In Other News

[Dauphin]

I think it's a toss up between 45 and 47.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

Both President Joe Biden and Secretary of State Antony Blinken told Fox News in October that they considered any Iranian threats against Trump to be a "top-tier" national security issue, and said any attempt by the IRGC to actually harm Trump would be met with kinetic military action equal to "an act of war."

Now that this has happened... DOJ released findings. Biden will do nothing. This is why he got voted out. He will go down as the worst president in history.

[-Jrabbit]

Black balls of goop on Oz beaches...

Mysterious black balls that washed up on Sydney beach were foul-smelling mini ‘fatbergs’

Lex Harvey
Updated Thu, November 7, 2024 at 10:35 AM CST·2 min read

The mystery of the black balls that washed up on some of Sydney’s most iconic beaches last month has now been solved – and it’s more disgusting than you could ever imagine.

Australian beachgoers were turned away from seven beaches last month after lifeguards spotted thousands of black spheres, prompting closures and clean-up efforts. A team of scientists at the University of New South Wales (UNSW) has revealed the black balls – initially thought to be made of tar – were actually mini “fatbergs,” made up of human feces, methamphetamine, human hair, fatty acids, and food waste, among hundreds of other vile and befuddling substances.

“They smell absolutely disgusting, they smell worse than anything you’ve ever smelt,” lead investigator Associate Professor Jon Beves told CNN affiliate 9News.

The New South Wales Environment Protection Authority (EPA) first warned Sydney residents to avoid swimming or touching the balls on October 17, after they were spotted at seven beaches including the city’s famed Bondi Beach.

At that stage their contents were “a mystery” and local officials ordered a series of tests to find out what they were and where they came from.

Initial testing suggested they were made from unrefined oil, potentially from an oil spill, Beves and UNSW professor William Alexander Donald wrote on website The Conversation.

“However, further testing indicated a different, more disgusting, composition.”

The balls were consistent with fatbergs, congealed masses of fats, oils and greasy molecules that can accumulate in sewage, the scientists wrote, noting their presence highlights the issue of pollution along Sydney’s coastline.

“I wouldn’t want to be swimming with them,” Donald told 9News.

Fatbergs come in all shapes and sizes. In 2021, a massive, 330-ton fatberg wreaked havoc in Birmingham, UK when it clogged a city sewer for weeks.

These Sydney fatbergs were no ordinary fatbergs, however. The blobs contained everything from fecal matter to medication and recreational drugs, the scientists wrote.

Where these gross balls came from still remains a mystery.

The balls likely originated from “a source that releases mixed waste,” according to a media release from the EPA Wednesday.

“Authorities have considered several possible causes, such as a shipping spill or wastewater outflow,” the statement said.

“However, due to the complex composition of the balls and the time they have spent in the water, testing has not been able to confirm their exact origin.”

[Originally from CNN, but I found it on Yahoo]

https://www.yahoo.com/news/mysterious-black-balls-washed-sydney-074909892.html

[EPW]

No, but I admit I did see post # 1122

[N35t0r]

I have bad news for some Poly posters

Did you not read the news posted immediately above yours?

[EPW]

I have bad news for some Poly posters

Those typing monkeys will never produce Shakespeare’s works, mathematicians say



By Amarachi Orie, CNN

3 minute read
Published 12:08 PM EDT, Fri November 1, 2024


Researchers from Australia have rejected the Infinite Monkey Theorem as "misleading."


Independent Television News/Shutterstock Sign up for CNN’s Wonder Theory science newsletter. Explore the universe with news on fascinating discoveries, scientific advancements and more.
CNN —
Talented though they may be, monkeys will never type out the complete works of William Shakespeare, or even a short book, a new study suggests.
The Infinite Monkey Theorem is a famous thought experiment that states that a monkey pressing random keys on a typewriter would eventually reproduce the works of the Bard if given an infinite amount of time and/or if there were an infinite number of monkeys.
However, in the study published in the peer-reviewed journal Franklin Open, two mathematicians from Australia’s University of Technology Sydney have rejected this theorem as “misleading” within the confines of our finite universe.
They challenged it by looking at the Finite Monkeys Theorem, in which there is a finite amount of time and a finite number of monkeys.



