Nietzsche, Friedrich
The philosopher was born on October 15, 1844 in Röcken bei Lützen, Prussia (present-day Germany). He attended a private preparatory school in Naumburg, then received a classical education at the prestigious Schulpforta school. After graduating in 1864, he attended the University of Bonn for two semesters. He transferred to the University of Leipzig, where he studied philology (a combination of literature, linguistics and history). He was strongly influenced by the writings of philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer. In 1869, Nietzsche took a position as professor of Classical Philology at the University of Basel in Switzerland. During his professorship, he published his first books: The Birth of Tragedy (1872) and Human, All Too Human (1878). He also began to distance himself from classical scholarship, as well as the teachings of Schopenhauer, and to take more interest in the values underlying modern-day civilization. Suffering from a nervous disorder, he resigned from his post at Basel in 1879.
For much of the following decade, Nietzsche lived in seclusion, moving from Switzerland to France to Italy when he was not staying at his mother’s house in Naumburg. However, this was also a highly productive period for him as a thinker and writer. One of his most significant works, Thus Spoke Zarathustra, was published in four volumes between 1883 and 1885. He also wrote Beyond Good and Evil (published in 1886), The Genealogy of Morals (1887) and Twilight of the Idols (1889). In these works of the 1880s, Nietzsche developed the central points of his philosophy: “God is dead,” a rejection of Christianity as a meaningful force in contemporary life; his endorsement of self-perfection through creative drive and a “will to power”; and his concept of a “super-man” (Übermensch), an individual who strives to exist beyond conventional categories of good and evil, master and slave. Nietzsche suffered a collapse in 1889 while living in Turin, Italy. The last decade of his life was spent in a state of mental incapacitation. The reason for his insanity is still unknown, although historians have attributed it to causes as varied as syphilis, an inherited brain disease, a tumor and overuse of sedatives. After a stay in an asylum, Nietzsche was cared for by his mother in Naumburg and his sister in Weimar, Germany. He died in Weimar on August 25, 1900.
Nietzsche is regarded as a major influence on 20th Century philosophy, theology and art. His ideas on individuality, morality and the meaning of existence contributed to the thinking of philosophers Martin Heidegger, Jacques Derrida and Michel Foucault; Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud, two of the founding figures of psychiatry; and writers such as Albert Camus, Jean-Paul Sartre, Thomas Mann and Hermann Hesse. Less beneficially, certain aspects of Nietzsche’s work were used by the Nazi Party during the 1930s and ‘40s as justification for its activities; this selective and misleading use of his work darkened his reputation somewhat for later audiences.
Night Gallery
A popular 1969-73 television anthology series created and hosted by The Twilight Zone’s Rod Serling, Night Gallery was presented as short and typically chilling tales, featuring guest appearances by Vincent Price, Burgess Meredith, Bill Bixby, Ross Martin, Geraldine Page and John Astin, among many other stars. All of the macabre paintings displayed on the barren set of the vignette introductions were painted by Thomas J. Wright, and the sculptures shown were created by artists Logan Elston and Phil Vanderlel.
Nightcrawler
Kurt Wagner, also known as Nightcrawler, is the product of a love affair between two mutants: the terrorist Mystique and the Neyaphem warlord Azazel. When Kurt was born, the townsfolk were horrified by his demonic appearance and so she threw him into a river, shape-shifted into another form, then claimed she had killed the son and the mother. Azazel would not allow his son to die, so he saved him and gave him to one of his other lovers to raise. Kurt grew to display amazing agility, out of which his mutant abilities manifested. Making use of these gifts, he did acrobatics for circus audiences. When a millionaire circus owner from Texas approached them join his circus, he planned to move the circus to America and demanded that Kurt be in the freak show.
Nightcrawler was created by writer Len Wein and artist Dave Cockrum. At the time of Nightcrawler’s conception, he was originally supposed to be a demon that failed a mission and was banished from hell. He made his debut in Giant Size X-Men #1 in 1975. When he was first introduced, Nightcrawler struggled to be accepted by society at large, as well as by other mutants. Even so, he was usually a light-hearted character, quick to make jest or pull pranks on his fellow X-Men. He was also quite the ladies’ man. As time went on, more focus was placed on Nightcrawler’s Catholic faith and how he deals with the tragic experiences of his life. He became more of a sullen, introspective character, especially during his time with the team Excalibur. After returning to the United States, the Marvel Comics character planned to join the priesthood, but was forced back into the life of costumed adventuring before being officially ordained. In the 2003 film X-Men 2 (also known as X2), Nightcrawler was portrayed by Alan Cumming.
