Infinite Monkey Theorem

For some reason, I remembered the infinite monkey theorem today.

An infinite number of monkeys with an infinite amount of time and typewriters will eventually produce the collected works of Shakespeare.

This statement usually attributed to scientist Thomas Huxley, who supported the Darwinist theory of evolution. I always wonder why he named Shakespeare's, and not his own books, in this cause. Was he afraid his publishers would take him at his word, and give his next book advance to monkeys? We'll never know.

Researchers at Plymouth University haven't found any signs of such yet. They let loose a bunch of monkeys with a keyboard. The monkeys played around with a single letter SSSSSSSSSSS and then urinated over the keyboard. I guess if they had played with the letter B, you could assume they were getting pretty close to "To B or not to B", but as it stands, it's not Hamlet.

Not satisfied, someone is running a Monkey Shakespeare Simulator on the web. Everytime you visit the page, your PC's spare computing power is used to create some random pages, and checked against the bard's works, to see if something matches. (For a rant on how impossible this project is , you can listen to Brett Watson.) But I am skeptical for a different reason.

My feeling is, frankly, that this is a mistake. Even if they end up simu2lating Shakespeare, what good does that do to us? Nobody really needs any new Shakespearean comedies. Why not simulate the next Harry Potter book instead? JK Rowling can call it a day at the office, and go shopping instead.