Coincidentally, the word Lark was also an all-sleeper passenger train of the Southern Pacific Company that ran on the route from San Francisco, where Little Brother takes place, to Los Angeles.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lark_%28passenger_train%29

Interestingly enough this past April the Swedish men who founded the notorious Internet file-sharing site, Pirate Bay, Fredrik Neij, Gottfrid Svartholm Warg and Peter Sunde, and the man who provided the financing, Carl Lundstrom, were all sentenced to one year in prison and ordered to pay a total of $3.5 million in damages to a who’s who of leading entertainment companies. However, it appears the site is still operating as of today, September 13, 2009. http://thepiratebay.org/

You can read more about the case in this article on the New York Times website.

The Muni Trolleys actually looks like these:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/milantram/3616073477/in/set-72157619593722872/

You can view a variety of different types of the Muni trolleys from over the years here.

The Market Railway is a non-profit organization that was founded in 1976 by three transit preservationists who wanted to preserve a vintage Municipal Railway trolley bus that was about to be scrapped in San Francisco.

The organization remained small until the first trolley festival in 1983. Today the organization continues to focus their efforts on projects that entail restoring the trolleys and programs like “The Teaching Trolley” which educate the community on the importance of the Muni transit system.

The term is commonly used with the word war (war profiteering) to refer to people, organizations, governments, etc. who are making profits from warfare.

In this article from the BBC website, Panorama, the world’s longest running investigative show, investigated claims that as much as $23 billion dollars may have been lost, stolen or not properly accounted for in the Iraq war and that the U.S. Government is accountable for this “war profiteering.”

Interestingly enough the character ‘Daddy Oliver Warbucks’ in the film, Annie, is an example of the stereotype of a war profiteer, but associated to a ‘good guy.’

There’s also genetic profiteering where people can pay to find out their ancestry or if they are at risk of getting cancer. This is a controversial topic that is explored in this paper by Laura De Francesco published in Nature Biotechnology in August of 2006.

* Pronunciation: \ˌkwid-ˌprō-ˈkwō\
* Function: noun
* Etymology: New Latin, something for something
* Date: 1582
: something given or received for something else; also: a deal arranging a quid pro quo

Quid pro quo is often used as legal terminology for various reasons. One example used in court refers to contracts. A contract is drawn up when an act or service is completed in exchange for money or something else of economic value. If the deal appears to be one sided, a lawyer can question whether there was quid pro quo or an equal exchange.

In the movie Silence of the Lambs, Hanibel Lector uses the phrase when talking to Clarice from his jail cell. See below for the text.

Hannibal Lecter: “Plum Island Animal Disease Research Center.” Sounds charming.

Clarice Starling: That’s only a part of the island. There’s a very, very nice beach. Terns nest there. There’s beautiful…

Hannibal Lecter: [cuts her off] Terns? Mmh. If I help you, Clarice, it will be “turns” with us too. Quid pro quo. I tell you things, you tell me things. Not about this case, though. About yourself. Quid pro quo. Yes or no?

Quid Pro Quo was also the title of a movie made in 2008. According to Wikipedia, the plot involves a semi-paralyzed radio reporter who is sent to investigate a story, leading him to a disturbing subculture and a journey of self-realization.

This paper, published in Forensic Science Communications, a peer-reviewed quarterly journal, explores noise signature and also discusses how to use pattern noise for source-camera identification.

As done in Little Brother, a noise signature on a camera can be turned off or stripped out of the camera.Watch this “How to” video.