Nigma, Edward
See Nygma, Edward.
Nike
The goddess of victory (both in battle and sport) in Greek mythology is depicted as having wings, and is sometimes referred to as “Winged Goddess” or “Winged Victory.” She is the daughter of the Titan Pallas and the Naiad Styx, sister of Kratos, Bia and Zelus, who represented Strength, Force and Rivalry, respectively. The four siblings were companions of Zeus, and Nike had the role of the divine charioteer, flying above battlefields and giving glory to the victors. Known in Roman mythology as Victory or Victoria, Nike is today most often associated with the athletic footwear company of the same name. Phil Knight, the founder of Nike, chose the name purposely for its association with victory in sport.
Nimoy, Leonard
Born Leonard Simon Nimoy on March 26, 1931 (just four days after his frequent co-star William Shatner) in Boston, Massachusetts. Nimoy was the youngest child of Yiddish-speaking Jewish immigrants who had escaped Stalinist Russia. The family settled in the West End of Boston, where the acting bug bit Nimoy early on. He performed throughout his teen years at Boston’s English High School, and after his graduation in 1949, he attended Boston College. He made his way out to the West Coast, and by the early 1950s, Nimoy was appearing in bit parts in feature films. His first title role came with 1952’s boxing-themed Kid Monk Baroni. After a two-year stretch in the U.S. Army Reserve beginning in 1953, and marrying Sandra Zober in 1954, Nimoy resumed his acting career in 1955. He began studying with Jeff Corey, a highly respected acting coach, and continued to land bit parts on television series and B-movies. During this time, he became a father of two; daughter Julie was born in 1955 and son Adam in 1956.
After carving out a niche with day-player TV roles, it was Nimoy’s featured role on a 1965 episode of The Lieutenant that caught the attention of producer/writer Gene Roddenberry. At the time, Roddenberry was casting for the upcoming sci-fi series Star Trek, and thought Nimoy would be ideal for the role of the stoic and logical science officer Mr. Spock. Roddenberry even allowed Nimoy to contribute his own elements to the character. It was Nimoy who suggested the pacifist Vulcan neck pinch and the Vulcan salute. The latter was based on a Jewish hand symbol Nimoy had seen during a synagogue ritual. Star Trek premiered in 1966 and turned Nimoy into a legitimate star. The groundbreaking show garnered a steady following (and earned Nimoy three Emmy nominations), but due mainly to bad broadcast scheduling, was taken off the air in 1969 after three seasons. Immediately after the series ended, Nimoy was snapped up as a series regular on the show Mission: Impossible. He spent the next two years playing the role of the Great Paris, a master of disguise and illusion. He left the show in 1971. Throughout the 1970s, Nimoy not only took several roles on television and the stage (featuring appearances as Tevye in Fiddler on the Roof), he also published several volumes of poetry, and his 1975 autobiography I Am Not Spock, which featured a series of imagined discussions between himself and his most famous character.
With the blockbuster success of George Lucas’ Star Wars in 1977, America confirmed its love of big-budget sci-fi. At the same time, audiences had shown a renewed interested in Star Trek as a result of re-run syndication throughout the 1970s. Paramount Pictures, determined to stay competitive with Lucas’ high-grossing creation, approved a big-screen version of Star Trek. The film, Star Trek: The Motion Picture, was released in December of 1979. It was a box-office smash and was nominated for three Oscars (although critics nearly universally panned it). Nimoy returned for 1982’s sequel, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, and even directed the third and fourth installments in the series—1984’s Star Trek III: The Search for Spock and 1986’s Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home. Outside of the franchise, Nimoy co-starred in the 1982 TV film A Woman Called Golda, about Israeli prime minister Golda Meir (played by Ingrid Bergman), and he earned another Emmy nod for his efforts. The following year, Nimoy used his brief time away from the franchise to focus on directing, and in 1987, he helmed the enormously successful Three Men and a Baby, starring Ted Danson, Steve Guttenberg and Tom Selleck. As the Star Trek film series continued on, Nimoy and Shatner began to feel the strain. The two had put their contentiousness aside for the sake of the movies, but by the time 1989’s Star Trek V: The Final Frontier and 1991’s Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country hit movie theaters, Nimoy was ready to say his goodbyes to the franchise. The following year, he showcased his first screenwriting effort with Vincent, an adaptation of a former work that he directed and starred in based on Vincent Van Gogh.
