GR translation: Attitude 8.11, Torpor, Undergraduate.

[David Morris]

Attitude:
Aeronautics . the inclination of the three principal axes of an
aircraft relative to the wind, to the ground, etc.

On Sun, Jun 17, 2012 at 10:15 PM, Mike Jing
<gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:
> 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?
>>
>>