From Ritual To Rocket: gravity\u27s Rainbow In The Apocalyptic Tradition (thomas Pynchon)

This thesis situates Thomas Pynchon\u27s Gravity\u27s Rainbow (1973) in the Apocalyptic tradition. In constructing this tradition I have employed the critical theories--or critical visions--of Northrop Frye, Mircea Eliade, and of the Toronto School of communication theorists: Marshall McLuhan, Eric Havelock, and Walter Ong. Ong\u27s conception of the technologizing of the word provides the unifying theme of this thesis, a theme which I extend into the postmodern context where it manifests itself in Pynchon\u27s Rocket/Word.;The first chapter examines the way in which pre-literate oral cultures, Hesiod, Plato, Herodotus, and Thucydides are apocalyptic or anti-apocalyptic. The second chapter focuses on the Bible, which provides the central apocalyptic paradigms and which transmutes the imaginative space of myth into a new dialogical, historical space--or apocalyptic space --which has the character of a textual field oriented towards signification and meaning in contrast to the oral mode of participating in the being of the cosmos via cultic ritual attunement with the cycles of nature. I discuss four covenants of the Old Testament (Noah, Abraham, Sinai, David) as enactments of the process of what I call the hermeneuticizing of the cosmos. I relate this apocalyptic/textual space to principles of biblical typology, Puritanism, and to surprisingly analogous ideas of apocalypse in the theories of Northrop Frye and Jacques Derrida.;Chapter three concentrates more specifically on Gravity\u27s Rainbow with some consideration also given to The Crying of Lot 49 and other works of the American apocalyptic tradition. Tyrone Slothrop, I argue, can usefully be seen as a postmodern Puritan adrift in the Zone: the hyperreal postmodern space for which he has no Bible to serve as his great code. The Zone is an apocalyptic space of signification where the Rocket serves as another ambiguous Logos. This exploding Word--with its metonymic links to the Bomb--is consistent with the double-edged symbolism of biblical apocalyptic revelations, including the smashed tablets of Sinai, the deferred Kingdom of Israel in exile, or Christ as the crucified Logos. Finally, I will consider the way in which Pynchon\u27s postmodern style is, itself, revelatory and apocalyptic

Notes on the dynamics of noncommutative U(2) and commutative SU(3) instantons

We examine the dynamics of noncommutative instantons of instanton number 2 and commutative instantons of instanton number 3 in 5D super Yang-Mills theory. We begin by detailing the construction of the 1=4-Bogamolyni-Prasad-Somerfeldt instanton solutions, their moduli space, and the moduli space potential using an explicit parametrization of the moduli space coordinates in terms of the biquaternions. We then go on to numerically analyze the dynamics on the moduli spaces we have constructed, discussing some of the numerical issues which arose, and describing the numerical algorithm we developed to solve them

Physical access for persons with disabilities

For persons with disabilities, the activities that able-bodied people take for granted can be major, often insurmountable challenges. Attempting to enter a restaurant for lunch with friends can result in lengthy and adversarial litigation if the facility is not accessible to a person with a disability or other mobility impairment. This litigation would be initiated after the individual was effectively refused service; a refusal based on hislher personal physical characteristics. If a shopping mall is not equipped with "access amenities", then the disabled person may be excluded from shopping there and thus exercising consumer freedom. If workplaces are not equipped to accommodate the access needs of persons with disabilities, then those people are effectively barred from gainful employment there. If a municipal goveniment building is inaccessible to disabled persons, then they may be excluded from participating in council meetings. These are all activities that the majority of the population enjoys as a matter of course, in that they represent the functions of a free citizen in a free society. If a person is excluded from such activities because of some personal characteristic, then that person is subjected to differential or discr~minatory treatment. The guarantees provided in Canadian feden! and provincial rights legislation, are such that people are not to be discriminated againsL Where buildings and facilities othen\iise open to the public are not accessible for persens with disabilities, then those people are being discriminated against. To challenge these discriminatory practices, individuals initiate complaints through the administrative justice system. To address the extent to which this is a problem, many sources were consulted. Constitutional lawyers, tribunal members, advocates for the disabled and land use planners were interviewed. Case law and legislation were reviewed. Literature on citizenship theory, dispute resolution and dispute avoidance was compiled and assessed. And, the field of land use planning was analyzed (drawing on the WTiter's educational and experiential background) as a possible alternative method for effecting systemic access for persons with disabilities. The conclusion of this study is that there does exist a proactive method for assuring access, a method that can apply the systemic remedy needed to deal with this problem. The current method, which is an adversarial and piecemeal complaint process, has proven ineffective in remedying this discrimination problem~ Failure to provide an appropriate remedy means that persons with disabilities will not enjoy the degree of citizen status enjoyed by the able-bodied. This is the current circumstance, and since equity is the aim of rights legislation, and since such legislative and administrative frameworks have failed in that purpose, then an alternative method is necessary. An alternative model is the one in which land use planning is based. It has conflict avoidance and conflict minimization as underpinnings. And, most importantly, land use planning is already a proyen method of combatting discrimination