Nimoy spent the rest of the 1990s honing his directing chops, voicing animated projects and appearing in the occasional acting role. In 1995, he released his second biography, I Am Spock. Largely retired from acting, Nimoy embraced a new career as a photographer, while he and his wife supported the arts with generous financial gifts from the Nimoy Foundation. The actor returned to acting to reprise his most famous role in J.J. Abrams’ reimagining of Star Trek in 2009 and Star Trek Into Darkness in 2013.
Nimoy died at his home in Los Angeles on February 27, 2015 at the age of 83.
Nimue
See Lady of the Lake.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (film)
Written and directed by Michael Radford, and based on Nineteen Eighty-Four (novel) by George Orwell, this dour science fiction film tells of a dystopic society where the government, led by the enigmatic Big Brother, can see and hear everything its citizens do. The cast of the film, which was fittingly released in 1984, includes John Hurt as Winston Smith, Suzanna Hamilton as Julia, and Richard Burton as O’Brien.
Nineteen Eighty-Four (novel)
Written by George Orwell and published in 1948, this classic cautionary tale tells of a dystopic society where the government, led by the enigmatic Big Brother, can see and hear everything its citizens do.
Ninety-ninety rule
A rule for tracking computer programming development time, the full wording of which is: “The first 90% of the code accounts for the first 90% of the development time. The remaining 10% of the code accounts for the other 90% of the development time.” Often mistaken for a typo, the rule simultaneously emphasizes two important points: 1) For almost any product, most of the development time will be used on relatively small but difficult sections of the code, and 2) The first point often leads to extremely optimistic project schedules. The ultimate lesson of this rule is that the amount of the project that is completed is not tied to the amount of code completed, and that substituting one for the other can be disastrous.
Nineve
See Lady of the Lake.
Niniane
See Lady of the Lake.
Nintendo Entertainment System
The NES, originally called the Famicom (or Family Computer), was released in Japan in 1983. There, it sold over 2.5 million units during its first year on the market. Nintendo, a former collectible card company, decided to expand its interests globally. Executives knew Western markets would be difficult to utilize. The video games industry was in shambles, so stores would be hesitant to stock a new console that likely no one would buy. Nintendo planned properly. First, Nintendo agreed to buy back unsold consoles so that stores would not be liable. Second, they developed a peripheral known as R.O.B. the Robot that could be used with two of its games (Stack Up and Gyromite). With R.O.B, the NES was disguised as an electronic toy, not a video game system. Finally, they redesigned the Famicom and renamed it the Nintendo Entertainment System. The console was released in the United States on October 18, 1985, and was an instant success in no small way due to one of its launch titles: Super Mario Bros.
The Nintendo Entertainment System was the home of the debut titles for many future franchises, including Mario, The Legend of Zelda, Metroid, Final Fantasy, Castlevania and Megaman. To date, Super Mario Bros. has sold over forty million copies, making it the second-best selling video game of all time (behind Nintendo’s Wii Sports). Other top sellers for the NES included Duck Hunt and Super Mario Bros 3.
The NES’s main competitors were two other 8-bit consoles: the Sega Master System and Atari’s 7800 system. Released in the U.S. in 1986, the Sega system allowed for better graphics and sound, but its only real success was in European markets. Initially, Nintendo had reached out to Atari with the interest of reviving the video game industry together, but Atari did not comply and released its own console to compete with Nintendo. Originally released during the video game crash, Atari’s upgraded 5200 console was re-released in 1986, but by that point, the NES, launched in 1985, was so popular that it stole all of Atari’s sales. As the console became obsolete with the release of the Sega Genesis and the Super Nintendo Entertainment System in the early 1990s, the price of the NES diminished.
Ninth metal
See Nth metal.
Niska, Adelai
Feared gangland boss who hires Malcolm Reynolds and his crew to do a simple theft in the Firefly episode “The Train Job.” When the crew reconsiders, however, Niska is not amused. Portrayed by actor Michael Fairman, Niska would reappear in the episode “War Stories” to exact his revenge.
