ABSTRACT:
Recent hurricane seasons have been characterized by intense and frequent tropical cyclones. One contributor is increased sea-surface temperature, which is caused by decreased upwelling of cold deep-ocean water. We demonstrate that decreased pirate activity results in less upwelling. This suggests that the only viable solution to intense tropical cyclones is to increase pirate activity.

INTRODUCTION:
The destructiveness of the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons has heightened public and scientific awareness of the possible long-term consequences of global warming. Although the link between hurricane strength and global warming remains speculative, recent work has shown that hurricanes have intensified over the past 30 years (Emmanuel, 2005), with an increase in the number of category 4 and 5 hurricanes and a decrease in those classified as categories 1 and 2 (Webster et al., 2005). Emmanuel (1987) argued that hurricane intensity is a function of the sea surface temperature (SST) which, of course, increases as the Earth warms. But other factors are important as well. Lighthill et al. (1994) pointed out that while a lower SST limit of 26^oC is required for tropical cyclone formation, several other key factors contribute to formation and intensity.

The increase in global average temperature is well-correlated with a decrease in global pirate population, as evident in figure 1 (Henderson, 2006).

We propose that piracy decreases the average SST, thereby lowering average global temperature and suppressing tropical cyclone intensity.

PIRACY AND UPWELLING:
Piracy decreases average SST by inducing upwelling of cold deep-ocean water. Various pirate activities contribute to upwelling. These include involuntary crew resignation, inter-vessel interactions and acoustically-transmitted oscillations (Bligh, 1789; Stevenson, 1883).

Involuntary crew resignation (ICR, a.k.a. “walking the plank”) involves a pirate or captive being forcibly ejected from a vessel at sea. This results in upwelling from displacement of water by the ejectee (Archimedes, c.250 BCE).

Inter-vessel interactions (IVI, a.k.a. “sea combat”) consists of transmission of projectiles between vessels, resulting in destruction or boarding. Upwelling is caused by scattered projectiles and by sinking of vessel elements.

Acoustically-transmitted oscillations (ATO, a.k.a. “sea shanties”) were originally intended to boost morale of rowing pirates. They have assumed ritual functions with the ascent of external power supplies. ATO’s produce upwelling by disturbing the sea surface. This increases motion of large biological entities (“fish” or “whales”), producing displacement.

MODEL RESULTS:
We have modeled pirate-induced upwelling using the PARROT (Piratic Activity Realization Rate of Oceanic Tendencies) oceanic circulation model (Haqq-Misra et.al. 2006). This model has 0.5^o resolution and accurately reproduces present-day ocean currents (Figure 2a.).

We simulated normalized pirate-induced upwelling (in upwelling pirate units, or upu) over the three upwelling categories described above. An ICR event produces 1 upu. IVI’s produce a variable number of upu. We used a Maxwellian with an average of 1000 upu. It should be noted that IVI events can produce multiple ICR’s. ATO produces continuous upwelling, based on the local pirate density and oceanic biotic activity. The world average ATO is about 0.5 upu/day.

We average pirate activity from 1605-2005 for each ocean grid cell. While recent pirate activity is weak and concentrated off of the Somali coast (BBC, 2005), historically piracy has been concentrated in the Caribbean (Bruckheimer, 2003). This is consistent with our model results, which produce significant pirate-induced upwelling in the Atlantic basin (Figure 2b.).

DISCUSSION:
We have demonstrated that pirate activity produces upwelling. It is thus obvious that a decreasing pirate population will result in less oceanic upwelling, especially in the Atlantic basin.

As evidenced by the 2004 and 2005 hurricane seasons, decreased upwelling results in increased SST’s and more intense tropical cyclones. Our PARROT model predicts that if the downward trend in piracy continues tropical cyclones will intensify. The hurricane season may also lengthen, due to increased SST.

PREDICTIONS AND EXPERIMENT:
The PARROT model has not been experimentally verified. Therefore, we have predicted the upwelling and global impact resulting from a single ICR event. While the effects of an ICR event depend on the mass of ejectee, our model predicts a reduction of roughly 10% in the number of named tropical storms in the Atlantic basin in the 2006 season as a result of a relatively small ICR event off the northern Puerto Rican coast between March 9 and March 13, 2006.

We intend to experimentally verify PARROT by producing such an ICR event. At least one of the authors of this paper will be present for the experiment, to measure the exact upu value of the event.

CONCLUSIONS:
We have demonstrated that decreased piracy contributes to increased tropical cyclone intensity. The only viable solution is to increase pirate activity, especially in the Atlantic basin. We suggest that ICR’s and ATO are preferable to IVI’s, because they offer finer control of upwelling effects.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS:
We thank the Flying Spaghetti Monster for inspiring this work and Robert Henderson for advocating piracy to fight global climate change.

