Updated: 8/14/2003; 1:24:38 AM.
Distressed Fabric
Mcgyver5's Radio Weblog
        

Friday, October 18, 2002

The missiles are distributing about London just as Poisson's equation in the textbooks predicts.

The DC sniper story is starting to match some of the most bizarre science fiction I have ever read. First of all, there is the crazy everything-powered aircraft flying around in circles above the capitol. Does this remind anyone else of Valis and Counter-Clock World by Philip K. Dick?

Secondly, as they apply statistics and "geographic profiling" based on the theory of "least effort" in their hunt, this whole thing starts reminds me of Gravity's Rainbow. It's full of references to statistics (...the bell shaped curve of farewell..) and the plot centers in part around a big map of London and statistical interpretations of that map. The book explores the quest to find truth through statistics and the paranoid sense of connectiveness of all things.

 They say that Pynchon must have been reading the works of Zipf pretty closely. As one reviewer states:

"This Principle of Least Effort he uncovered gradually became his total obsession, and the 1949 book absolutely crosses a line, blending statistics with paranoia as Zipf--not sounding at all like a statistician- pleads to the reader that his Principle lays bare nothing less than the secret structure of all social relations--not just linguistic, but economic, political. etc. "

Anyway, there are a number of parallels between GR and the DC / Maryland Sniper.  The analysis of maps, looking in vain for a pattern, the randomness of the strikes of both the sniper and the V2 missles.  The fact that you don't hear the missles until after they strike just as you start hearing the echo of the sniper's bullet off the walls of the suburban big box stores after it goes through your chest. 


3:40:59 PM    comment []


This made me laugh.  thanks to Rick for finding it.
11:45:17 AM    comment []


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