Friday, December 01, 2006

Zeno's Diet

I run the bagel club at work. It wasn't my idea. No money changes hands. A sign up sheet gets people to enter the rotation to bring them in. Donuts and bagels once a week.

This club is entirely optional. With my sales skills, it is amazing that there are any members. I mean, i can't even give away great stuff.

So, some of the members are weight conscious. So, they come up and cut a donut in half, and eat just that. Then, a bit later, they come back and cut the half in half, taking a quarter. Then, sometimes, even the quarter is cut in half, leaving an eighth.

This is Zeno's Diet. The idea is that before you can eat the whole donut, you must first eat half of it. And before you can eat the remaining half of it, you must eat half of that half, which is a quarter of it. And so on. Since there are an infinite number of steps, it is impossible to finish eating a whole donut. That's because it is impossible to do an infinite number of things in finite time.

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