REFERENCES:
Archimedes (of Syracuse), On Floating Bodies, c.250 BCE, Syracuse, Greece.

Bligh, W., 1789. Log of the H.M.S. Bounty, Royal Navy, London, UK.

British Broadcasting Corporation, Nov. 25, 2005 “US Firm to Fight Somali Pirates”, London, UK.

Bruckheimer, J., 2003, Pirates of the Caribbean, Disney Enterprises, Orlando, FL, USA.

Emanuel, K.A., 1987. The Dependence of Hurricane Intensity on Climate, Nature, 326, 483-485.

Emanuel, K.A., 2005. Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones over the past 30 years. Nature, 436, 686-688

Henderson, R. 2006, The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, Villard.

Haqq-Misra, J.D., et al. 2006. A Predictive Ocean Circulation Model, in press.

Lighthill, J. et al., 1994, Tropical Cyclones and Global Climate Change, BAMS, 75, 2147-2157.

Stevenson, R.L. 1883. Treasure Island, Cassell & Co., London, UK

Introduction: First, let’s be clear. I don’t really care if you believe me or not because I have tenure. You can look it up.

Secondly, I only just became aware of the dire FSM controversy and the need for vigorous research on the subject whilst I was helping my son search the web for information on Tarantula’s for his 4th grade science project. One things for certain. When I was a kid laying on the living room floor in front of the encyclopedia Britannica looking up Tarantula’s and dreaming of becoming a scientist, I don’t ever recall accidentally running across Flying Noodle Monsters and letting that totally distract me. In all fairness, on more than one occasion I admit wandering off topic when running into depictions of the Mandinka tribe and its fertility rituals. But you sure can get off course on the web, don’t you agree?

It has been argued that the Flying Spaghetti Monster (FSM) is an omnipotent power governing all of creation. Actually, that’s really just something I came up with to paraphrase what I presume is the basic principle under discussion here. I’ve only skimmed the whole ‘FSM issue’ for the first time here tonight and I don’t really know if they are making such claims or not, to be really honest about it. I mean, that website has a lot of words on it.

If the FSM is omnipotent, this implies that stuff was created and didn’t just ‘happen’ by accident. Therefore, one needs only prove that things were ‘created’ and you got yourself direct physical scientific evidence that FSM is ‘real’ and you can even put that in a scintillation counter and it will be radioactive or something to prove that it’s there. Ipso facto semper ubi sub ubi, clap, clap zip your trap QED.

Additionally, a long standing unresolved problem in the field is whether FSM is infallible. Again, to be honest, it’s not entirely clear that this really is an issue, much less a longstanding one, because like I said, my son was itchy to get to the tarantula stuff so I really didn’t read the FSM website very carefully and don’t really know if they are making any infallibility claims or not.

But if they didn’t, they should have. Infallibility and omnipotency go hand in hand, or at least you’d think they would.

This paper summarizes my exhaustive research, which for the first time to my knowledge, exploits a novel physical technique described herein to uncover strong, incontrovertible evidence, for exactly whatever it is you are looking for in this contest, because I didn’t read the contest rules thoroughly so I’m not exactly certain whether this research paper addresses your needs.

Methods: The web was googled using randomly generated keywords obtained with the aid of a proprietary ‘green’ powered electronic Ouija board. The energy source driving the board was a novel electrical generator powered by a 3 month old male pet hamster running an exercise wheel in a fully bedded hamster cage with free access to food, water and copulation with a female cage mate (Fig 1). As the experiments were running, the female hamster was housed in an adjoining compartment to kinda ramp up the energy, if you know what I mean.

The randomly generated keywords so generated were subsequently used to search the web with the magical google search function interface in a pseudo-quantitative semi-unbiased manner. Any page hits making reference to stem cells were discarded. All website hits containing pornography or links to pornography were bookmarked for future investigative studies. Otherwise, we just went with the flow. All data are presented as the mean +/- SEM of triplicate determinations for n independently replicated trials. 4-Weight analysis of variance using the Colavita Bucatini post-hoc correction test was used to establish statistical significance. Alternately, representative outcomes are depicted.

All plastic tubing used in the construction of the hamster hotel was handled under provisions specified in international guidelines for the care and protection of plasticware used in research experiments.

Results: The Ouija board routinely generated meaningful and useful keywords requiring only minimal deconvolution. For example, in one iteration the Ouija board output was “jcmwby83o%AKBX)>Q”, which obviously is a code representing ‘Penne Rigati’. Using google, the term ‘Penne Rigati’ searched the web, and quickly found websites depicting both cooked and uncooked noodles. The explanation for the latter is not entirely certain but preliminary evidence strongly supports the hypothesis that uncooked noodles are transitional species (TJM, unpublished). In all cases, the cooked noodles were depicted as a complex mess such as that shown in Figure 2. The simplest explanation for these results is that, in a random world, noodles can assemble in a 1st order dimension of high complexity.

