It's been over a month! Wow. But I have been thinking about stuff to blog about. I'm slowly making my way through the Phillip K. Dick story anthology Jeff gave me, between Newsweek and doing New York Times crossword puzzles. As much as I found "The Variable Man" and "The Short Happy Life of the Brown Oxford" and "The Builder" childish, I loved "The Indefatigable Frog".
A pair of professors are arguing about the old conundrum: "If a frog jumps half-way toward the wall on each jump, we he ever get to the wall?" The philosopher says Yes and the physicist says No. (I think Dick got it backwards, but Oh well.) Hilarity ensues when they are forced to work together to invent a device that will let them determine the answer experimentally. Of course one of them ends up in the device, forced to repeat the experiment. I would not have predicted the outcome. It is pure genius. But I'll let you read the story for yourself.
I remember that story. I think that in any (bounded) amount of time he can only jump a finite number of times and he's certainly bounded by his lifespan, so he will die before getting there.
ReplyDeleteI think he'll get close enough that he can reach out to the edge with his hand(paw? claw?)and pull himself over, even if he can't ever hop to the edge. Or is that cheating?
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