Monday, December 5, 2011

Pacific Vortex: Eaton School of Oceanography and more

pg 23

"And when mother died, our dear admiral was charting icebergs off Greenland with some long-haired freaks from the Eaton School of Oceanography."
There are many schools of oceanography, but this is a fictional name.

She..wore...an oriental sheath dress.
In fashion, a sheath dress is a type of dress designed to tightly fit the body. It is often made of a very light and thin material like cotton or silk, and rarely contains any flourishes. Unlike the shorter cocktail dress and the longer ballroom dress, a sheath dress typically falls around the knees or lower thighs, and can be either strapped or strapless. Some brands well-known for their sheath dresses include Ralph Lauren, Prada, and Marc Jacobs.

He signaled the bartender and ordered another Cutty on the rocks - a double this time.
Cutty Sark is a range of blended Scotch whisky and sherry produced by Edrington plc of Glasgow whose main office is less than 10 miles from the birthplace of the famous clipper ship of the same name. The whisky was created on March 20, 1923, with the home of the blend considered to be at The Glenrothes distillery in the Speyside region of Scotland. The name comes from the River Clyde-built clipper ship Cutty Sark, whose name came from the Scots language term cutty-sark, the short shirt prominently mentioned in the famous poem by Robert Burns - "Tam o' Shanter". The drawing of the clipper ship Cutty Sark on the label of the whisky bottles is a work of the Swedish artist Carl Georg August Wallin. He was a mariner painter, and this is probably his most famous ship painting. This drawing has been on the whisky bottles since 1955.

The Tall Ships' Races for large sailing ships were originally known as The Cutty Sark Tall Ships' Races, under the terms of sponsorship by the whisky brand.

"To the victor go the spils."
In the politics of the United States, a spoil system (also known as a patronage system) is a practice where a political party, after winning an election, gives government jobs to its voters as a reward for working toward victory, and as an incentive to keep working for the party—as opposed to a system of awarding offices on the basis of some measure of merit independent of political activity.

The term was derived from the phrase "to the victor belong the spoils of the enemy" by New York Senator William L. Marcy, referring to the victory of the Jackson Democrats in the election of 1828.

Similar spoils systems are common in other nations that traditionally have been based on tribal organization or other kinship groups and localism in general.

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