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Yoyodyne
Yoyodyne is the name of a number of companies, both fictional and real. Literary Yoyodyne was introduced as a fictional defense contractor in Thomas Pynchon's '' V.'' (1963) and featured prominently in his novel '' The Crying of Lot 49'' (1966). Described in the latter book as "a giant of the aerospace industry," Yoyodyne was founded by World War II veteran Clayton "Bloody" Chiclitz. The company has a large manufacturing plant in the fictional town of San Narciso, California. The name is reminiscent of several real high-tech companies, including the Gyrodyne Company of America, Teledyne and Teradyne, all of which were founded a few years before Pynchon wrote ''The Crying of Lot 49'', and Rocketdyne, an aerospace company that manufactured, among other things, propulsion systems. The " dyne" is the standard unit of force in the centimetre–gram–second (CGS) system of units, derived from the Greek word ''dynamis'', meaning "power" or "force". Other fictional uses * The 198 ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Adventures Of Buckaroo Banzai Across The 8th Dimension
''The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension'', often shortened to ''Buckaroo Banzai'', is a 1984 American science fiction film produced and directed by W. D. Richter and written by Earl Mac Rauch. It stars Peter Weller in the titular role, with Ellen Barkin, John Lithgow, Jeff Goldblum, and Christopher Lloyd. The supporting cast includes Lewis Smith, Rosalind Cash, Clancy Brown, Pepe Serna, Robert Ito, Vincent Schiavelli, Dan Hedaya, Jonathan Banks, John Ashton, Carl Lumbly and Ronald Lacey. The film centers upon the efforts of the polymath Dr. Buckaroo Banzai, a physicist, neurosurgeon, test pilot, and rock star, to save the world by defeating a band of inter-dimensional aliens called Red Lectroids from Planet 10. The film is a cross between the action-adventure and science fiction film genres and also includes elements of comedy and romance. After screenwriter W. D. Richter hired novelist Earl Mac Rauch to develop a screenplay of Mac Rauch's new charact ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The Crying Of Lot 49
''The Crying of Lot 49'' is a 1966 novel by American author Thomas Pynchon. The shortest of Pynchon's novels, the plot follows Oedipa Maas, a young Californian woman who begins to embrace a conspiracy theory as she possibly unearths a centuries-old feud between two mail distribution companies; one of these companies, Thurn and Taxis, actually existed (1806–1867) and was the first private firm to distribute postal mail. Like most of Pynchon's output, ''Lot 49'' is often described as postmodernist literature. '' Time'' included the novel in its " TIME 100 Best English-Language Novels from 1923 to 2005". Plot In the mid-1960s, Oedipa Maas lives a fairly comfortable life in the (fictional) northern Californian village of Kinneret, despite her lackluster marriage with Mucho Maas, a rudderless radio jockey, and her sessions with Dr. Hilarius, an unhinged German psychotherapist who tries to medicate his patients with LSD. One day, Oedipa learns of the death of an ex-lover, Pierce Inver ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Thomas Pynchon
Thomas Ruggles Pynchon Jr. ( , ; born May 8, 1937) is an American novelist noted for his dense and complex novels. His fiction and non-fiction writings encompass a vast array of subject matter, genres and themes, including history, music, science, and mathematics. For '' Gravity's Rainbow'', Pynchon won the 1973 U.S. National Book Award for Fiction."National Book Awards – 1974" National Book Foundation. Retrieved 2012-03-29. (With essays by Casey Hicks and Chad Post from the Awards 60-year anniversary blog. The mock acceptance speech by Irwin Corey is not reprinted by NBF.) Hailing from |
The Cuckoo's Egg
''The Cuckoo's Egg: Tracking a Spy Through the Maze of Computer Espionage'' is a 1989 book written by Clifford Stoll. It is his first-person account of the hunt for a computer hacker who broke into a computer at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL). Stoll's use of the term extended the metaphor ''Cuckoo's egg'' from brood parasitism in birds to malware. Summary Author Clifford Stoll, an astronomer by training, managed computers at Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) in California. One day in 1986 his supervisor asked him to resolve an accounting error of 75 cents in the computer usage accounts. Stoll traced the error to an unauthorized user who had apparently used nine seconds of computer time and not paid for it. Stoll eventually realized that the unauthorized user was a hacker who had acquired superuser access to the LBNL system by exploiting a vulnerability in the movemail function of the original GNU Emacs. Early on, and over the course of a l ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Clifford Stoll
Clifford Paul "Cliff" Stoll (born June 4, 1950) is an American astronomer, author and teacher. He is best known for his investigation in 1986, while working as a systems administrator at the Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory, that led to the capture of hacker Markus Hess, and for Stoll's subsequent book '' The Cuckoo's Egg'', in which he details the investigation. Stoll has written three books, articles in the non-specialist press (e.g., in ''Scientific American'') on the Curta mechanical calculator and the slide rule, and is a frequent contributor to the mathematics YouTube channel '' Numberphile''. Early life and education Cliff Stoll attended Hutchinson Central Technical High School in Buffalo, New York. He earned a B.S. in Astronomy in 1973 from the University at Buffalo (SUNY). While studying for his undergraduate degree at SUNY Buffalo, Stoll worked in the university's electronic music laboratory and was mentored by Robert Moog. He received his PhD from Universi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Japan
Japan ( ja, 日本, or , and formally , ''Nihonkoku'') is an island country in East Asia. It is situated in the northwest Pacific Ocean, and is bordered on the west by the Sea of Japan, while extending from the Sea of Okhotsk in the north toward the East China Sea, Philippine Sea, and Taiwan in the south. Japan is a part of the Ring of Fire, and spans Japanese archipelago, an archipelago of List of islands of Japan, 6852 islands covering ; the five main islands are Hokkaido, Honshu (the "mainland"), Shikoku, Kyushu, and Okinawa Island, Okinawa. Tokyo is the Capital of Japan, nation's capital and largest city, followed by Yokohama, Osaka, Nagoya, Sapporo, Fukuoka, Kobe, and Kyoto. Japan is the List of countries and dependencies by population, eleventh most populous country in the world, as well as one of the List of countries and dependencies by population density, most densely populated and Urbanization by country, urbanized. About three-fourths of Geography of Japan, the c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Feudalism
