Eish!

I’ve been giving some more thought to this quandary.

Zeno was very clearly an under-achiever, came left with girls and suffered from premature balding. This latter point is easily shown in his theory about the hair that never quite makes its destination.

None of this explains the tortoise though and how it fits in to the bigger picture. I can only assume he used one as some kind of hat.

That he was an under-achiever is easily understood. His paradox is riddle with the inability to reach the goal post, something he managed to justify metaphorically. This genius is lamentable and I can only wish that I had thought of using it for myself at school. It certainly applies quite well to:

• the queue in the Home Affairs Office
• the Post-Office
• my inbox
• come to think of it, my outbox too

Admittedly that is all the thought I’ve given the matter. It wasn’t really that interesting to begin with.

I’m not often intimidated by the animal kingdom.

Actually, this is a blatant lie. There are many species that I that I am afraid of: dodgy Thai prawns for a start; stingrays; dogs with orange eyebrows; most snails and belligerent tortoises.

It is the latter that drew my attention this weekend. As a student of Esop and with an Ephebian flair for practical philosophy I can say with some certainty that there is a subtle fallacy involved in the story of the  Tortoise and the Hare.

The tortoise is commonly regarded as the underdog in this fable. Yet when compared to the hare on a purely zoological scale, there is not much of an advantage that the hare can expect.

Read the rest of this entry »