Nobel, Alfred
Alfred Bernhard Nobel was born on October 21, 1833 in Stockholm, Sweden. He was often sickly as a child, but he was always lively and curious about the world around him. When Alfred was 4, his father moved to St. Petersburg, Russia, to take a job manufacturing explosives. The family followed him in 1842. Alfred’s newly affluent parents sent him to private tutors in Russia, and he quickly mastered chemistry and became fluent in English, French, German and Russian. He left Russia at the age of 18. After spending a year in Paris studying chemistry, he moved to the United States. After five years, he returned to Russia and began working in his father’s factory making military equipment for the Crimean War. In 1859, at the war’s end, the company went bankrupt. The family moved back to Sweden, and Alfred soon began experimenting with explosives. In 1864, when Alfred was 29, a huge explosion in the family’s Swedish factory killed five people, including Alfred’s younger brother Emil. Dramatically affected by the event, Nobel set out to develop a safer explosive. In 1867, he patented a mixture of nitroglycerin and an absorbent substance, producing what he named “dynamite.” In 1888, Alfred’s brother Ludvig died while in France. A French newspaper erroneously published Alfred’s obituary instead of Ludvig’s, and condemned Alfred for his invention of dynamite. Provoked by the event and disappointed with how he felt he might be remembered, Nobel set aside a bulk of his estate to establish the Nobel Prizes to honor men and women for outstanding achievements in physics, chemistry, medicine and literature, and for working toward peace. Sweden’s central bank, Sveriges Riksbank, established the Nobel Prize in Economics in 1968 in honor of Alfred, who had died of a stroke on December 10, 1896, in San Remo, Italy. After taxes and bequests to individuals, Nobel left 31,225,000 Swedish kronor (equivalent to 250 million U.S. dollars in 2008) to fund the Nobel Prizes.
Noble gas
Any of a group of rare chemically inert gaseous elements of group 8A or 0 of the Periodic Table of Elements: argon, helium, krypton, neon, xenon, and usually radon. Noble gases, also called inert gases, exhibit great stability and extremely low reaction rates.
Node B (eNB)
See Base transceiver station (BTS).
Nomenclature
Can refer to the name or designation something is given, the process of naming, or a system or set of terms or symbols, especially in a particular science, discipline or art.
Non-player character
In gaming, an incidental character that may or may not interact with player-driven characters and may or may not help to guide the game. Also known as an “NPC.”
Non-volatile storage
Computer storage that is not lost when the computer is turned off.
NOR flash memory
See NAND flash memory.
NORAD
See North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD).
Norman
An android that pretends to be a member of the U.S.S. Enterprise crew in order to take control of the ship and steer it to an unnamed planet. Once on the planet, Captain James T. Kirk is reunited with an old nemesis, Harry Mudd. In I, Mudd, which originally aired on November 3, 1967, it is revealed that Mudd crash-landed on the planet, only to become both master and slave of a planet full of obedient-yet-adamant androids, who cannot be without a master and would not let Mudd leave. In order to escape, Mudd had Norman divert the Enterprise, a starship full of 430 “masters,” for the needy androids to cater to. The captive landing party discover that there are many copies of each “model” of android, except for Norman. There is only one Norman, which the crew correctly take to be the central intelligence. Flooding the androids with illogic, they shut down one after another, with the episode climax being a string of riddles and make-believe activities, which the analytical brain of Norman cannot comprehend. Eventually, steam rises from his computerized head, and Norman shuts down, leaving the landing party free to go. As an act of justice, instead of granting Harry Mudd his freedom, Kirk leaves him on the planet with the remaining androids … including many fashioned in the image of his shrewish wife, Stella … until he mends his ways.
North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)
A U.S./Canadian organization charged with the missions of aerospace warning and aerospace control over North America. Aerospace warning includes the monitoring of man-made objects in space, and the detection, validation and warning of attack against North America by aircraft, missiles or space vehicles, through mutual support arrangements with other commands. Aerospace control includes ensuring air sovereignty and air defense of the airspace over Canada and the United States. The May 2006 NORAD Agreement renewal added a maritime warning, which entails a shared awareness and understanding of the activities conducted in U.S. and Canadian maritime approaches, maritime areas and inland waterways.
Norton Anti-virus
A family of antivirus software programs designed to detect computer viruses, malware, spyware and other threats.
Nowhere Man
One of the 1996 premiere series for the fledgling UPN television network, Nowhere Man was designed to be a cross between The Fugitive and The Prisoner. Photojournalist Thomas Veil took a picture he shouldn’t have, and someone wants the negatives. Someone powerful enough to alter every element of Veil’s life until they get it! Lasting only one season, Nowhere Man, which starred Bruce Greenwood, featured plot twists, betrayals and a shocking series climax.
NPC
See Non-player character.
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