Encyclopedia on a Toothpick
I've recently finished reading "Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World" by Haruki Murakami. The book was fantastic, as usual for a Murakami novel. I must admit, I was a little bit wary of it at first, because it played out as more of a fantasy than his previous novels, but I grew to absolutely love it. When I finish reading all his books (I think I have 4 more to read) then I will definitely read them all again.
I wanted to share one excerpt from the novel which particularly interested me. It's a theory that Murakami calls "Encyclopedia on a toothpick"
Basically, to store an infinite amount of data on a toothpick, assign a numerical value to each letter of the alphabet (00 for 'a', 01 for 'b' and so on) - you could even use their ASCII codes. Next string all the letters making up the encyclopedia together to form a very large number. You'll end up with something like this 0419041713081924...
Next turn this number into a fraction by pre-pending a 0. to it and make a mark on the toothpick at exactly this point of its length (where 0 is the start of the toothpick and 1 is its end). This mark contains all the information of the encoded encyclopedia in its position.
To read more discussion on this theory and whether or not it is scientifically possible, check out this page.
I'm now reading Bulgakov's "Black Snow", a witty part-autobiographical satire on the farcical nature of Russia's dramatic and literary society set in the 1930s...
posted by LX @ 1:42 AM
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