Scientists appear to disagree as to whether the universe (or multiverse) is truly infinite in the sense that given enough time, all possible events will necessarily happen. On the other hand, maybe this is just semantics, given that, according to some, the known Poincaré-invariant laws of physics allow "miraculous" events to occur via thermal fluctuations or quantum tunneling, but with exponentially small probabilities that for all practical purposes preclude us from observing them. Would such an event have actually "happened" in any meaningful sense? Similarly, the second sentence of this paragraph may have "meaning" in a universe in which I specialized in quantum physics rather than this bullshit, but this is not that universe. Physicists may tell us it has meaning, but can we be sure? As the author linked above points out in his paper, some physicists will say anything: "Indeed, when asked 'What is a particle?' many theoretical physicists like to smugly reply, 'An irreducible representation of the Poincaré group.'" Exactly! Total assholes.
But given enough time, at least some subset of all possible events will obviously happen, and some of them will be extremely unlikely. And so it was that on Monday, "Barton Simpson" stood trial before "Mr. Burns":
Few details were available, but according to this report Simpson was charged with possessing a prohibited firearm at Birmingham Airport last year, but pleaded not guilty. (So this may have been only a preliminary hearing, not a trial.) A court worker was quoted as saying, "It's a bizarre coincidence that Bart Simpson is actually on trial in front of Mr Burns but it'll proceed as any other criminal case would." Did a reporter actually ask something like, "How will the proceedings change given the fact that two of the participants share names with characters in an American cartoon?"
I guess that's not impossible, it just seems really unlikely.
