From the New Scientist::
Both Charles Darwin and Albert Einstein relied on pen, paper, and the postal service to communicate with correspondents around the world. But researchers have now found the pattern of their replies is the same as that of computer users answering email today, with both following the same mathematical formula.
…In previous work, Barab�si looked at how long it took people to answer their email, and found a “bursty” pattern – most emails are answered fairly quickly, but a few sit around for a long time, and some sit around for a very long time.
Although I do think that their hypothesis that this behavior is related to some kind of biological encoding is silly. It’s simple: You get an important email, you jump on it. Duh!
Alex Eckelberry