Entropy Again

[OUTRSPACIA at aol.com]

The topic of entropy rears it's convenient head again, relative to the main
themes of TRP/GR. I'll throw my own simplistic comment on the pile:

Courtesy of physicist Paul Davies, in his book "The Last Three Minutes,"
Chapter 2: The Dying Universe: 
 "In the year, 1856, German physicist Hermann von Helmholz made what is
probably the most depressing prediction in the history of science. The
universe, Helmholz claimed, is dying. The basis of this apocalyptic
pronouncement was the so-called second law of thermodynamics."

He goes on to correlate this law to the ideas of the "arrow of time" and of
"entropy."

One can argue that if GR describes anything, it is a dying universe.
 Throughout the book, people, places, events and things are truncated,
disordered, disintegrating. They're dying. The word and the idea of "entropy"
is more than trendy, thanks to Pynchon, it's utterly appropriate, for the
book and the world in which we readers live. Fear and  paranoia, other
Pynchon themes are easily at home in such a world.

So if the central theme is entropy, it must also be death.

If you buy the idea that entropy equals death, then you either give up, or
you put some tolerable face on existence, which is what TRP has done with GR.

He's painted a bleak world, but he's done so in an almost absurdist manner.
He's made the dying universe as entertaining as it is haunting. Seems like
he's going to make the best of it, take advantage of it while it lasts --
which could be a gazillion years, unless we manage to end it all ourselves
before entropy fulfills its grim promise.