especially for 6 and 8 also tr&-' or tra-'Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English travers, from Anglo-French travers (as in a travers, de travers across), from Latin transversum (as in in transversum set crosswise), neuter of transversus lying across; senses 5-9 in part from 2traverse -- more at TRANSVERSE

1 : something that crosses or lies across 2 : OBSTACLE, ADVERSITY 3 : a formal denial of a matter of fact alleged by the opposing party in a legal pleading 4 a : a compartment or recess formed by a partition, curtain, or screen b : a gallery or loft providing access from one side to another in a large building 5 : a route or way across or over: as a : a zigzag course of a sailing ship with contrary winds b : a curving or zigzag way up a steep grade c : the course followed in traversing 6 : the act or an instance of traversing : CROSSING 7 : a protective projecting wall or bank of earth in a trench 8 a : a lateral movement (as of the saddle of a lathe carriage); also : a device for imparting such movement b : the lateral movement of a gun about a pivot or on a carriage to change direction of fire 9 : a line surveyed across a plot of ground From Meriam-Webster online. (should be replaced by OED definitions by anyone with access due to its importance)

Traverse family tree
It seems certain that the Traverses of Against the Day are the progenitors of the Traverses of Vineland, described therein: "These were old, proud and strong union people, surviving in one of the world's worst antinunion environments - spool tenders, zooglers, water bucks and bull punchers [all logging jobs, btw] some had fought in the Everett mill wars, others from the Becker side had personally known Joe Hill, and had not mourned, and organized......" More on the Traverse Family Tree...

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 youngest son who goes to Yale; Vectorist, 97; circuit rider, 98; 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; going to Inner Asia, 735;

Traverse, Lake
90; Webb's daughter; marries Deuce, 266; a virgin bride, child of the storm, 267; fuckmouth whore, 268; and Deuce, 472; Child of the Storm, 487; DISCUSSION

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; in Venice, "the faro dealer" 728; and Ruperta, 801;

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

Trespassers

Down where the ‘Hidden People’ live, inside their private rock dwellings, where humans who visit them can be closed in and never find a way out again. Iceland spar is what hides the Hidden People, makes it possible for them to move through the world that thinks of itself as ‘real,’ provides that all-important ninety-degree twist to their light, so they can exist alongside our own world but not be seen. They and others as well, visitors from elsewhere, of non-human aspect.

“They have been crossing here, crossing over, between the worlds, for generations. Our ancestors knew them. Looking back over a thousand years, here is a time when their trespassings onto our shores at last converge, as in a vanishing-point, with those of the first Norse visitors.

“They arrive here in criminal frames of mind, much like those early Norsemen, who were either fleeing retribution for offenses committed back where they came from or seeking new coastlines to pillage. Who in our excess of civilization strike us now as barbaric, incapable of mercy. Compared to these other Trespassers, however, they are the soul of civility.” - p.134

"There's no discovering them unless they choose so." 413; "We are here among you as seekers of refuge from our present—your future—a time of worldwide famine, exhausted fuel supplies, terminal poverty—the end of the capitalistic experiment." 415; time-travellers from The Future, 424;

Trilby hat
185; "a soft felt men's hat with a narrow brim and a deeply indented crown. It is traditionally made from rabbit fur felt, but may also be made of other materials such as tweed" -from the Wikipedia entry

Trouvé, Gustave
28; developer of airscrew design in 1880s; "Trouvé-screw unit" photographed at Chicago

Trumper's
224; Gentleman's barbers. "Established 1875 in Curzon Street, Mayfair, by Mr George Trumper, the business has served the needs of London gentlemen and members of the Royal Court for over 125 years, and has been honoured with the Royal Warrant of Queen Victoria and five subsequent monarchs." Website

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; "umeki" is Japanese for "plum tree"; "tsurigane" is Japanese for "hanging bell" [2]; female Quaternionist; 560; Umeki and Kit; 974; Umeki and Auberon Halfcourt on Corfu

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;

Turania
761; aka Eurasia Irridenta; The name is derived from Turan an ancient Persian name for the land to the east of Iran. Turanism or Pan-Turanism is a political movement aiming at uniting the various Turkic peoples of the Russian empire.

Turner, Freddie
52; professor at Harvard. It turns out that there is a present-day academic with the name Fred Turner (Wikipedia entry ) who used to teach Communication at Harvard's JFK School of Government between 1989-2000, before moving to MIT and Stanford. Interestingly enough, he is the author of a book titled From Counterculture to Cyberculture: Stewart Brand, the Whole Earth Network, and the Rise of Digital Utopianism.

Turner, Frederick Jackson (1861-1932)
Unlike Freddie, Frederick Jackson Turner didn't make it to Harvard until 1910. Nonetheless, FJT did deliver his famous "frontier thesis" in a paper to the American Historical Association on July 12, 1893, during the Columbian Exposition and on the site of the present-day Art Institute of Chicago, a scant couple of blocks away from the Palmer House. The apocalyptic tone of the Inconvenience's tour of the Chicago stockyards fits well with Turner's claim that the closure of the frontier marks an end of America—or at least the end of a first period of American history—as well as the virtuous individualism, democracy, and freedom of movement that defined that America.
Frederick Jackson Turner Wikipedia entry

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; an appreciative nod to poet and translator Willis Barnstone whose works include the vast collection of Jewish pseudepigrapha, early Kabbalah, Haggadah, Midrash, Christian Apocrypha and Gnostic scriptures entitled 'The Other Bible'?

Tushuktash
764; "a rock with a hole in it";

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

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

T.W.I.T. with the vagina, i.e., the female sex organ. "T.W.I.T." sounds like — no, is — a cross between "clit" and "twat." And, natch, it's headed up by Nookshaft. And, let's face it, that tetractys is surely an inverted beaver, yes? (See "Beavers of the Brain"). Its male counterpart is Candlebrow U., to be encountered down the road apiece (and that ain't no spoiler!).

Isn't this a stretch? It reads to me as just a pun on "twit" as in, these Brits are twits.

Tyburnia
219; "in that ambiguous stretch north of Hyde Park known then as...";

Tyburnia occupies the ground on the north side of Hyde-park and Kensington-gardens, and stretches from Edgware-road on the east to about Inverness-terrace on the west. This is not, strictly speaking, a fashionable quarter; but it is not absolutely unfashionable, and is a very favourite part with those — lawyers, merchants, and others—who have to reside in town the greater part of the year. It stands high, the cellars of the Tyburnian houses being on a level with the chimneys of Belgravia, and the houses, though without the architectural pretensions of the more recent additions to the latter district, are roomy and comfortable. Rents are high for a moderate-sized house—but much lower in proportion to the accommodation than in either Mayfair or Belgravia NEAREST Railway Station Edgware-road, Praed-street, and Queen’s-road; Omnibus Routes Edgware-road, Praed-st, Bishop-road, and Uxbridge-road. Charles Dickens (Jr.), Dickens's Dictionary of London, 1879

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