High Wiredness by Mail

[Rick Vosper]

Forgive me if this has been discussed already (I'm weeks behind, as usual),
but the same October '96 issue of _Wired_ (Tired: David Foster
Wallace/Wired: Thomas Pynchon) contains this tidbit, in a discussion of ATM
packet-switching theory (p208) courtesy of one Steve J. Steinberg:

"For the past 20 years, most analyses of data traffic-- including those ATM
is based on-- have assumed that traffic bursts follow a Poisson statistical
distribution. The Poisson distribution is a mathematical model for
describing physical processes over time; it's used to predict the frequency
of auto accidents, atomic disintegrations, and, perhaps most famously, the
fall of bombs and Slothrop's sexual encounters around London in Thomas
Pynchon's *Gravity's Rainbow."

Most Famously??? 

I thought the fun of this group-- nay, the whole POINT--  lay in its very
obscurity, "a very fine and private vice", to misquote Hunter Thompson.
What would we all do if our beloved TRP became as popular as, say, Anne Rice?

A-and as far as I know, no one herein has ever mentioned the Bianca Quote in
a twenty-year-old issue of _High Times_ magazine...but I digress.

--rick