Someone has brought donut holes in to the office this morning. I'm grateful for the free snack (even though they're making me feel pretty sick right now). But I can't approve of the basic donut hole design. The whole genius of the donut is the hole: not only does it allow for even cooking, but it affords more surface area. More surface area means more contact with the oil, which means more fat, which means more deliciousness. The donut hole is doomed to a poorer tastiness:mass ratio than its larger cousin.

One of the few things I remember from college math is that as a conventional geometric object is projected into more dimensions, a greater proportion of the points contained within that object exist on its surface. This seems a little counterintuitive, particularly since you can cram an infinite number of geometric points into any given space. But you'll just have to take my word for it (particularly since I don't remember how to understand the math that provides the justification): the ratio of points on a sphere's surface to those in its interior is higher than the ratio of points on a circle's circumference to those in its interior. This relationship holds until you get to seven dimensions and change, at which point it maxes out and begins to decline.

Two important conclusions follow. One, multi-dimensional string theory may hold the key to snack foods of unimagined delectability (the ideal hyperdonut exists in 7.25695 dimensions). And two, the donuts in Homer Simpson's 2D universe must be less tasty than those in our own. Dude must really like donuts.