"The Chicken Egg Dilemma"

Which came first, the chicken or the egg?

Short answer: It depends. (You saw that coming, didn't you?)

Long answer: 

The answer depends on what your definition of 'egg' is.  

If you mean any egg (not specifically a 'chicken egg'), then the answer is easy--the egg came first.  There were egg-laying creatures on Earth long before the bird known as the 'chicken' ever showed up. 

If you mean not just any egg but specifically a 'chicken egg', it again depends on what your definition of 'chicken egg' is.  Is it an egg which hatches to produce a chicken, or is it an egg laid by a chicken?  If you use the latter definition, the chicken must have come first, since "an egg laid by a chicken" could not happen unless a chicken already existed (the first chicken would not have come from a chicken egg then, most likely it was a result of a mutation of another species). But using the former definition, the egg must have came first.

There is also a possibility of a third definition of a 'chicken egg', which is 'an egg laid by a chicken, which hatches into a chicken'. By this definition, the chicken came first .

Yes, circular logic is circular. 

Final Thoughts:

If you want to find out for yourself which came first, the chicken or the egg, you can perform a simple experiment.  Just follow these easy steps:

1. Walk in to your favorite non-vegetarian restaurant. 
   
2. Order one (1) chicken dish, and one (1) egg dish.
   
3. Make a note of which comes first.
   
4. Voila!
   

P.S: It doesn't really matter which came first. Both are tasty. 

"Contradictory Proverbs II (The Tale of the Spider)"

Disclaimer: The following story is based on true incidents.  Any similarities to a story known as 'the spider and the king' are accidental.  Author is aware of the story but remembered it only after writing this entire post (sans this disclaimer of course).

There's a spider in my hostel bathroom.

I first noticed it when one night I almost walked into the web it had built over the bathroom door.  I didn't disturb it, but I did wonder about the chances of the web surviving for long.  Sure enough, by the time I awoke the next morning, the web was gone. 

Later that day, I noticed the spider building a web again, in the exact same place.  This time I didn't really think much of it (attributing it to a glitch in the Matrix or something), and the next morning, as expected, the web was gone (again). 

Now here's the strange part.  Tonight, for the third day in a row, there was the spider again, building a web in all its glory... which inspired me to write this blog post.  

There's probably a moral-of-the-story in here, but which one is it-- "Learn from thy mistakes", or "Perseverance pays"? 

Or is the answer, as always, "it depends"?