Ok, who is this guy, and what has he done with our real president . . . . . .

[Robert]

It's not a figure of speech, it's an argument for 'everything is possible if you give it enough time' which is not true, hence the site linked by stuie!

24 letters from "The Second Part of King Henry IV" after 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years.

Even 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey years only 24 letters lined up from a shakespear play. That's at least a billion billion times the time even the most progressive astronome thinks that is the age of the universe. Imagine how many billion billion billion billion billion (....) billion years it'll be to get an entire shakespeare play? Indeed, most probably an infinite number of years.

Thus:
after an infinite number of years an infinite number of monkeys will write a total play of shakespeare. (which is btw an easy job compared to the the odds that are needed to come to something like our universe)

[MrFun]

Back to the topic of the thread, CyberShy.

[Donegeal]

Originally posted by CyberShy

24 letters from "The Second Part of King Henry IV" after 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey-years.

Even 2,737,850 million billion billion billion monkey years only 24 letters lined up from a shakespear play. That's at least a billion billion times the time even the most progressive astronome thinks that is the age of the universe. Imagine how many billion billion billion billion billion (....) billion years it'll be to get an entire shakespeare play? Indeed, most probably an infinite number of years.

Within 2 minutes of running the monkey page, I got 41 letters from the Taming of the Shrew.

[Elok]

Originally posted by Donegeal
Within 2 minutes of running the monkey page, I got 41 letters from the Taming of the Shrew.

Yes, but how many "monkey-years" do those two minutes represent?

[Whaleboy]

It's amazing how such a stupid fairy tale keeps existing in the heads of the believers. A billion monkeys will never even produce anything more then a bad line if they can even type forever.

If you have a good computer I dare you to create a script that comes with random letters after each other. Let it run for 10 days (which must be more or less the equivalent of a million monkeys typing for 1000 years) and show me that they at least have written ONE perfect line that makes gramatically sence.

Well, to be pedantic about it, the amount of time before the monkeys produce a great work is inversely proportional to the number of monkeys involved. That probability is always there, i.e., give a single monkey an infinite amount of time, and he will certainly produce a great work.

No, the figure of speech is an infinite number of monkeys.

Is it? An infinite number of monkeys would produce a great work instantly wouldn't they?

This is of course assumes that monkeys are given a load of simple, random attempts that do not relate to each other. If they are allowed to work in iterations, i.e., each attempt is based upon the last, if the last conforms to certain selection criteria, then it becomes much, much easier. In that case, a thousand monkeys could easily be as prolific as Shakespeare during his lifetime.

[Robert]

People think that time solves everything. that's the whole point.

[Blaupanzer]

Despite the article, it would appear Bush's role is somewhat distant. The likelihood he read the bill, knew those two provisions were there, understood their implications, and signed it anyway must be very near zero. The Congress may have done the right thing, but the Bush role as signer can hardly be viewed as something refreshing.

If he knew, and he signed anyway, this would indicate that he is not as far over on these issues as some people claim. As far as I know, he has never actually said he hates gays and lesbians, just that he doesn't want them to be entitled to be married.

[Robert]

I hope people are aware that those who are against gay marriage do not hate gays by default anyway!

[ajbera]

You're absolutely correct CyberShy, but I'm expecting enraged/hysterical refutation of your comment any moment now...

[Whaleboy]

I hope people are aware that those who are against gay marriage do not hate gays by default anyway!

While I agree that the position "I am opposed to gay marriage" does not necessitate "I hate gays", I think it's fair to say that a great many people who are opposed to gay marriage base their argument on some irrational or religious prejudice against homosexuality. Their pretense of "harm against a social institution" is oft-refuted sophistry .

[chequita guevara]

Originally posted by CyberShy
I hope people are aware that those who are against gay marriage do not hate gays by default anyway!

Not by default, but they seem to do so anyway.

[MrFun]

Originally posted by CyberShy
I hope people are aware that those who are against gay marriage do not hate gays by default anyway!

So whites in the 1950s who sought to preserve segregation and disfranchisement laws against blacks were not necessarily racist?

[Robert]

Thinking that something is wrong doesn't mean by default that you hate the person who does that what you think is wrong.

I think abortion is wrong but I don't hate people who abort their baby. I don't even hate people who do shoplifting while about everybody thinks that's wrong.

And we're living in a community where a lot of individuals have not the same rights. Everything is debatable (and is being debated). Some of course more then others, but most have a history. And history can't be changed and neither can you force people to start thinking different if they've been thinking something for millenia. Children do not have the same rights as adults, OzzyKP is running an organisation to give children much more rights. I disagree with him that children should have the right to vote. Do I hate children? No, I actually am a youth worker and work with teenagers about everyday. Maybe he's right and I'm wrong, it's just an opinion.

The black/white thing is a different discussion because people thought that black people were lesser people then white people. A lot of anti-gay marriage may disagree with gay-intercourse, I think most of them do not see gays as lesser people. They just think that marriage is a man/woman thing.
That may be wrong, but it's just an opinion and humanity is known for having had a billion wrong opinions and for being unable to find out which opinions are perfectly true and which are not. It would be different if they would be stoning gays (which actually happens in some countries as well)

that doesn't mean that there's a lot of things going wrong in the christian community if we talk about gays. Having said that, I think that a lot of things go wrong in the gay community as well. Neither the gay community nor the christian community are perfect.

I hope you guys can understand such a ballanced opinion instead of the usual black-white poly-fundamentalistic-liberal thinking overhere.

[Proteus_MST]

Re: Re: Without having actually read the article...

Originally posted by CyberShy



It's amazing how such a stupid fairy tale keeps existing in the heads of the believers. A billion monkeys will never even produce anything more then a bad line if they can even type forever.

It could be proven that at least 6 monkeys, given one month of time,
don´t produce anything meaningless on a typewriter

http://www.wired.com/news/culture/0,1284,58790,00.html

Originally posted by CyberShy

If you have a good computer I dare you to create a script that comes with random letters after each other. Let it run for 10 days (which must be more or less the equivalent of a million monkeys typing for 1000 years) and show me that they at least have written ONE perfect line that makes gramatically sence.

There already is something like this:
The Monkey Shakespeare Simulator

[Proteus_MST]

"This is an incredibly exciting victory that will be helpful to millions of gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender families,"

It also includes transgender families?
I always thought that transgenders, after their gender reassignment surgery, for the administration count as members of the opposite sex (i.e. the gender they feel they belong to [and not the gender they were born with])
so that for example a couple with a female [genetically male] and a genetically male for administration would count as normal couple between a male and a female (AFAIK that´s the case in germany i.e. after the sex reassignment surgery the entry for gender in the identity card is changed and he/she counts as a member of the gender he has after the surgery and no longer as a member of the gender he was born with, without the law making diffeence between him/her and someone who was born with the gender he/she has now).

Or do they mean transgenders before surgery (for example genetically female (feeling male, but having no surgery yet) living together with genetically female)