TPPM (9): "It is Everywhere, and No Longer Noticed"

[Dave Monroe]

"The compulsive pessimist's last defense -- stay still
enough and the blade of the scythe, somehow, will pass
by -- Sloth is our background radiation, our
easy-listening station -- it is everywhere, and no
longer noticed."

http://www.nytimes.com/books/97/05/18/reviews/pynchon-sloth.html

http://www.themodernword.com/pynchon/pynchon_essays_sloth.html

http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/sloth.html

http://www.vheissu.org/bio/eng_sloth.htm


"our background radiation"

The cosmic microwave background is the afterglow
radiation left over from the hot Big Bang. Its
temperature is extremely uniform all over the sky.
However, tiny temperature variations or fluctuations
(at the part per million level) can offer great
insight into the origin, evolution, and content of the
universe.

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101Flucts.html

The Big Bang theory predicts that the early universe
was a very hot place and that as it expands, the gas
within it cools. Thus the universe should be filled
with radiation that is literally the remnant heat left
over from the Big Bang, called the “cosmic microwave
background radiation”, or CMB.

http://map.gsfc.nasa.gov/m_uni/uni_101bbtest3.html

And see as well, e.g., ... 

http://www.astro.ubc.ca/people/scott/faq_basic.html

http://hyperphysics.phy-astr.gsu.edu/hbase/bkg3k.html

http://www.damtp.cam.ac.uk/user/gr/public/cmbr_home.html

http://csep10.phys.utk.edu/astr162/lect/cosmology/cbr.html


"our easy-listening station"

Lanza, Joseph.  Elevator Music: A Surreal History
   of Muzak, Easy-Listening, and Other Moodsong.
   Rev. ed.   Ann Arbor: U of Michigan P, 2002 [1994].

http://www.press.umich.edu/titleDetailDesc.do?id=8718


"it is everywhere, and no longer noticed"

Eagleton, Terry.  Ideology: An Introduction.
   New Yor: Verso, 1991.

http://www.versobooks.com/books/cdef/ef-titles/eagleton_ideology.shtml

Edmundson, Mark.  Nightmare on Main Street:
   Angels, Sadomasochism, and the Culture of Gothic.
   Cambridge, MA: Harvard UP, 1997.

http://www.hup.harvard.edu/catalog

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