First published in 1965, The Crying of Lot 49 is the second novel by American author Thomas Pynchon. The novel follows Oedipa Mass, a young California housewife, after she unexpectedly finds herself named executor of the estate of California real estate mogul and ex-boyfriend, Pierce Inverarity. Reflecting on their history together, Oedipa recalls how her travels with Pierce helped her recognize, but not overcome, the poignant sense of being held paralyzed and isolated from the world (and others) within a staid existence and bourgeois by some. invisible and nefarious external force. Oedipa also struggles to understand why Pierce appointed her as executor considering his profound ignorance of finance, law, real estate, and who he was as a person (by virtue of his isolation). Despite these reservations, Oedipa accepts the dubious honor, traveling to San Narciso, the Southern California city in the heart of Pierce's vast holdings. A series of unlikely coincidences lead her to begin investigating a potential conspiracy centered around an underground communications network called The Tristero. As Oedipa delves deeper into the investigation, she begins to question her own sanity. Mounting evidence affirming the existence of the Tristero, such as prevalent sightings of its emblem, a toned-down version of a post horn, is inextricably linked to Pierce's real estate holdings. Therefore, Oedipa must deal with her growing sensory paranoia that suggests that the entire investigation is a figment of her imagination or (much worse) a manipulative ploy imposed on her by some unknown external entity (Pierce? The Tristero itself?). Pynchon uses Oedipa's search through St. Narcissus in search of the Tristero in the Arctic... middle of the paper... entropy safety is zero because the expected outcome can be predicted with absolute certainty. The coin always shows heads. Meanwhile, the entropy measure for a coin toss manipulated to make it more likely to land heads than tails, or vice versa, exceeds the entropy for a two-sided coin toss, since the new coin has two possible outcomes. However, the entropy measure for a correct coin toss exceeds that of a manipulated coin toss, even if they share the same number of possible outcomes (heads, tails), because the equal probability of the outcomes being heads or tails for flipping the right coin adds an additional degree of uncertainty. Therefore, in information theory, the measure of entropy increases as the number of possible outcomes increases, but decreases if the probabilities distort expectations in favor of the occurrence of one possible outcome over others..