Erlkönig: alien-compression.shtml

                                [collected 2001-03-19]
Alien Compression

Alien arrives on Earth. 
Alien asks to view all Earth encyclopedias. 
Alien encodes all the content as a single very massive integer. 
Alien treats number as a fraction between 0 and 1. 
Alien takes out a crystal rod, measures, and makes a single mark on it. 
Alien goes home with the rod to decode later.