What I Learned Today

[MaggieL]

Originally Posted by Kagen4o4

today i learnt about ternary logic

It's not widely known that ternary logic actually has its roots in the expression "Killing two birds with one stone".

The birds in question were in fact arctic terns (<cite>Sterna paradisaea</cite>), and, like virtual particles, are always found in pairs, mostly because one good tern deserves another. Having a stone left over with both birds already dispatched left an extra stone that could be used for parity-based error correction, or other expressions of doubt, such as theatrical criticism ("Let he who is without sin stone the cast first"). The thoroughness represented by this redundancy yielded another catchphrase: "Leaving no tern unstoned".