Infinite monkey theory redux
10 o'clock, December 22, 2004
Contra Plymouth University’s monkey results from last year, no less reputable a publication than the Weekly World News reports that monkeys at the Raleigh Institute, near Manchester, have successfully produced “Romeo and Juliet.”
“We’ve been holding our breath for weeks,” says Alan Ripshaw, the researcher in charge of the Monkey Project. “We knew the monkeys were getting close, but we’ve had a number of false starts.
“One time they got to the fourth act of Macbeth, before making a mistake. The monkeys also recently typed out a Thomas Pynchon novel, but that doesn't count.”
Ripshaw says he began the project because he was intrigued with the controversy over whether Shakespeare really was the author of the plays bearing his name.
“Some scholars think Bacon was the real author,” Ripshaw says. “That’s when I had the thought, ‘What if they were written by monkeys?’”
Of such thoughts is scientific history made.
(Via Maureen.)
Hee! I particularly like this line:
"Ninety-nine percent of it was nonsense," Ripshaw says. "But one of the monkeys put up a blog on the Internet, and it has a big following."
Except I'm not sure what that "but" is doing there. :)
Huh -- I don't seem to have fulfilled my duty in comments to your previous entry by mentioning possibly my favorite R. A. Lafferty story (and that's saying a lot): "Been a Long, Long Time." Every so often someone submits an infinite-monkeys story to us, and I enjoy some of them a fair bit, but I always feel a little like Lafferty's already written the ultimate one; I'm not sure I can imagine an infinite-monkeys story that would supplant Lafferty's in my esteem. But of course y'all writerly types (and monkeys) are welcome to try.
Whenever I mention that story I always want to quote the best line from the story, but that line is the punchline, so I always refrain. But it's tempting.
Oh, and see also Wikipedia's article on Infinite monkey theorem.