moral: don't expect much of fortune cookies.
earlier today i went to a vietnamese-chinese place for lunch, and sticking to american custom, at the end of the meal my bill came with a fortune cookie.
at a first reading, i thought the cookie fortune said this:
all things are difficult because they are easy.
wow, methought, that's deep!
the writer of this fortune must really understand the human condition! it must take a powerful optimism to be able to write such a thing, and moreover it is a clever mixture of humanism yet accounts subtlely the constraints of the human mind and imagination.
i dare say that it encapsulates the mathematical experience. if it weren't so long, it could suit a zen koan ..
.. but then i re-read it, and realised that it actually said:
all things are difficult before they are easy.
i think i might have groaned out loud at the restaurant. i suppose the fortune does say something, but nothing as deep as what i thought it said.
such a disappointment!
at a first reading, i thought the cookie fortune said this:
all things are difficult because they are easy.
wow, methought, that's deep!
the writer of this fortune must really understand the human condition! it must take a powerful optimism to be able to write such a thing, and moreover it is a clever mixture of humanism yet accounts subtlely the constraints of the human mind and imagination.
i dare say that it encapsulates the mathematical experience. if it weren't so long, it could suit a zen koan ..
.. but then i re-read it, and realised that it actually said:
all things are difficult before they are easy.
i think i might have groaned out loud at the restaurant. i suppose the fortune does say something, but nothing as deep as what i thought it said.
such a disappointment!