Attached Link: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20030509/ap_on_fe_st/britain_monkey_authors_3

You just knew someone, some day, would have to try this.

LOL...for some reason, I find that reassuring.

Attached Link: http://www.dilbert.com/comics/dilbert/games/career/bin/ms.cgi

I heard that on NPR today. :-) We wrote an automatic paragraph generator in C class in college, and the results were not pretty there either. One of my favorites is the Dilbert mission statement generator. It's almost scary how close those come to actual mission statements I've known and loved. ;-) jon

 
~jon
My Blog - Mad Utopia Writing in a new era.

I think it did spit out our mission statement. I've heard several people say they've used it for their business classes and got As for their mission statements.

So, mission statement writers at least need to worry. :-) jon

 
~jon
My Blog - Mad Utopia Writing in a new era.

Attached Link: http://www.rain-street.org/fightcrime.htm

A long time ago, comedian Bob Newhart wrote a bit about this kind of thing. The premise was that IF scientists ever decided to test the "infinite number of monkeys" theory, some gaggle of poor schlubs would have the god-awful job of checking on the monkeys to see if they ever ACTUALLY write a classic. As I recall, Newhart took the role of one of these poor guys talking to his buddy on a walkie-talkie: "Hey, wait a minute, Harry. I think one of them finally came up with something here. Let me see: 'To be or not to be? That is the kwivoarkisnjammmign' ... Nah, forget it, Harry. False alarm." But if you really do want to worry about something (particularly if you're picthing an action-adventure TV script to the network suits next Tuesday), then you ought to check out the log line generator at the "They Fight Crime" site. As I described it to someone recently, it was amusing for the first five minutes. Then it made me sad. Then it got just plain scary because I think half of that crap is actually going to end up on the air.

I heard that premise many years ago. While on the surface, it seems to make sense, the article seems to have borne out my original logical thought...that the premise assumed that a monkey wouldn't just press the same letter over and over for infinity.