GR translation: Attitude 8.11, Torpor, Undergraduate.

Mike Jing gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com
Sun Jun 17 22:15:02 CDT 2012


Hmmm...  It seems Attitude is an art term:

http://machaut.uchicago.edu/?resource=Webster%27s&word=attitude&use1913=on

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Attitude_%28art%29

Still not sure where the 8.11 and Undergraduate came from.  Some
undergraduate art course maybe?


On Sat, Jun 16, 2012 at 5:55 AM, Prashant Kumar
<p.kumar at physics.usyd.edu.au> wrote:
> So the best I've got is this. "Attitude 8.11" might be an angle of attack,
> (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angle_of_attack), if we interpret "flung
> himself" literally. Otherwise maybe it's a rating of some sort? And Torpor
> and Undergraduate could refer to the esteem in which Dodson-Truck holds
> Slothrop (he's teaching him German or something IIRC, right?)
>
> Sorry I couldn't be of more help; this passage is rather abstruse.
>
> Prashant
>
> On 16 June 2012 16:32, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
>>
>> P209.13-26   Well, no, Slothrop doesn’t see, not exactly. He hears
>> this sort of thing from Dodson-Truck nearly every time they get
>> together. The man just materialized one day, out on the beach in a
>> black suit, shoulders starred with dandruff from thinning carrot hair,
>> coming into view against the white face of the Casino, which trembled
>> over him as he approached. Slothrop was reading a Plasticman comic.
>> Katje was dozing in the sun, face-up. But when his footpads reached
>> her hearing, she turned on one elbow to wave hello. The peer flung
>> himself at full length, Attitude 8.11, Torpor, Undergraduate. “So this
>> is Lieutenant Slothrop.”
>> Four-color Plasticman goes oozing out of a keyhole, around a corner
>> and up through piping that leads to a sink in the mad Nazi scientist’s
>> lab, out of whose faucet Plas’s head now, blank carapaced eyes and
>> unplastic jaw, is just emerging. “Yeah. Who’re you, Ace?”
>>
>> What does "flung himself at full length" mean?  And what is "Attitude
>> 8.11, Torpor, Undergraduate."?  Military slang?  Rocketry jargon?
>> What?
>
>



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