Utopia 2184:
Appendix B2:
Notes for the Unskilled Reader
Seeking Help with Allusions
and Foreign Terms

For Chapter the First

Upper Canada: The southern part of the Canadian province of Ontario was in colonial times Upper Canada. The term ceased to be fully natural after the 1867 Confederation. It retains, now, for Canadians, something of the archaic charm of 'Oxenforde' for 'Oxford', of 'Caunterbury' for 'Canterbury'.

David Dunlap Observatory: A research facility of the University of Toronto, named after the Ontario philanthropist whose generous widow made the enabling financial arrangements. Historical background, contemporary photographs, and technical background are available at http://www.astro.utoronto.ca/DDO/.

Saint Francis Xavier: Pioneer Jesuit missionary to the Far East.

Prends cette rose; bon...: 'Grab this rose; good...'

Chez soi: 'At home', as opposed to 'ill at ease'.

Sicut arbor aevo: '[Spreading] like a [great] tree unto the age'; motto of the University of Toronto.

Bachelier; malgré lui: Bachelor, as in Science; 'in spite of himself'.

Très riches: 'Exceedingly rich'.

Literaarne salong: Literary salon.

Kirk, politsei: Church, police.

Hardy and Littlewood: G.H. Hardy (1877-1947) and J.E. Littlewood (1885-1977) collaborated in pure mathematics at Cambridge.

Michael Edelstein: The year-month-day styling '1917 March 21' is customary in the astronomical community. - Prof. Edelstein's daughter, mathematician Leah Keshet, published a fine retrospective column in the 'Lives Lived' series of the Toronto Globe and Mail on 2003 February 7.

Calculus on Manifolds: One of several textbooks by Michael Spivak.

One of them later completes a doctorate, proclaims in a book that mathematical ability is a myth: John Mighton, The Myth of Ability (Toronto: Anansi Press, 2003).

With my own retinas at annular eclipse: On 1994 May 10, in Toronto.

NKVD: Precursor of KGB. The deportation of about ten thousand individuals on 1941 June 14 marked the beginning of the mass arrests in sovietized Estonia. Hitler's Wehrmacht occupied Estonia soon after - retreating, however, before the resurgent Red Army in 1944.

For Chapter the Second

Strine: The Strine language was first analyzed systematically in 1964, in a work entitled Let Stalk Strine, by one Afferbeck Lauder.

Caveat emptor: 'Let the buyer beware.' An adage of Roman lawyers, showing where the burden of proof was considered to lie in legal contests between vendors and injured purchasers.

In foro interno: 'In the internal forum', inwardly.

In pectore: 'Within the breast'. A pope may appoint a cardinal in pectore, protecting him from secular political persecution by concealing his identity from the Church at large.

The racing horse smuggled past the Sixth-Form staircase: As in the 1954 Frank Launder English comedy film, The Belles of St Trinian's. United Kingdom censorship rating 'U'.

Insisting with Dorothy Day on the strictest pacifism: Dorothy Day's career as a pacifist extended from World War II to well after Viet Nam. A useful archive of her writings, encompassing a wide range of social-justice themes, is viewable and machine-searchable at
http://www.catholicworker.org/dorothyday/.

Utne Reader, historical chorus that has included G.K. Chesterton and E.F. Schumacher, Henry David Thoreau and Helen and Scott Nearing: The Utne Reader, published once every two months, and available on most good North American newsstands, is a glossy magazine reprinting the best of the current "alternative press". A particular merit of Utne is its freedom from polemic. Catholic essayist, fiction author, and journalist G.K. Chesterton offers much in his Father Brown detective stories and still more in his explicitly theological-philosophical works. Among the latter I know, and so can recommend, Orthodoxy. E.F. Schumacher is best known for Small is Beautiful. Schumacher also, however, demonstrated by his example as a managerial mind in Northamptonshire's Scott Bader polymer manufactury that an industrial concern can successfully dispense with external shareholders, vesting all ownership in its own workers. The Scott Bader group continues to trade. Another enduring monument to Schumacher is Britain's Intermediate Technology Development Group (ITDG), founded on Schumacher's initiative in 1966. ITDG was already mentioned here in 'Appendix B1: Notes for the Skilled Reader' (in a discussion of small wind turbines from primitive workshops). Thoreau's Walden, completed a few years before the American Civil War, counts among its achievements the dissection, with terrifying prescience, of the cultural decline that would continue from his days to ours. Helen and Scott Nearing show by their example, and explain in their writings, that it is possible to live in dignity with simple tools in contemporary Vermont and Maine. 'Dignity' here encompasses such things as building in stone, with a fireplace in every room, and organizing a commercially self-sustaining organic farm so rationally as to require only four hours' manual labour daily.

