Take A Deep Breath

And Keep On Breathing
We'll come back to that. 
     Good morning, fellow workers!  I know, I know, most of you are probably not out of bed by the time I begin typing these lines (08:21) but this fond conceit helps me to keep going.
     First, of First.  First Bus, that is.  SIT BACK DOWN!  No, this is not the usual vitriolic rant about their service, or what passes for it.  Rather, it is about their mobile phone app that allows one to purchase electronic tickets instead of having to root around for the exact change or embarrass yourself and the driver by handing over a £20 note.  Art?

Thus

    As you can see, there is a four-letter word present that permits the bus driver to see at a glance if this is a real valid ticket or not.
     Of course, Conrad being Conrad, he couldn't simply take this for granted.
     O no.
     "How many different possible combinations can there be when you only have four letters?" I pondered.  In this case, the calculation is very easy, because there's no case sensitivity or punctuation, so you're only working with a base number of 26.
    Thus, there are 456,976 different combinations to work with.  Let us assume that only 10% of those are actually valid combinations that spell out real words, leaving 45, 698 viable words.  This being so, there are enough words for the app to run for 125 years before it begins to repeat itself, which is probably enough to dissuade those crossing their crooked criminal fingers in hope of words being repeated.

"Yeah?"

     Of course, when you get to the Infinite Monkey Theorem, in which an infinite number of monkeys clattering away on typewriters will eventually produce the entire works of the Barf of Avon (Shakespeare if you're taking notes), things get much harder.  For a start, you have 26 upper-case and 26 lower-case letters, as well as the space between words, and 11 punctuation characters.  That's 64 characters.  We have had a bash at calculating the time it would take to produce the Barb's full portfolio, as have others, and the fact is that the Universe would die many quadrillions of quadrillions of times before it happened.

The Universe: nice while it lasted

     Blogger doesn't have the scientific notation to allow me to express the probability properly, but - here goes:  if 10 Squared is shown here as 10 2, then the Infinite Monkey time-to-completion is of the order 10 800000, which is a mind-bogglingly large number.  The Universe itself is only going to be around for the order of 10 9 years itself.
     Wowsers!  All that from a humble bus ticket!  I am almost too diverted to torment the motley -

 - but not quite.

Talking Of The End Of Everything -
I've been saving this one up for a while, since it needed a bit of background checking in order to ensure I didn't make a massive idiot of myself <insert joke here>, and

Eh?  What's going on here?

   -   Dog Buns R.E.M.!  Get out of BOOJUM! you interfering rascals!  Where were we?
     Eschatology!  I came across this when looking up "Escheat".  It's a branch of theology that deals with the end of the world, which can be very different across different religions.  In some it all ends in fire and fury, in others Hom. Sap. ascend to Heaven.*
     This assumes that the end of the world we are looking at is a long way off, several millennia at least, because

STOP INTERFERING!

     - I do apologise for these unwarranted intrusions, clearly Art has deserted his station and is back in the coal cellar with a knife and fork.
     As I was saying, those who espouse the eschatological view that End Times are a-coming this very week, and definitely by lunchtime Friday, as classed as "Doomsday Culters", which is a bit harsh as we've never had a Doomsday yet.**

No it is not - I have more to type!

     In light of Art having locked himself in the cellar, and pernicious 'Pocalypse pictures poised to pounce, I think that's enough of Eschatology for today.  We may come back to it again since there is little in this world more entertaining than it's end.

Yes, quite.

     Hmmm.  Having said that, I think we can look at what are known as "Physical Eschatologies", or, in the common parlance, "Scream And Run For The Hills (Not That It'll Do You Much Good)".

"Low"
No, not the David Bowie album - Art, you'd  better not let any inappropriate pictures intrude here! <he says, casually twirling the Tazer held in his hand>.
     I refer, obviously - obviously! - to the comic book of the very same title.  It was brought to my attention by a thread over on The Flop House's Facebook page, and it seemed an interesting premise.  Art?


     Remember today's title?  This comic is set millennia into the future, when your our sun has prematurely expanded, rendering the planet's surface uninhabitable.  What remains of humanity lives in submarine cities in the ocean depths, getting ready to die -
     Except some people haven't given up striving yet -
     Since I pass Travelling Man en route to the bus stop, I shall see if they stock it.

In Complete Contrast, And Yet Also Exactly The Same -
I have just finished re-reading Fritz Leiber's "A Pail Of Air", which is available for FREE via Project Gutenberg if you care to go read it yourself.  It's a snappy little short story about the Earth being torn out of it's orbit by a dead star, and how most of Hom. Sap. die from earthquakes and structural collapses, and most of those who survive die from the cold and lack of oxygen.

Thus

     The atmosphere has frozen, you see, and settled in frozen layers across the globe.  Our narrator and his family believe themselves to be the very last people alive, keeping a fire going in their "Nest" and thawing out buckets of frozen oxygen to survive.
     I shan't spoil the ending, but as with "Low", this is a story about hope and endurance, and also oxygen etiquette - remember today's title?

     You know, that reminds me of one of the bleakest sci-fi episodes ever broadcast, the "Twilight Zone"'s "The Midnight Sun", which is so depressing I think I'll finish right here -

A much friendlier midnight sun in Finland

*  I love a happy ending!
**  Mind you, it only takes one ...