Derek’s Comments (group member since Sep 16, 2013)

Derek’s comments from the Foucault's Pendulum group.

Ardenti certainly has a loose connection with the scientific method, but Diotallevi's supposed to have a pretty good understanding of the cabala, at least for a layman, so I am leaning towards him deliberately winding Ardenti up.

I've wanted to be a cyborg ever since (at least) The Six Million Dollar Man. Imagine doing that for $6,000,000 now...

I'm just beginning to catch up after letting myself be distracted by far too many things over Christmas.

I found Diotallevi's numerology hilarious, and am not sure yet whether it was deliberately wrong and he was just goading Ardenti, or whether he actually believes his numbers are valid.

"In every century then—or, strictly speaking, every hundred and twenty years [keep your eye on the ball now!]—there would always be six keepers for each place, or thirty-six in all.
…
"Thirty-six knights for each of the six places…"

oops. He's used the six places twice! But remember the ball…

"…makes two hundred and sixteen…. And since there are six centuries…"

And he drops the ball! What does six centuries have to do with anything? He's already said that a century is really 120 years, and there are only five of those!

It's easy to make those numbers add up to anything you want if you're allowed, as J says, to have 2+2=5. And, of course, he is stopping and pointing out that the sum of the digits is nine whenever it actually is.

Similarly, Ardenti has taken a coded message, applied a random code to it and got another coded message, and applied a second [semi-]random code to that [strictly not random as he chose to just use the next sequential code after the one he used first—but who would do that? These are codes that have been known—to that point—for 1400 years, since Julius Caesar], to get a third message that is still not clear-text, and to which he imparts his own meaning.

Ruth wrote: "Hmmm, Muslims don't drink but do deal in distillation.... "

Strictly, while many Muslims don't drink at all, the qu'ranic exhortation is against "strong drink", and historically there wasn't a problem with wine (Lebanon has a large wine industry).

Dolors wrote: "which btw were protected by the most spectacular yet witless password of all history. Eco is a walking contradiction"

I don't think it was that witless. Casaubon suspects that Belbo only ever thought to apply a password when he began to believe that somebody was after him, and he needed to use a password that his colleagues could crack. Still, it did seem to be something that his enemies could figure out as easily (or more so) than Casaubon. Surely there must have been something that would be more obvious to his friends while less obvious to his enemies.

Jonfaith wrote: "Monkey Fist should be on this group's advisory board."

Monkey Junk should be on this group's playlist :)

In every movie I've seen, the periscope of a submarine tucks up into the ceiling of the bridge, and they pull it down to use it in the open bridge area. Maybe I'll get a chance to ask the submariner who lives next door (except, they were just staying there while they built a new house, and I haven't seen lights for a while, so I think they might have moved).

I think they just put something like a sentry box in the museum to tuck the periscope into to prevent it being a hazard. Though I did note that Casaubon (which is a spoiler, because I haven't got far enough to know that's his name, yet) said "And so I remained underwater for what seemed a very long time." That confused me for a while.

Traveller wrote: "I had always thought 'Sofia' stood for 'wisdom'"

And she does! She is the patron saint of wisdom, and iirc (my Greek is a trifle rusty – i.e., non-existent) "sofia" literally means "wisdom". Which doesn't change what Dolors, said, 'coz if this book was only working on single levels, we wouldn't be reading it!

Traveller wrote: "Oh! I still wanted to ask if anyone knows what "Metacyclosynchrotron " means, and while trying to find an answer on the internet, lookee what I found!

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/User:Sha......"

And wp asks the question: "could it mean cyclotron?"

Of course not! I haven't got there, yet, but surely a Metacyclosynchrotron is to a cyclotron as a Ferrari is to a bicycle.

Traveller wrote: "Later on you got stiffies (and/or still contemporaneous with floppies) which consisted of a smaller harder disc which could not be bent."

Brits talk dirty. You really don't want to know when I get stiffies. We always called those floppies, too (floppies came in 8", 5½" and 3¼" sizes, all were, internally, a thin plastic disc covered in magnetic recording medium).

Of course, for Magdalanye, the translations are in Spanish too :(

Jonfaith wrote: "By "out of charcter" you obviously mean so fucking cool."

I certainly do!

Tim Curry reading Umberto Eco! It seems so out of character.

I understood he was a philologist, essentially an Italian counterpart to Tolkien. So, the medievalism is perfectly natural. Philology could easily lead to semiotics.

Damn! Apparently I'm going to need some wisdom.…

Post-Modernism. As far as I can tell, that means: the future.

You're just trying to turn me right off. I never liked po-mo.

Personally, faster is better. Perhaps I don't absorb as much, but I have trouble keeping my attention on a long discussion…

Got it. At the North pole, the pendulum inscribes a full clockwise circle over a sidereal day (just very slightly more than 24 hours). At the South pole, it inscribes the circle counterclockwise, and at the equator, if you can make the slider hit the midpoint exactly you won't knock over any pins at all, as it doesn't appear to rotate.

Very cool! You can move the sliders to show different times over the sidereal day, and to show how it works at different latitudes. I still don't quite get the difference between what happens at the poles and what happens at the equator, but I'll keep playing with it until I do!

This excerpt from Will's review is probably worth taking to heart:
“Some notes for readers: this book follows the pattern "Our Hero, just before the Final Confrontation, takes a moment to flash back to all the circumstances leading him to this moment." So you start out right near the end. You will be confused and overwhelmed. Press on, dear reader. All the important things will be explained. Don't worry too much if you don't know everything about Kabbalah or Socialism in Italy in the 1960s - they are not vital to the story. But reading about them does add to the enjoyment.”

I actually love these mystical mysteries, and enjoyed The Da Vinci Code, but I think a discussion would be pretty short and uninteresting.