I’ve always considered the pub the be a place for drinking, watching sports, a bit of banter, and of course, for partaking in serious philosophical debate. The latter being what we spent our time on last Wednesday.
Fat Jim is reading a book about space exploration and was trying to explain to our mate Wiv (as in “With it”, because he isn’t very) about the potential infinite nature of space.
“So you see, potentially, space will go on for infinity”, explained Fat Jim to those of us still awake at the Bar.
“But what happens when you get to the end then?” asked a somewhat bemused Wiv.
“There is no end Wiv, that’s the whole point, that’s what infinity is!”
“I thought it was just a really big number like a gazillion million?”
It was at this point that the conversation moved onto some examples to illustrate the nature of infinity, in the vain hope that Wiv would eventually ‘get it’. The classic scenario is obviously that of the infinite number of monkeys and typewriters producing the complete works of Shakespeare. After someone pointed out that an infinite number of Wivs probably couldn’t reproduce the first page of the bar menu, Wiv decided he would need to conduct an experiment to test this monkey theory. One that would need the help of his cousin from the City.
Last night Wiv came into the pub to tell us all about his experiments with infinity. He and his cousin, who works at London Zoo, took a typewriter into the Sparrow Monkey enclosure after the Zoo closed to see just how close to Shakespeare they could get.
For some reason Wiv thought they might get a couple of pages of the Bards work, and at the very least a few sentences.
Wiv had a sheet of paper on which he and his cousin had recorded the efforts of the monkeys.
Monkey 1 – Grinned a lot, ignored typewriter and continued rapid nodding motions at me.
Monkey 2 – Jumped up and down on the spot and covered eyes in a comedy manner like the monkeys in the teabag adverts.
Monkey 3 – Got agitated and swung round the cage. Think he spat at me.
Monkey 4 – Masturbated in a frenzied manner.
Monkey 5 – Showed his teeth and made cheetah from Tarzan noises. Monkeys have sharp teeth.
Monkey 6 – Shat into his hands and threw it at me. I fucking hate monkeys.
After reading Wiv’s findings we have all agreed it’ll take more than infinity. Or cleverer monkeys.
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Perfect gift for annoying relatives I believe, if you want to describe infinity to someone either use a circle, the infinity symbol (8 on its side) or in extreme cases send him to
http://j-walkblog.com/index.php?/weblog/posts/worlds_most_boring_podcast/
Hmm, think your mate might work in our IT helpdesk, him or a brother anyway (my email’s down this morning, I wish I had an infinite number of monkeys to send out into the main IT floor to run amuck, maybe something would be fixed).
*Makes note about copying Monkey #6 whe nin a difficult situation*
*Makes note about copying Monkey #4, er, whenever*
I hate to inform you that the popular “monkey at the typewriter” theory has been debunked. It can not be proven. I did not record the source, but it was published in the Boston Metro in 2003. I once was frustrated with this theory, thinking about what if the monkey only typed two letters, for example, forever. And, as I said, there is no way to prove what he will or will not do, even given “infinity”…
Oli – I’ll stick to Ricky Gervais podcasts I think…
BoT – If I told you what Wiv did for a living your confidence in public services would take a substantial nosedive
greavsie – I find it works well at appraisal time.
NF – I find it doesn’t work well at appraisal time.
anthe – Hello. So if something can’t be proven, then it’s not true? God help all the religions then…
math teacher once gave us this lesson ….
in the words of buzz light year we are gonna intergrate this equation to infinity and beyond…..
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