Bunyan's words: Here quoted from Christian Prayer: The Liturgy of the Hours (New York: Catholic Book Publishing Co., 1976). Practicalities of reference checking have not made it possible to confirm that this text is word-for-word identical with what was sung in St Paul's Cathedral on 1965 January 30. Words of hymns are occasionally labile.

VAX: The first VAX was released by Digital on 1977 October 25. The accompanying VMS operating system was in its heyday renowned for its superior design. VMS was later renamed OpenVMS, but was never part of the Open Source movement.

Polycenter Security Compliance Manager: PSCM client software automatically took a snapshot of the security state of the OpenVMS or Digital Unix machine on which it was installed, transmitting its verdict in the form of a string of "passing" or "failing" bits to a centralized server, and also generating lockdown scripts for the local security administrator to inspect, edit, and run.

And was Jerusalem builded here: Blake's 'Jerusalem' is in British party politics a sort of marching song for Labour. The quotations from 'Jerusalem', here and subsequently, do not, however, constitute an endorsement of the Labour platform. That platform has historically had the weakness of prescribing State socialism.

The poor you will always have with you: Mark 14:3-9 gives the wider context.

Linux distro: Linux, being without tight central government, can be had in numerous "distributions", or more colloquially "distros". Distros seek to bundle numerous, typically open-source, tools together to create a coherent workstation or server environment for the end user.

For Chapter the Third

Antigonish, Mondragon: Pioneering twentieth-century centres for the cooperative movement, respectively in Nova Scotia and the Basque Country. To make the inevitable problems of governance tractable, cooperative firms often keep themselves small. A rapidly growing co-op may keep an upper bound on headcount by periodically spinning off daughter enterprises.

Europa Drukverein, Comité lyonnais pour matériaux imprimés: Fictional Continental names: 'European Print Union', 'Lyons Committee for Printed Materials'.

De minimis non curat lex: 'The law does not concern itself with trifles.' An adage of Roman lawyers.

Soft X-rays: X-rays of a comparatively low energy, adjacent in the electromagnetic spectrum to the hard ultraviolet. Inimical to genetic material, but less hazardous to the operator than hard X-rays or the still fiercer gamma radiations.

SETI: The "Search for ExtraTerrestrial Intelligence".

Through a glass darkly: 1 Corinthians 13:12: 'For now we see through a glass darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known.'

Locksley Hall: Tennyson: 'Science moves, but slowly, slowing, creeping on from point to point; // Slowly comes a hungry people, as a lion, creeping nigher, / Glares at one that nods and winks behind a slowly-dying fire. // Yet I doubt not thro' the ages one increasing purpose runs, / And the thoughts of men are widen'd with the process of the suns.'

Literae humaniores: A current Oxford undergraduate programme in Greek and Latin classics, perhaps already available in something vaguely like its early-twenty-first-century form in Victorian or Regency times.

Nuncio; boîte: Ambassador representing the Holy See; small, upscale restaurant.

Nihil obstat: Placed on copyright page of some materials by ecclesial authority, to indicate that whether or not the Church approves of the content, there is at any rate no formal contradiction with official theological teaching. Normally followed (as in the case of the Goodier book) by 'Imprimatur,' 'Let it be printed.'

One of the Shock Troops: Members of the Jesuit order write 'S.J.' after their names.

Intra tua vulnera absconde me: 'Hide me in Thy wounds.'

Fidei defensor: 'Defender of the Faith'.

For Chapter the Fourth

Bon, alors, regarde: c'est quoi, ça? 'Good, then; look: what's that thing?'

T, S4, S5: Formal calculi of possibility, agreeing in such claims as that 'Possibly both p and q' entails 'Both possibly p and possibly q,' but disagreeing on finer points, such as whether 'Possibly necessarily p' entails 'Necessarily p.' Propositional calculi have no particular connection with the "calculus" taught as first- and higher-year mathematics, but instead belong to the mathematical-logic and formal-philosophy syllabi. The work of the Victorian pioneers Boole and de Morgan in the most elementary (purely "truth-functional") parts of propositional calculus helped pave the way for the architects of digital computers.

Mais ça, c'est un symbole de la logique formelle ...: 'But that, that's a symbol from formal logic ...'

D'un calcul en quantique?: 'From a calculus in quantum logic?' Quantum logic is one of several branches in propositional logic proposing nonclassical properties for 'or', 'and', and 'not'.

Non, on sait bien que c'est simplement un symbole de la logique modale, le symbole qui signifie le Possible: 'No, clearly a symbol from modal logic, the symbol that signifies the Possible.'

Fear in a handful of dust: Eliot, 'The Wasteland': 'And I will show you something different from either / Your shadow at morning striding behind you / Or your shadow at evening rising to meet you; / I will show you fear in a handful of dust.'

• Previously:
  Chapter the Fourth