GR translation: sugar faces

[Kai Frederik Lorentzen]

> I didn't know punch cards were common or even real back in WWII. 

http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/IBM.html

"People and asset registration was only one of the many uses Nazi 
Germany found for high-speed data sorters. Food allocation was organized 
around databases, allowing Germany to starve the Jews. Slave labor 
<http://www.jewishvirtuallibrary.org/jsource/Holocaust/labortoc.html> 
was identified, tracked, and managed largely through punch cards. Punch 
cards even made the trains run on time and cataloged their human cargo. 
German Railway, the Reichsbahn, Dehomag's biggest customer, dealt 
directly with senior management in Berlin. Dehomag maintained punch card 
installations at train depots across Germany, and eventually across all 
Europe.

How much did IBM know? Some of it IBM knew on a daily basis throughout 
the 12-year Reich. The worst of it IBM preferred not to know — "don't 
ask, don't tell" was the order of the day. Yet IBM NY officials, and 
frequently Watson's personal representatives, Harrison Chauncey and 
Werner Lier, were almost constantly in Berlin or Geneva, monitoring 
activities, ensuring that the parent company in New York was not cut out 
of any of the profits or business opportunities Nazism presented. When 
U.S. law made such direct contact illegal, IBM's Swiss office became the 
nexus, providing the New York office continuous information and credible 
deniability.

Certainly, the dynamics and context of IBM's alliance with Nazi Germany 
changed throughout the twelve-year Reich....Make no mistake. The 
Holocaust would still have occurred without IBM. To think otherwise is 
more than wrong. The Holocaust would have proceeded — and often did 
proceed — with simple bullets, death marches, and massacres based on pen 
and paper persecution. But there is reason to examine the fantastical 
numbers Hitler achieved in murdering so many millions so swiftly, and 
identify the crucial role of automation and technology. Accountability 
is needed."

Pynchon could have added this to the multinational corporation thread in 
Gravity's Rainbow; it's also possible to imagine the early computer 
pioneers - from Alan Turing to Konrad Zuse - to be among the novel's 
personages.

>  The fear of folding walls as unsupported punched planes fits there 
> ("fold, spindle, mutilate").  And lace cookies are German? Yes.
>
> http://germanfoodie.com/food_blog/2011/12/18/lace-cookiesflorentines/
>
> On Sunday, March 3, 2013, Bekah wrote:
>
>     I doubt "sugar faces"  is something tangible -  it brings to my
>     mind cookies of some sort -  white cookies with faces on them -
>     but very fragile.
>     http://www.bakingandmistaking.com/2011/04/coconut-lace-cookies.html  -
>      but I've never seen a white one -  maybe OBA's mom had a recipe.
>
>     I suspect the "files of cards pierced frail as sugar faces"  are
>     old computer punch cards so full of holes they look like lace
>     cookies (white of course).  These cards were in use both during
>     WWII and in the early '70s,  when GR was written.
>
>     Surely TPR could have found a more appropriate metaphor, but … .
>
>     Bekah
>
>
>     On Mar 2, 2013, at 10:03 PM, Mike Jing
>     <gravitys.rainbow.cn at gmail.com <javascript:;>> wrote:
>
>     > P254.21   Here Slothrop stages a brilliant Commando raid, along
>     with faithful companion Blodgett Waxwing, on Shell Mex House
>     itself—right into the heart of the Rocket’s own branch office in
>     London. Mowing down platoons of heavy security with his little
>     Sten, kicking aside nubile and screaming WRAC secretaries (how
>     else is there to react, even in play?), savagely looting files,
>     throwing Molotov cocktails, the Zoot-suit Zanies at last crashing
>     into the final sanctum with their trousers up around their
>     armpits, smelling of singed hair, spilled blood, to find not Mr.
>     Duncan Sandys cowering before their righteousness, nor open
>     window, gypsy flight, scattered fortune cards, nor even a test of
>     wills with the great Consortium itself—but only a rather dull
>     room, business machines arrayed around the walls calmly blinking,
>     files of cards pierced frail as sugar faces, frail as the last
>     German walls standing without support after the bombs have been
>     and now twisting high above, threatening to fold down out of the
>     sky from the force of the wind that has blown the smoke away. . . .
>     >
>     > What are "sugar faces"?
>     >
>

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