AtDTdA: (9) 252

[Jasper]

252 The Chums in Venice (continued)

Page 252:
sotopòrteghi
Tunnels or passageways under large buildings.
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niello
Niello is a black metallic alloy of sulphur, copper, silver, and usually 
lead, used as an inlay on engraved metal. It can be used for filling in 
designs cut from metal.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Niello

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tenebrous
Means "shadowy" but is also a link back to the previous paragraph. The 
Tenebrae Service is a special form that is meant to recreate the 
feelings of the Passion story, also represented by the Stations of the 
Cross.
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Glagolitic
The Glagolitic Alphabet is the oldest known Slavic alphabet (9th c.). It 
originated as a tactic to lessen the dependence of the subjects of the 
Prince of Greater Moravia on Frankish priests, who banned it but could 
not suppress it; it played a similar role in preserving Bulgarian 
independence from Byzantium. [4] It appears to be a nexus of the kind of 
simultaneous temporal and spiritual tasks the Chums of Chance are now 
involved in. In this, it raises the issues first explored by Pynchon in 
the "Tchitcherine in Kyrghizia" sections of Gravity's Rainbow in which 
the introduction of a written alphabet causes immense political and 
social change.
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Gauloise
famous French cigarette.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gauloise
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"a small prism of radioactive alloy inside, emitting /energetic rays/"

Alpha rays?

See p. 244: Rays, boys, rays
See p. 258: Vibrational rays
See p. 445: Quaternian-ray weapons

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radio-lenses
Used in radio astronomy
http://science.howstuffworks.com/seti5.htm

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scusi
excuse me.
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Dottore
Italian for Doctor, as in Dottore Counterfly

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"This hasn't /been/ invented yet. I found it -- it found me? -- a 
fisherman in the fog, casting his lines again and again into the 
invisible river, the flow of Time, hoping to retrieve just such 
artifacts as this."

"Your own future may never include it.  Nor mine."

Today's lousy essay question:
What's going on here?

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Affascinante, caro
Fascinating, dear.
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ragazzo
boy.
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Dr. Lombroso
Born in Verona, Italy, Dr. Cesare Lombroso (1835-1909), using concepts 
drawn from Physiognomy, early Eugenics, Psychiatry and Social Darwinism, 
devised the theory that criminality was inherited, and that the born 
criminal could be identified by physical defects, which confirmed a 
criminal as savage, or atavistic.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cesare_Lombroso
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Also mentioned on p. 172.

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mattoidi
Borderland cases between sanity and insanity.
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Prego
Please.
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