Bomba!

Bomba! (ボンバ!, Bonba!) is a manga by Osamu Tezuka that began serialization in 1970.

Plot

Tetsu Otani is a junior high school student with a weak heart. Despite the hardships of being so meek at school, he has an intense crush on one of his teachers: Reiko Mizushima. However, one of his least favorite teachers, Kito, intends to propose to her. Since Kito is very violent and often pushes Tetsu around, the thought of him and Reiko together infuriates Tetsu. Before him appears a ghostly white horse, and the next day, Kito is found dead.

Tetsu realizes that this horse is the ghost of Bomba, a horse Tetsu's father told him he was charged to take care of during the Pacific War. Now, whenever Tetsu feels intense hatred for someone, Bomba will appear and cause that person to die.

Characters

Bomba (cryptography)

The bomba, or bomba kryptologiczna (Polish for "bomb" or "cryptologic bomb") was a special-purpose machine designed about October 1938 by Polish Cipher Bureau cryptologist Marian Rejewski to break German Enigma-machine ciphers.

History

The German Enigma used a combination key to control the operation of the machine: rotor order, which rotors to install, which ring setting for each rotor, which initial setting for each rotor, and the settings of the stecker plugboard. The rotor settings were trigrams (for example, "NJR") to indicate the way the operator was to set the machine. German Enigma operators were issued lists of these keys, one key for each day. For added security, however, each individual message was encrypted using an additional key modification. The operator randomly selected a trigram rotor setting for each message (for example, "PDN"). This message key would be typed twice ("PDNPDN") and encrypted, using the daily key (all the rest of those settings). At this point each operator would reset his machine to the message key, which would then be used for the rest of the message. Because the configuration of the Enigma's rotor set changed with each depression of a key, the repetition would not be obvious in the ciphertext since the same plaintext letters would encrypt to different ciphertext letters. (For example, "PDNPDN" might become "ZRSJVL.")

Bomba (Ecuador)

Bomba or Bomba del Chota is an Afro-Ecuadorian music, dance and rum al form from the Chota Valley area of Ecuador in the province of Imbabura and Carchi. Its origins can be traced back to Africa via the middle passage and the use of African slave labor during the country's colonial period. Africans brought to labor as slaves in Ecuador brought with them this music form heavily influenced from the Bantu cultures of the Congo. The people dance in pairs to the drums and use improvisation to build relationships between the dancer and lead drummer.

This music and dance tends to have a prominent Spanish, mestizo and indigenous influence in the melodies. It could go from a mid tempo to a very fast rhythm. It is usually played with guitars along with the main local instrument which is also called bomba which is a drum along with a guiro and sometimes bombos and bongos. A variation of it is la banda mocha which are groups that play bomba with a bombo, guiro and plant leaves to give melody.

Lolita (term)

Lolita was the nickname of one of the principal characters in Vladimir Nabokov's novel Lolita. Lolita's actual name was Dolores, with whom the narrator, Humbert Humbert, develops a sexual obsession. In the book itself, "Lolita" is specifically Humbert's nickname for Dolores. Nevertheless, "Lolita" and "loli" has come to be used as a general reference to a seductive or sexually attractive young woman.

In the marketing of pornography, lolita is used to refer to a young girl, frequently one who has only recently reached the age of consent, or appears to be younger than the age of consent.

Etymology & Related Terms

Nymphet

A nymphet is a sexually attractive girl, or young woman. The first recorded use of the term "nymphet", defined by The Century Dictionary as "a little nymph", was by Drayton in Poly-Olbion I. xi. Argt. 171 (1612): "Of the nymphets sporting there In Wyrrall, and in Delamere."

In Lolita, "nymphet" was used to describe the 9- to 14-year-old girls to whom the protagonist is attracted, the archetypal nymphet being the character of Dolores Haze. Nabokov, in the voice of his narrator Humbert, first describes these nymphets in the following passage:

Born to Die (Lana Del Rey album)

Born to Die is the second studio album and major-label debut by American singer and songwriter Lana Del Rey. It was released on January 27, 2012 by Interscope Records, Polydor Records, and Stranger Records. Del Rey collaborated with producers including Patrik Berger, Jeff Bhasker, Chris Braide, Emile Haynie, Justin Parker, Rick Nowels, Robopop, and Al Shux to achieve her desired sound. Their efforts resulted in a primarily baroque pop record, which sees additional influences from alternative hip hop, indie pop and trip hop music.

Contemporary music critics were divided in their opinions of Born to Die; some commended its distinctive production, while its repetitiveness and melodramatic tendencies were a recurring complaint. The record debuted at number two on the U.S. Billboard 200 with first-week sales of 77,000 copies; it was later certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) after moving one million units. Born to Die reached the peak position on eleven international record charts, and has sold 8.5 million copies worldwide as of May 2015.

Lolita (play)

Lolita is a play adapted by Edward Albee from Vladimir Nabokov's novel of the same name. The troubled production opened on Broadway on March 19, 1981 after 31 previews and closed after only 12 performances.

Frank Rich in his New York Times review wondered why the play even opened after "weeks of delays" as it was "the kind of embarrassment that audiences do not quickly forget or forgive." Rich said the least of its sins were incompetence, being boring, and trashing a literary masterpiece. "What sets Lolita apart from ordinary failures is its abject mean-spiritedness," he wrote. "For all this play's babbling about love, it is rank with indiscriminate – and decidedly unearned – hate."

Ten years earlier, John Barry and Alan Jay Lerner's musical Lolita, My Love was a bomb, closing during tryouts in Boston. (Albee's Lolita also played in Boston before its Broadway launch.) Critics had scored the play, saying that the lack of Nabokov's authorial voice made the musical salacious. Albee put Nabokov on stage in his play, but it did not help.