GR translation: very selectively blighted rainfall

[Prashant Kumar]

Okay so my impression of the passage is of something like an x-y
oscilloscope, with a monochrome colour scale indicating magnitude -- a
black and white tv hooked up to some (appropriately modulated) signal
source (though, this may not make sense since I don't think such things
were around, except perhaps for a particularly noise radar display).The
first line then indicates controls. The "diverging oscillations" are
instabilities in the signal -- the "swings of these playgrounds higher than
a certain angle from the vertical" refers to some sort of upper magnitude
for the oscilloscope, or, more likely, the signal source. The rest of the
imaginary, in the next two sentences, refers to the "quality" of the signal
-- its behaviour in the time domain. Imagine the movements on a staticky TV
screen: valleys, moss , "rainy" days all describe the undulating signal and
noise -- the latter the malignly playful "white surprise" in parentheses.
Pynchon even mentions brown noise <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Brown_noise>,
the "withering, spin-sterish brown"; now he's describing the frequency
domain of the signal. There are two "domains" in frequency analysis; the
time domain, or a real time plot of the signal, and the frequency domain.
Frequency here refer to how often the signal changes sign, postive and
negative. You see, every signal can be thought of as a weighted sum of
standard sine waves  <http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourier_series>, and the
frequency domain is a plot of the frequencies of the sine waves against
their magnitude. This is important since the frequency of the signal
affects the behaviour of your circuit.

This explains the "blighted rainfall", both in the image of the "white"
noise being blighted with "brown", but also with latter being a
transformation of the former (see wiki). The section from "back streets..."
on is describing the visual of the frequency domain sharp peaks, corners
etc around angles of hedge, "across freaks of the optical daytime", that
is, components (peaks) in the frequency domain in the range 400-800*10^12
-- very high frequency for microwave equipment. Normally a "natural" (read:
close to direct current; no alternation and a a frequency close to 0)
signal will have many low and few high frequency components. Thus the move
"out of the region of streets .. and into the countryside". Our heart
starts to feel afraid: the higher the frequency of an electromagnetic wave,
the higher the energy.

P.

On 19 November 2012 15:55, Mike Jing <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com> wrote:

> P241.34-242.13  Unity gain around the loop, unity gain, zero change, and
> hush, that way, forever, these were the secret rhymes of the childhood of
> the Discipline of Control—secret and terrible, as the scarlet histories
> say. Diverging oscillations of any kind were nearly the Worst Threat. You
> could not pump the swings of these playgrounds higher than a certain angle
> from the vertical. Fights broke up quickly, with a smoothness that had not
> been long in coming. Rainy days never had much lightning or thunder to
> them, only a haughty glass grayness collecting in the lower parts, a
> monochrome overlook of valleys crammed with mossy deadfalls jabbing roots
> at heaven not entirely in malign playfulness (as some white surprise for
> the elitists up there paying no mind, no . . .), valleys thick with autumn,
> and in the rain a withering, spin-sterish brown behind the gold of it. . .
> very selectively blighted rainfall teasing you across the lots and into the
> back streets, which grow ever more mysterious and badly paved and more
> deeply platted, lot giving way to crooked lot seven times and often more,
> around angles of hedge, across freaks of the optical daytime until we have
> passed, fevered, silent, out of the region of streets itself and into the
> countryside, into the quilted dark fields and the wood, the beginning of
> the true forest, where a bit of the ordeal ahead starts to show, and our
> hearts to feel afraid . . .
>
> What does "blighted" mean here?
>
>
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