Hola Martijn, all, On Wed, 18 Aug 1999, Martijn van Buul wrote: > Howard Herman wrote: > > > > As to the hard cased animal in the fairy tale, I believe that refers to > > the tortoise who had a race with the hare, and ultimately won because of > > his persistence. > > Wasn't it a semi-paradox stated by Aristoteles? It was about a race between a > turtle and an athlete, with the turtle having a headstart. Aristoteles claimed > that the athlete could never overtake the turtle, because, during the time > the athlete needed to get to the original location of the turtle, the > turtle had advanced a bit etc. etc. Well, no ;-). I believe the tortoise and the hare is one of Aesop's fables; the moral of the fable is "slow and steady wins the race", as in, the hare thinks he's so far ahead that he can take a nap, and while he's sleeping the tortoise wins the race. Maybe there's a metaphor in there for the 64 vs. the PC, somehow. The paradox you refer to is "Zeno's paradox"; to resolve the paradox you need to know about infinitesimals (which the Greeks didn't). Aristotle was, of course, one of the more famous Greek philosophers. In the humanities he is generally lifted up as one of the great thinkers; people in other fields generally regard him as an idiot, and think the humanities people ought to re-think their position. Finally, regarding tortoises and turtles, I believe that whereas the turtle is water-based, the tortoise is land-based. Tortoises also tend to be huge. -Steve - This message was sent through the cbm-hackers mailing list. To unsubscribe: echo unsubscribe | mail cbm-hackers-request@dot.tcm.hut.fi.
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