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 They were talking about the Northern Ohio Insane Asylum, a few miles southeast of town, in which currently were lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks Cleveland these days had been filling up rapidly with, enthusiasts from everywhere in the nation and abroad for that matter, eager to bathe in the radiance of the celebrated Æther-drift experiment in progress out at Case.

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"Northern Ohio Insane Asylum"
Pynchon being generous here and explaining one of his references for those weirdos who don't keep the Internet at hand while reading a Pynchon book.

"currently were lodged some of the more troublesome of the scientific cranks"
Holy heck how troublesome can these science fanatics be?! Feels more like maybe a few nerds stood out from the crowd too much and these bully cops decided to give them a brief incarceration instead of a wedgie. I suppose this experiment has become some kind of a spring break for science nerds. Sort of like how at the beginning of the book, the World's Columbian Exposition was spring break for ballooning enthusiasts. That's where the kids met Merle and his penchant for photographing naked ladies!

"eager to bathe in the radiance of the celebrated Æther-drift experiment"
This is a pun. Bathe in the radiance of a light experiment.

"Æther-drift experiment"
The Michelson-Morley Experiment was supposed to prove the existence of Æther through how light moved through it while traveling in different directions. It was theorized that the Æther would drift based on its interaction with the movement of the Earth. This should have caused light to move at differing speeds when moving in perpendicular directions. It did not. But this failed experiment was possibly the beginning of moving the world into special relativity. So that's probably why it's so important to the beginning of this novel. Special relativity will probably be important towards the end of the novel which sucks because I'll finally have to try to understand what all that's about. I'm sure it's more than just "light moves at a constant velocity no matter what which means time has to be the changing variable! Wacky!"

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 45 (1026)

 Chief Schmitt's bravos in blue were detaining and subjecting to lengthy and mostly aimless questioning anybody whose looks they didn't care much for, which took in a wide piece of the population, including Merle, who was stopped on Rockville Street as he was heading out toward the Case Institute.

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Oh, forgive me my last entry. Part of my belief was that the swagger of the police extended in some part to regular civilians hating them a little bit less out of sympathy for the grief of their slain comrade. But the swagger was simply because they had a little more justification to be the ruthless authoritarian pricks that cops have always been and who have always been treated as such until the late 20th Century and early 21st Century when, thanks to sympathetic executive producers of cop television shows and one major terrorist attack which somehow lumped cops into the heroic category of "first responders," brainwashed a huge swathe of the American populace into believing police were not the corrupt assholes everybody always knew they were. Thomas Pynchon, and most other writers of great literature, have never been fooled. Feels like a good time for a Gravity's Rainbow quote, the one where the German cops bust up the Black Market!

"No wonder. The cops go at busting these proceedings the way they must've handled anti-Nazi street actions before the War, moving in, mmm ja, with these flexible clubs, eyes turned to the finest possibilities of threat, smelling of leather, of the wool-armpit rankness of their own fear, jumping little kids three-on-one, shaking down girls, old people, making them take off and shake out even boots and underwear, jabbing and battering in with tireless truncheonwork among the crying kids and screaming women. Beneath the efficiency and glee is nostalgia for the old days. The War must've been lean times for crowd control, murder and mopery was the best you could do, one suspect at a time. But now, with the White Market to be protected, here again are whole streets full of bodies eager for that erste Abreibung, and you can bet the heat are happy with it."

And don't read that and think, "Whatever. Pynchon is just describing Nazis and German police!" Au contraire, mein Freund! This next passage is about American military police and it goes just as hard!

"American voices, country voices, high-pitched and without mercy. He lies freezing, wondering if the bedsprings will give him away. For possibly the first time he is hearing America as it must sound to a non-American. Later he will recall that what surprised him most was the fanaticism, the reliance not just on flat force but on the rightness of what they planned to do . . . he'd been told long ago to expect that sort of thing from Nazis, and especially from Japs—we were the ones who always played fair—but this pair outside the door now are as demoralizing as a close-up of John Wayne (the angle emphasizing how slanted his eyes are, funny you never noticed before) screaming 'BANZAI!'"

I'm not sure about all that John Wayne stuff at the end but then I'm not reading Gravity's Rainbow one line at a time so I'm going to ignore it!

Anyway, as we see here, Pynchon, like all the other intelligent people in America, understands how cops just love to abuse their power!

"Case Institute"
Pynchon meant to write "Case School of Applied Science" but didn't for some reason. Probably due to lack of research ability, the poor sap!

Chapter 1: Section 7: Page 59: Line 40 (1021)

 This strip of Ohio due west of Connecticut had for years, since before American independence, been considered part of Connecticut's original land grant.

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I think this strip specifically might be what is known as the Western Reserve and possibly the strip through Pennsylvania was just known as "Settle Here at Your Own Risk"? Or maybe it's just because the land was given to Pennsylvania as America was being established and the Ohio portion was simply more Connecticut until the state ceded the land to the United States as part of the Northwest Territory in 1800. But not before Moses Cleaveland founded the worst city in the United States!
    Anyway, the university where Merle is headed was called the Case Western Reserve University except that Pynchon refers to it as the Case Institute, something it wouldn't be called for decades. Which is weird because calling it by its original name fits in so much better with Merle's story!