BEg2 chapter 9 BPX cable channel

[Mark Kohut]

Cowart shows the ball lightning 'level' is present in BE if changed by
lightning strikes.

A droll-sounding name, Kugelblitz ought to mean “casserole lightning” or
“pudding blitz,” but the word is standard German for the mysterious type of
atmospheric electricity called, in English, ball lightning. Unlike the
familiar flashes that link sky and ground in storms, ball lightning floats
or hovers in the air. Though not to be confused with St. Elmo’s Fire or the
will o’ the wisp, Kugelblitz does seem to beckon from marshy hermeneutical
ground. One errs, that is, to go haring off after the science that
theorizes it as something like a miniature Tunguska event, a minuscule
“ancient black hole” piercing the atmosphere (Muir 48). In another sense,
however, the ball lightning phenomenon reigns over the novel’s meanings the
way Iceland spar does in *Against the Day*. One discerns its significance
not in meteorology but in that branch of history devoted to military
innovation: late in World War II, along with ballistic missiles (the V-1
and V-2 rockets) and the first jet fighter (the ME-262), the Germans
fielded a mobile anti-aircraft gun, ancestor of such shoulder-fired weapons
as the Stinger that figures in *Bleeding Edge*. They called it the
Kugelblitz.

On Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 1:42 AM Michael Bailey <michael.lee.bailey at gmail.com>
wrote:

> Apparently fictive.
>
> A search led to this by a familiar name, David Cowart:
>
>
> http://www.pomoculture.org/2016/09/25/down-on-the-barroom-floor-of-history-pynchons-bleeding-edge/
>
> It looked like pornoculture.org, is why I clicked. But, a nice essay.
>
>
> BPX cabling, though, is a thing.
>
>
> https://docstore.mik.ua/univercd/cc/td/doc/product/wanbu/bpx8600/8_4/ref84/bpx_cabl.htm
> --
> Pynchon-L: https://waste.org/mailman/listinfo/pynchon-l
>