Acornell.2741
net.math
utzoo!decvax!duke!harpo!floyd!vax135!cornell!jts
Sun Apr 11 22:55:46 1982
Book on Paradoxes
For those of you interested in a book of paradoxes, try "Vicious Circles
and Infinity", by Patrick Hughes and George Brecht (Penguin books).

Among the paradoxes it includes are:

     .   Russell's paradox (the set of sets not members of themselves)
     .   Berry's   paradox (the least integer not nameable in less than
                            19 syllables)
     .   Zeno's paradoxes  (Achilles and the tortise, the arrow, etc.)
     .   Hilbert's hotel   (has an countably infinite number of rooms)

It also has some cute stories; here's my favorite:

     The following entry won a newspaper prize for the best piece on the
     topic "What would you most like to read on opening the morning mail?"

     Our Second Competition

         The First Prize in the second of this year's competitions goes
         to Mr. Arthur Robinson, whose witty entry was easily the best
         of those we received.  His choice of what he would like to read
         on opening his paper was headed 'Our Second Competition' and was
         as follows:

             "The First prize in the second of this year's competitions
         goes to Mr. Arthur Robinson, whose witty entry was easily the
         best of those we received.  His choice of what he would like to
         read on opening his paper was headed 'Our Second Competition,'
         but owing to paper restrictions, we cannot print all of it."

-----------------------------------------------------------------
 gopher://quux.org/ conversion by John Goerzen <jgoerzen@complete.org>
 of http://communication.ucsd.edu/A-News/


This Usenet Oldnews Archive
article may be copied and distributed freely, provided:

1. There is no money collected for the text(s) of the articles.

2. The following notice remains appended to each copy:

The Usenet Oldnews Archive: Compilation Copyright (C) 1981, 1996 
 Bruce Jones, Henry Spencer, David Wiseman.