The New Pope: Episode 5

February 12, 2020 11:19 AM - Season 1, Episode 5

*sigh*

John Paul III appears to differ philosophically with Daniel Bryan.

Also (stolen from the Ringer recap): IT’S THE PAPAL COUNTDOWN, DO DO DOO DOO

posted by Huffy Puffy (3 comments total)

Maths corner!

OK so we learn that Pope Lenny, in a coma, makes 421 breaths and sighs; then 420 breaths and sighs, then 419, etc. The question is: how long until Zero Sigh, i.e., no breaths between sighs? You can brute force this answer but there is a more elegant geometric solution I remember from school, where you draw the sighs over time on a graph. This ends up being a perfect right angled triangle, a square cut diagonally, with sides measuring 421 in length.

You can therefore determine the area of the triangle, which is the same as the total number of sighs, by squaring 421 and then dividing by two. Then all you have to do is decide how long a breath is, which I’ll assume is 5s, or 12 breaths/min.

So, how long till Sigh Zero?

421 * 421 / 2 * 5 = 443,103 seconds

Which is 7385 min, or 123 hours, or a little over 5 days...
posted by adrianhon at 2:57 AM on February 13, 2020 [2 favorites]

Well I hope he doesn't wake up *before* next week's episode...
posted by Huffy Puffy at 4:50 AM on February 13, 2020

Adrian, thanks for doing the math for us! I was wondering that, too.

I love the fact that John Paul III's "NO!" was upstaged by a periodic sigh. Will JP3 get a chance to issue is Middle Way proclamation, allowing marriage for priests, both gay and straight, to to legitimize "possible" love, so as to divert people from "aberrant" love (which is a form of violence)? What about nuns, would they be able to marry? And would this open the door to all gay marriages being accepted by the Church, or is this just for priests?

Would a newly revived Pius XIII then overturn such a middle way proclamation?
posted by filthy light thief at 7:10 AM on February 13, 2020