The Philosopher's Stoned

For the last couple of days, I was engaged in a death struggle with an implementation of the computer science scenario known The Drinking Philosophers problem in a new language, but alas, was doomed due to lack of time and enthusiasm. (Instead I had to settle for its more famous but lesser cousin, The Dining Philosophers problem.)

If you have wrestled with anything that involves concurrency, then you'll know that reconstructing the histories of parallel processes based on their trail is a little like trying to understand a Tarantino or Christopher Nolan screenplay in its non-linearity. At worse, you're saddled with a Lynch film - every which way you look at it makes sense but you will always be wrong in your conclusions.

Coming back to our quaint bunch of theosophers, I chucked my worries by looking at the brilliant Monty Python implementation of the problem. Here it goes:

The Drinking Philosophers Song

Immanuel Kant was a real pissant who was very rarely stable.
Heidegger, Heidegger was a boosey beggar who could think you under the table.
David Hume could out-consume Shoppenhauer and Hegel,
And Wittgenstein was a beery swine who was just as schloshed as Schloegel.
There's nothin' Neitzche couldn't teach ya 'bout the raisin' of the wrist;
Socrates, himself, was permanently pissed!

John Stuart Mill, of his own free will, after half a pint of shard was particularly ill.
Plato, they say, could stick it away, half a crate of whiskey every day.
Aristotle, Aristotle was a bugger for the bottle, Hobbes was fond of his dram.
And René Déscartes was a drunken fart, "I drink therefore I am."
Yes Socrates, himself, is particularly missed: A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed!

(lyrics, link to page with the audio)