Related article These monkeys use names to communicate with each other, study finds

They took the assumption that the current population of around 200,000 chimpanzees would remain the same over the lifespan of the universe of one googol years (that’s 1 followed by 100 zeros). They also assumed that each chimpanzee would type one key per second for every second of the day, with each monkey having a working lifespan of just over 30 years.
Using these assumptions, the researchers calculated that among these randomly-typing monkeys, there is just a 5% chance that a word as simple as “bananas” would occur in the lifespan of one chimpanzee.
They found that a short sentence such as “I chimp, therefore I am” will “almost certainly never be produced by any currently living chimp,” study co-author and mathematician Stephen Woodcock, an associate professor at the University of Technology Sydney, told CNN on Friday.
“By the time you’re at the scale of a full book, you’re billions of billions of times less likely,” he continued.
Woodcock and co-author Jay Falletta, a senior research consultant at the university, concluded in the study that, even with more chimpanzees or quicker typing, it is “not plausible” that monkey labor will ever be a viable tool for “developing written works of anything beyond the trivial.”

“Even if every atom in our known universe were its own universe on the scale of ours, we would still have pretty much no chance of ever seeing something as long as even a short book,” such as “Curious George,” which is around 1,800 words, “before the end of the universe,” Woodcock told CNN.

“Personally, I think it’s fascinating how misleading the well-established result for the infinite resource case is,” he added. “Yes, it is true that given infinite resources, any text of any length would inevitably be produced eventually. While true, this also has no relevance to our own universe, as ‘reaching infinity’ in resources is not something which can ever happen.”
Interdisciplinary clinician-scientist Chris Banerji, theme lead for Clinical AI at the Alan Turing Institute in London, agrees that monkeys randomly typing Shakespeare’s works is unlikely since the Finite Monkeys Theorem is “correct,” but he told CNN on Friday that the Infinite Monkey Theorem “still holds.”
“While the situation seems dire, there may be hope for the monkeys yet,” said Banerji, who was not involved in the study. “The universe is very large, and there is room for many more chimps than live here on Earth, under some cosmological theories there may even be infinite space or infinitely many universes.”
He said that “if we accept the possibility of these infinite worlds” then “the monkeys’successful replication of Shakespeare is an ‘eventual certainty,’” as the Infinite Monkey Theorem states. “In the words of the Bard ‘Until I know this sure uncertainty, I’ll entertain the offered fallacy.’”

[N35t0r]

The only thing I'm getting here is that we need more monkeys. Or BETTER monkeys!

Let's genetically engineer monkeys to love longer and type faster, and her the cloning vats going!

[Uncle Sparky]

Tests show it take 26 monkeys 10 day to write 'The Art of the Deal'.

[BeBMan]

And I'm sure everyone is glad that the following has been sorted finally

Universe would die before monkey with keyboard writes Shakespeare, study finds


Australian mathematicians call into question the ‘infinite monkey theorem’ in new research on old adage

Mathematicians have called into question the old adage that a monkey typing randomly at a keyboard for long enough would eventually produce the complete works of Shakespeare.

Two Australian mathematicians have deemed it misleading, working out that even if all the chimpanzees in the world were given the entire lifespan of the universe, they would “almost certainly” never pen the works of the bard.

The paper tested the “infinite monkey theorem”, a thought experiment demonstrating that an infinite amount of time can make something that is incredibly unlikely become probable, by asking what would happen if generous yet finite limits were placed on the monkey typists.

Their calculations were based on a monkey spending about 30 years typing one key a second at a keyboard with 30 keys – the letters of the English language plus some common punctuation. It found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare’s works would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.

