oedipa's dance with the demon

[Richard Fiero]

lorentzen-nicklaus wrote:
>   in his col49-companion from 1994, j. kerry grant included a long note (pp.
>   81-95) on the words "two distinct kinds of this entropy", which is the
>   elaborated version of something he first published in "pynchon notes" 28/9
>   (1991). lots of useful stuff on "entropy" and about 
> nefastis's maxwell's demon
>   machine. in the end (94f) grant offers a really interesting interpretation:
>
>  " ... in the light of these more or less negative approaches 
> to nefastis and
>his machine, we might want to go back for a moment to the 
>first mention of the
>engineer, which seems to suggest that there is at least some reason to regard
>him in in a sympathetic light. 'john's somebody who still invents things',
>stanley koteks tells oedipa, indicating that nefastis is to be counted among
>those 'really creative enginneer(s)' who would be stifled by 
>the patent-grabbing
>policies of yoyodyne (h85.14). . ."

What?!? The concept of Maxwell's Demon as the tie between 
thermodynamic and information theoretic entropies is far neater 
than all this silly verbiage. C'mon, it's like the alligators in the sewer.

See also "The Hieronymous Pattern"
http://www.psiops.com/cosimano/thehieronymouspattern.html
"In 1949 T. Galen Hieronymous patented what was for many years 
the most famous radionic device in the US.   In the 1950s, John 
W. Campbell, the science fiction writer and editor decided to 
build the unit in the hope of debunking it.  To his great 
surprise it worked and not just for him!  But there was 
more.  Campbell discovered that just the circuit diagram of the 
instrument would work just as well as the real instrument."

Well, I've built several. Although they did not work for me, 
they did work for various subjects who tried them.