Ants, Cats, and Cantor’s Diagonal

IntroductionWhen I was a computer science student, I read the first edition of the book "Parsing Techniques - A Practical Guide" by Dick Grune [1] et al. In the ~30 years since, it may be the book I’ve been reminded of most often. The primary reason for this is that the book goes off on tangents that are sometimes only vaguely related to the book's topic, or even to the immediate context. If you're interested in a subject, details add texture, making it easier to remember. If you just want to get the information you're looking for, these detours can be annoying. "Get to the point already!" If you've read any of my other blog posts, you may have noticed I tend to go off on interesting (your mileage may vary) tangents as well. I'm not sure whether I inadvertently adopted the writing style or if the book simply matched my preferences and I like it because of that. Warning: in this blog post, I'm only going off on tangents. TelescopingThis blog post was triggered by something that…