(snipsnap)

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/nov/01/infinite-monkey-theorem-keyboard-tyepwriter-shakespeare-study

[Broken_Erika]

Man barred from hunting 1 year after trying to shoot squirrel, hitting town hall instead

The man was fined $3,000 after striking the town hall in St. Helens, north of Goderich

A man who tried to shoot a squirrel in his Huron County yard and ended up almost striking a person has been barred from hunting for one year and ordered to pay a fine.
The man, from St. Helens, about 30 kilometres north of Goderich, was ordered to pay $3,000 and must complete remedial training before getting another hunting licence, officials from the province's Ministry of Natural Resources wrote in a statement.
The incident happened on June 5 in the township of Ashfield-Colborne-Wawanosh. The bullet ended up hitting the town hall, officials said.
"An investigation completed in conjunction with local OPP determined that [the man] had discharged a .22-calibre rifle at a squirrel in his yard, shooting in the direction of the main intersection of Belfast Road and St. Helens Line. The bullet passed within feet of the township employee before striking the building," officials said.
The man pleaded guilty to careless hunting. The case was heard in the Ontario Court of Justice in Goderich.

https://www.cbc.ca/news/canada/london/man-barred-from-hunting-1-year-after-trying-to-shoot-squirrel-hitting-town-hall-instead-1.7371254

[SlowwHand]

Good luck finding a typewriter.

[Broken_Erika]

Monkeys will never type Shakespeare, study finds

Two Australian mathematicians have called into question an old adage, that if given an infinite amount of time, a monkey pressing keys on a typewriter would eventually write the complete works of William Shakespeare.
Known as the "infinite monkey theorem", the thought-experiment has long been used to explain the principles of probability and randomness.
However, a new peer-reviewed study led by Sydney-based researchers Stephen Woodcock and Jay Falletta has found that the time it would take for a typing monkey to replicate Shakespeare's plays, sonnets and poems would be longer than the lifespan of our universe.
Which means that while mathematically true, the theorem is "misleading", they say.

As well as looking at the abilities of a single monkey, the study also did a series of calculations based on the current global population of chimpanzees, which is roughly 200,000.
The results indicated that even if every chimp in the world was enlisted and able to type at a pace of one key per second until the end of the universe, they wouldn't even come close to typing out the Bard's works.
There would be a 5% chance that a single chimp would successfully type the word "bananas" in its own lifetime. And the probability of one chimp constructing a random sentence - such as "I chimp, therefore I am" - comes in at one in 10 million billion billion, the research indicates.
“It is not plausible that, even with improved typing speeds or an increase in chimpanzee populations, monkey labour will ever be a viable tool for developing non-trivial written works,” the study says.
The calculations used in the paper are based on the most widely accepted hypothesis for the end of the universe, which is the heat death theory.
Despite its name, the so-called heat death would actually be slow and cold.
In short, it's a scenario in which the universe continues to both expand and cool - while everything within it dies off, decays, and fades away.
“This finding places the theorem among other probability puzzles and paradoxes... where using the idea of infinite resources gives results that don’t match up with what we get when we consider the constraints of our universe,” Associate Prof Woodcock said in a statement about the work.

https://www.bbc.com/news/articles/c748kmvwyv9o

[BeBMan]

Having a drink is natural:

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2024/oct/30/alcohol-consumption-abundant-in-the-natural-world-study-finds

[Bereta_Eder]

snip snip

[Ming]

Bat escapes German zoo by hiding in visitor's jacket

By Ben Hooper



A bat escaped from Germany's Karlsruhe Zoo by hiding inside a visitor's jacket. Photo by ntrief/Pixabay.com



Oct. 24 (UPI) -- A bat escaped from a zoo in Germany by landing on a visiting woman and hiding in her clothes until she got home.

Elina Öfele, 30, said she and her young son walked through the bat cave at Karlsruhe Zoo in southwestern Germany last week, and when she got home she removed her jacket and a bat fell to the floor.

Öfele contacted an animal expert and put the bat in a box with honey water and a banana overnight to keep it fed and comfortable.

Her husband and son returned the bat to the zoo the following day.

A spokesman for the zoo said the leaf-nosed bat was returned to its habitat and is doing fine. He said it was the first time a bat had ever escaped from the zoo by stowing away with a visitor.