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Wednesday, October 15, 2014

First Uninteresting Day

In mathematics there is a semi-humorous paradox known as the "Interesting number paradox": It holds that if it is possible to classify all natural numbers as either interesting or uninteresting, then it is impossible to find the first uninteresting number.

Consider:
* 1 is interesting because it's the first number,
* 2 the first prime, first even number, etc,
* 3 the first odd prime,
* 4 is the first square,
* 9 is the first non-prime odd number
* 64 Is the first cube of a non-prime
... eventually you will come to a number that is uninteresting, except that the mere fact of being the lowest uninteresting number is sufficient to make it interesting.

In terms of my journey to becoming a non-smoker today nothing happened except the time gap between my last cigarette and the current clock setting increased.

This means that today was interesting as the first uninteresting day of my journey.

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