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24.4.07

Zeno of Elea, MA

I find that trying to finish an MA thesis is like living on the inside of Zeno's paradoxes, which go like this: if person M, let's say a student of comparative literature, is trying to get from point X to point Y, let's say X is being unemployable and Y is the finish point of an MA thesis, he'll have to write the appropriate number of pages to get from his starting position to point Y.

Easy as π. Except first he writes half his thesis, no problem. Next, he writes half of what is left, leaving a quarter of the way to go. Then, he writes half of that, and he now has an eighth to go. But since this guy is pretty dumb, and probably watching House M.D. obsessively instead of working, he keeps just going half of the remaining distance. And as you know, Xenophon, since all numbers are infinitely recursive, he has to keep covering half the distance. Forever. He'll never get to that magic last page. On the other hand, the same thought holds for dying, so he'll never die or run out of House M.D. episodes to watch, either. Sweet.

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3 Comments:

Anonymous Anonymous said...

A-ha! That explains it. Same boat, you see.

April 24, 2007 3:51 pm  
Blogger suttonhoo said...

exceedingly sweet when House is in the house.

keep on keeping on. :)

April 25, 2007 5:38 pm  
Blogger Mikkel said...

http://politiken.dk/indland/article293073.ece

April 27, 2007 2:29 am  

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