Feudalism, also known as the feudal system, was the combination of the legal, economic, military, cultural and political customs that flourished in medieval Europe between the 9th and 15th centuries. Broadly defined, it was a way of structuring society around relationships that were derived from the holding of land in exchange for service or labour. Although it is derived from the Latin word ''feodum'' or ''feudum'' (fief), which was used during the Medieval period, the term ''feudalism'' and the system which it describes were not conceived of as a formal political system by the people who lived during the Middle Ages. The classic definition, by François Louis Ganshof (1944), François Louis Ganshof (1944). ''Qu'est-ce que la féodalité''. Translated into English by Philip Grierson as ''Feudalism'', with a foreword by F. M. Stenton, 1st ed.: New York and London, 1952; 2nd ed: 1961; 3rd ed.: 1976. describes a set of reciprocal legal and military obligations which existed am ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Miniature Wargaming
Miniature wargaming is a form of wargaming in which military units are represented by miniature physical models on a model battlefield. The use of physical models to represent military units is in contrast to other tabletop wargames that use abstract pieces such as counters or blocks, or computer wargames which use virtual models. The primary benefit of using models is aesthetics, though in certain wargames the size and shape of the models can have practical consequences on how the match plays out. Miniature wargaming is typically a recreational form of wargaming because issues concerning scale can compromise realism too much for most serious military applications. A historical exception to this is naval wargaming before the advent of computers. Overview A miniature wargame is played with miniature models of soldiers, artillery, and vehicles on a model of a battlefield. The benefit of using models as opposed to abstract pieces is primarily an aesthetic one. Models offer a vi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Los Angeles
Los Angeles ( ; es, Los Ángeles, link=no , ), often referred to by its initials L.A., is the List of municipalities in California, largest city in the U.S. state, state of California and the List of United States cities by population, second most populous city in the United States after New York City, as well as one of the world's most populous megacities. Los Angeles is the commercial, financial, and cultural center of Southern California. With a population of roughly 3.9 million residents within the city limits , Los Angeles is known for its Mediterranean climate, ethnic and cultural diversity, being the home of the Cinema of the United States, Hollywood film industry, and its Greater Los Angeles, sprawling metropolitan area. The city of Los Angeles lies in Los Angeles Basin, a basin in Southern California adjacent to the Pacific Ocean in the west and extending through the Santa Monica Mountains and north into the San Fernando Valley, with the city bordering the San Gabri ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Last Call (novel)
''Last Call'' is a fantasy novel by American writer Tim Powers. It was published by William Morrow & Co in 1992. It is the first book in a loose trilogy called ''Fault Lines'': the second book, ''Expiration Date'' (1995), is vaguely related to ''Last Call'', and the third book, '' Earthquake Weather'' (1997), acts as a sequel to the first two books. Major themes Like many of Powers' novels, ''Last Call'' features a detailed magic system, here based on divinatory tarot, and draws on mythical or historical events and characters, in this case Bugsy Siegel and the development of Las Vegas casinos as well as the legend of the Fisher King. Powers makes use of T. S. Eliot's poem ''The Waste Land'' throughout, which also features the Fisher King legend. Awards ''Last Call'' won the World Fantasy Award for Best Novel In its most general sense, the term "world" refers to the totality of entities, to the whole of reality or to everything that is. The nature of the world has b ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Tim Powers
Timothy Thomas Powers (born February 29, 1952) is an American science fiction and fantasy author. Powers has won the World Fantasy Award twice for his critically acclaimed novels '' Last Call'' and ''Declare''. His 1987 novel ''On Stranger Tides'' served as inspiration for the '' Monkey Island'' franchise of video games and was optioned for adaptation into the fourth ''Pirates of the Caribbean'' film. Most of Powers' novels are "secret histories". He uses actual, documented historical events featuring famous people, but shows another view of them in which occult or supernatural factors heavily influence the motivations and actions of the characters. Typically, Powers strictly adheres to established historical facts. He reads extensively on a given subject, and the plot develops as he notes inconsistencies, gaps and curious data; regarding his 2001 novel ''Declare'', he stated, "I made it an ironclad rule that I could not change or disregard any of the recorded facts, nor rearr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
The John Larroquette Show
''The John Larroquette Show'' is an American sitcom television series that aired on NBC from September 2, 1993, until October 30, 1996. Created by Don Reo, the show was a star vehicle for John Larroquette following his run as Dan Fielding on '' Night Court''. The series takes place in a seedy bus terminal in St. Louis, Missouri, and originally focused on the somewhat broken people who worked the night shift, and in particular, the lead character's battle with alcoholism. The series was produced by Reo's Impact Zone Productions, Larroquette's Port Street Films and Witt/Thomas Productions in association with Warner Bros. Television. ''The John Larroquette Show'' has been re-run in the US on "Rewind TV" since January 9, 2022. Plot John Hemingway, recovering alcoholic, has been appointed to the role of night shift manager of the St. Louis bus depot. He must deal not only with the intricacies of keeping the station running smoothly, but also the employees and other personalities ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
