Welcome to the Lounge

Quote:

Heat crackled off the white walls of the tavern but, Teppic thought, how different it was from the Old Kingdom. There even the heat was old; the air was musty and lifeless, it pressed like a vice, you felt it was made of boiled centuries. Here it was leavened by the breeze from the sea. It was edged with salt crystals. It carried exciting hints of wine; more than a hint in fact, because Xeno was already on his second amphora. This was the kind of place where things rolled up their sleeves and started.
“But I still don’t understand about the tortoise,” he said, with some difficulty. He’d just taken his first mouthful of Ephebian wine, and it had apparently varnished the back of his throat.
“’S quite simple,” said Xeno. “Look, let’s say this olive stone is the arrow and this, and this—” he cast around aimlessly—“and this stunned seagull is the tortoise, right? Now, when you fire the arrow it goes from here to the seag—the tortoise, am I right?”
“I suppose so, but—”
“But, by this time, the seagu—the tortoise has moved on a bit, hasn’t he? Am I right?”
“I suppose so,” said Teppic, helplessly. Xeno gave him a look of triumph.
“So the arrow has to go a bit further, doesn’t it, to where the tortoise is now. Meanwhile the tortoise has flow—moved on, not much, I’ll grant you, but it doesn’t have to be much. Am I right? So the arrow has a bit further to go, but the point is that by the time it gets to where the tortoise is now the tortoise isn’t there. So, if the tortoise keeps moving, the arrow will never hit it. It’ll keep getting closer and closer but never hit it. QED.”
“Are you right?” said Teppic automatically.
“No,” said Ibid coldly. “There’s a dozen tortoise kebabs to prove him wrong. The trouble with my friend here is that he doesn’t know the difference between a postulate and a metaphor of human existence. Or a hole in the ground.”
“It didn’t hit it yesterday,” snapped Xeno.
“Yes, I was watching. You hardly pulled the string back. I saw you,” said Ibid.

namespace TestJumps {
	class Program {
		static void Main(string[] args) {
			string s;
			do {
				double d;
				Console.Write("Input test value: ");
				s = Console.ReadLine();
				if (double.TryParse(s, out d) && d > .5D) {
					int i = 0;
					double total = d;
					while (total < 1D) {
						d /= 2;
						total += d;
						i++;
					}
					Console.WriteLine("Total {0} reached in {1} steps", total, i);
				}
			} while (!string.IsNullOrEmpty(s));
		}
	}
}