What about Entropy?

[Eddie Bettano]

--- Eddie Bettano <eddiebettano at yahoo.com> wrote:
> Poem for a dying cough tied behind the clown mobile.
> 
> What about entropy? 
> What about it? 
> What? 
> Wha? 
> Wa? 
> Wa, wa, all this wa wa....
> 
> 
>    --E
> 
> In GR, Slothrop discovers that Entropy(ies) is/are
> THEIR'S. 
>  entropy is the loss of information in a transmitted
> message. 
> Enzian also discovers that Entropy(ies) is/are
> THEIRS.
> 
> Entropy is a measure of the disorder or randomness
> in
> a closed system. 
> Entropy is the tendency for all matter and energy in
> the universe 
> to evolve toward a state of inert uniformity. 
> 
> See GR (302, 324).
> 
> Notice how it is that Enzian grows cold (324). 
> Slothrop also grows cold. In fact, Slothrop becomes
> so
> cold he can't feel anything at all. 
> 
> Some definitions that go with Entropy:   
> 
> 
> Centrifugal:  Moving or  directed away from a center
> or axis. 2. Operated by means of
>  centrifugal force. 3. Physiology. Transmitting
> nerve
>  impulses away from the central nervous system;
> efferent. 4. Botany. Developing or progressing
> outward
> from a center or axis, as in a flower cluster in
> which
> the oldest flowers are in the center and the
> youngest
> flowers are near the edge. 5. Tending or directed
> away
> from centralization, as of authority: "The division
> of
> Europe into two warring blocs, each ultimately
> dependent on a superpower patron, is subject
> to ever-increasing centrifugal stress" (Scott
> Sullivan).
> 
> In GR there is "centrifugal History" (737) 
> 
> and there is centripetal History--"gravitational
> collapse" (737). 
> 
> Centripetal: Moving or directed  toward a center or
> axis. 2. Operated by means of centripetal  force. 3.
> Physiology. Transmitting nerve impulses toward the
>  central nervous system; afferent. 4. Botany.
> Developing or progressing inward toward the center
> or
> axis, as in the head of a sunflower, in which the
> oldest flowers are near the edge and the youngest
> flowers are in the center. 5. Tending
> or directed toward centralization: the centripetal
> effects of a homogeneous population. 
> 
>  As readers of Postmodern fiction we can think of
> Entropy as a fictional analogue to
> the physical process we find in the second law of
> thermodynamics. We immediately connect this to
> Thomas
> Pynchon, but he was not the first author to use
> Entropy in his fictions. I don't believe Pynchon is
> all that interested in the second law of
> Thermodynamics and I don't think he knows a hell of
> a
> lot about it. Again, it seems clear that Pynchon is
> being honest in the Introduction to SL when he
> admits
> how little he understood  these matters and how
> little
> they really matter. Early Pynchon critics were
> convinced that P was not a poet but a scientist who
> wrote poetry and that to understand his fiction
> readers needed to know at least as much about
> science
> as literature. Well, they were wrong. Entropy is
> useful to Pynchon as poet. 
> 
> Entropy in GR advances towards
>   "isotropy" (124), 
> 
> Identical in all directions; invariant with respect
> to
> direction.
> "inertia" (209) , 
> Physics. The tendency of a body
> to resist acceleration; the tendency of a body at
> rest
> to remain at rest or of a body in motion to stay in
> motion in a straight line unless acted on by an
> outside force. 2. Resistance or disinclination to
> motion, action, or change: the inertia of an
> entrenched bureaucracy. See INERT. 
> 
> "Vacuum" (239), 
>  Absence of matter. b. A space empty
>  of matter. c. A space relatively empty of matter.
> d.
> A space in which the pressure is significantly lower
> than
>  atmospheric pressure. 2. A state of emptiness; a
> void. 3. A state of being sealed off from external
> or
> environmental influences; isolation. 4., pl.
> vac·uums.
> A vacuum cleaner. --vac·u·um adj. 1. Of, relating
> to,
> or used to create a vacuum. 2. Containing air or
> other
> gas at a reduced pressure. 3. Operating by means of
> suction or by maintaining a partial vacuum. 
> Important derivatives are: 
> wane, want, vanish,  vacant, vacation, vacuum, void,
> avoid, evacuate, and WASTE. 
>  progressing in a "long rallentando" in infinite
> series, term by term dying…never quite to the
> zero…."
> (149) and thus only approaching the Final Zero" 
> asymptotically ( 319). 
> 
> 
> Gradually slackening in tempo; ritardando. Used
> chiefly as a direction. -- A rallentando passage or
> movement. [Italian, present participle of
> rallentare,
> to slow down. 
> 
> Asymptote  Mathematics. A line considered a limit to
> a
> curve in the sense that the
> perpendicular distance from a moving point on the
> curve to the line approaches zero as the point moves
> an infinite distance from the origin. 
> 
> Entropy is an historical/psychological  process, a
>  dispersion, interminable fragmenting. An 
>  atomization/voiding of the WHOLE or subject/object,
> the self from the self, man from man, man from god,
> man from earth. A Fall and another Fall. 
> In GR, Entropy is the Second Fall of Man. 
> 
> 
> __________________________________________________
> Do you Yahoo!?
> Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up
> now.
> http://mailplus.yahoo.com
> 


__________________________________________________
Do you Yahoo!?
Yahoo! Mail Plus - Powerful. Affordable. Sign up now.
http://mailplus.yahoo.com