Monday, August 02, 2010

Bend Your Mind Around This

A few months ago ListVerse had a Top 11 of brain-twisting paradoxes. Among them was this fun one at #4:

Suppose there is a town with just one male barber; and that every man in the town keeps himself clean-shaven: some by shaving themselves, some by attending the barber. It seems reasonable to imagine that the barber obeys the following rule: He shaves all and only those men in town who do not shave themselves.

Under this scenario, we can ask the following question: Does the barber shave himself?
Asking this, however, we discover
that the situation presented is in fact impossible:

- If the barber does not shave himself, he must abide by the rule and shave himself.
- If he does shave himself, according to the rule he will not shave himself
Of course the #1 brain-twister is the age-old one of an irresistible force meeting immovable object. Like all mind-benders of this sort it is unanswerable since it would take an infinite amount of energy to be irresistible or immovable.

But perhaps more importantly it was reported a few weeks ago that British scientists have "cracked" the greatest mystery of the chicken or egg. And the answer (with drum roll, please) is:
The Chicken
It has something to do with certain chemicals or proteins that control egg production which needs a chicken to exist. Here's a link to an article on MSNBC.

In case you are interested, it is reported in a scholarly paper with the exciting and enticing title of Structural Control Of Crystal Nuclei By An Eggshell Protein.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

The barber paradox - I love this! This was my first introduction to Russell's Paradox. A simplistic version of the mathematical answer is that you can't make the collection of people who shave themselves be the same kind of collection as that of just 'all people'.

Anonymous said...

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