I must be getting old because I don’t understand about 9o% of this “Candy Council of Cool” blog post.  But one bit did catch my attention (more specifically it caught my filter’s attention, and then mine :)).  I don’t fully understand what sort of initiation they’re talking about, but the challenge sounds fun:

First, they had to memorize and exchange Shakespearean lines (Act II, Scene 1 of “The Merry Wives of Windsor”) in 10 minutes; and Second, they had to eat the most number of donuts in 10 seconds!

Memorize Shakespeare and eat donuts?  I think I want to join. The fact that they picked Merry Wives, featuring our loveably corpulent Falstaff, makes it that much more enjoyable.  I wonder if they did that on purpose? http://www.candymag.com/coc/2009/10/mini-mag-bts-series-celebrities/

http://www.nationalpoetryday.co.uk/ Well I’m not in the UK so it’s not technically my nation, but Shakespeare’s home turf is celebrating National Poetry Day today (Thursday, Oct 8).  It didn’t feel right to not mention it just because I’m over here across the pond. Anybody want to offer up some poetry for the occasion? I’ll forego the sonnets and offer up some Ariel, instead:

Full fathom five thy father lies;
Of his bones are coral made;
Those are pearls that were his eyes;
Nothing of him that doth fade,
But doth suffer a sea-change
Into something rich and strange.
Sea-nymphs hourly ring his knell:
Ding-dong.
Hark! now I hear them — Ding-dong, bell.

When you see an article about the Top 10 great people in history who might be gay, the question is not whether Shakespeare will be on the list but what number he’ll come in at. In this case, the author has him at #10.  No big surprises and no editorializing, either.  In fact his case is full of “people think” logic, primarily about the sonnets.  Nothing new under the sun:

The only indication that Shakespeare could have been gay was his sonnets, which were not intended for publication. A huge fraction of these sonnets address his love for, they say, a young man. If you read them, you’ll be blown away by the intense romantic feelings in them that would really make anyone easily conclude that the poet was actually involved in a homosexual affair.

What I love, though, and wish the article’s author had picked up on, was that he’s got Sir Francis Bacon at #5 but doesn’t mention the Authorship connection at all.  This guy would have been my new favorite person if his description of why we think Bacon was gay had included

The only indication that Bacon could have been gay was his sonnets, which were not intended for publication. A huge fraction of these sonnets address his love for, they say, a young man. If you read them, you’ll be blown away by the intense romantic feelings in them that would really make anyone easily conclude that the poet was actually involved in a homosexual affair.

Ah well, next time.  I can only imagine what they’re saying about this one on the “Alexander The Great Geek” blog. 🙂

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/magazine/8270688.stm This article on the value (or lack thereof) of “frivolous” research starts out with the example of whether monkeys can write Shakespeare.  The answer is no, they just basically poop on typewriter, though they did tend toward a fondness for the letter S.  This cost a month of research to find out. The thing that bugs me most about this is that it is the definition of frivolous.  Which researcher misunderstands the concept of infinite? It is NOT an experiment in the intelligence of monkeys.  It is a statement of statistical probability at infinite scales.  The question was never *can* they, it was always *would* they.  Because theoretically the answer is yes.  Quick reasoning : Have you typed the complete works of Shakespeare yet?  No?  Then keep typing.  Repeat until you do. The problem is that, realistically, you end up with a more meaningful answer like “It would take greater than the age of the universe to even get through one play.”  So while it might be a true statement, it is a uselessly true one. On a different note, I’ve lost track the different ways I hear the theorem quoted.  One monkey, infinite typewriters.  A thousand monkeys, a million monkeys.  “Now that we have the Internet we know this to not be true.”  haha.  Insert “twitter” for “internet” and haha again. My favorite?

If you locked William Shakespeare in a room with a typewriter for a long enough period of time, eventually he would type the complete works of The Monkees.

Update :  Speaking of monkeys, Savage Chickens chimes in today with a particularly relevant comic 🙂