Unexpectedly, we also identified a class of supra-complex noodle structures. A Ouija generated code :”KUD^%$AM” was interpreted as “baby eating spaghetti” leading to websites enriched in pictures of darling children in high chairs smeared with pasta and pasta sauces (Fig 3). The simplest explanation for these observations is that noodles, which already assemble into 1st order highly complex structures, are capable of existing in a transmuted supra-dimensional state as a higher order complex entity and thus are not static beings.

We next investigated whether similar patterns in nature have been observed in other entities. To accomplish this, a meta-analysis of the hamster powered Ouija board generated code revealed a heptad repeat pattern (XxxxxxxXxxxxxxXxxxxxxXxxxxxxX, where x = any character and X = any other character). Upon deconvolution, the pattern translated to ‘human brain’. A search of the web revealed many pictures and illustrations similar to that shown in Fig 4A, and to our surprise, also generated pictures of several tasty looking perciatelli dishes such as that shown in Figure 4B. The simplest interpretation is that the human brain is highly similar to a fat plate of perciatelli noodles, which happen to be the most advanced form of pasta currently known.

Conclusions: I’ve probably already said more than I should, but in any event: Other lines of research indicate that the human brain is irreducibly complex and therefore has been made by an intelligent creator. Perciatelli pasta is the most complex and intelligent past known, and looks almost exactly like the human brain. Thus, perciatelli must have been formed by a creator also.

Regular fettuccini and spaghetti, like perciatelli, are noodles, and have been observed repeatedly, like perciatelli, to assemble into complex structures. Since perciatelli looks like the human brain, it must also be irreducibly complex and since it is a noodle, then other noodles must be irreducibly complex. Taken together, these observations prove that a plate of noodles is more complex than the human brain and it’s origins are owed to an omnipotent and infallible creator.

Since the highest form of all things is made in the image of its creator, and since humans are less complex than noodles, and since parsimony argues that all complex beings are created by a single creator, then the creator looks like a noodle or a group of noodles, or even a plate full of noodles.

Therefore, this unbiased and statistically rigorous analysis provides incontrovertible proof that the creator of all things is the Flying Spaghetti Monster, since it is the only noodle-based creator known to exist at the moment.

Bibliography: The Internet, The Bible, The Simpsons

Acknowledgments: This work was supported by grants from the Marconi Brothers and from Colavita USA, a worldwide food conglomerate specializing in Italian and Italian-sounding food and beverages. The authors claim no conflicts of interests. Nobel prizes and other awards should be mailed to the author’s attention at his work address, which can be googled easier by the reader than it would take for him to type.

My Brother-in-Pasta:

Let others write of facts and figures to show his existence, for I possess evidence of a much higher order. I have irrefutable proof of a Flying Spaghetti Monster, revealed to me through divine inspiration. For I, once a disbeliever, have experienced His Wonder-Working Power first hand. Having accepted Him as my personal Lord and Provider of Yummy Pasta, my faith rests not on the mere scribbling of mortal men.

I tell my story to you, that it may be written down and passed to future generations as concrete proof of His Divine and Miraculous Power.

When I first learned of Flying Spaghetti Monsterism, I doubted Him. Living then in a closeted world of reliance on observable evidence and disprovable propositions, I taunted His adherents. Though I now recall those days with shame and mourning, I even went so far as to mock Him by spinning spaghetti on my fork, waving it around the kitchen table, and making loud “woo-woo-woo” noises until my wife slapped the back of my head and told me to stop it.

But we all intuitively understand, each of us, that evidence is only truly observable after our eyes have at last been opened to the truth. Enlightenment may come through years of rigorous personal exploration and squatting on sun-baked rocks. For others, as it did for me, revelation may come violently, through an unannounced moment of epiphany. My own Path to Enlightenment was the latter.

Several months ago, I was diving off the San Juan Islands in Washington State. Armed with a spear-gun, I felt myself the master of all I surveyed, smugly content in the illusion that I, as a member of the human race, sat atop the universal order of things. Spotting a large ling cod, I pursued the wily fish into an underwater kelp forest.

Suddenly, I was immobilized by thousands of undulating tendrils of kelp, each bearing an uncanny resemblance to his Noodly Appendage. Unannounced, a waving cord tore the air-providing regulator from my mouth. As the oxygen level in my bloodstream plummeted, the unarguable connection between Him and the origin of life on Earth came rushing at me in a rapidly approaching ball of white light.

It was then, and only then, in my darkest hour, in my moment of deepest despair, that I accepted Him as the One Legitimate and True Creator of our World and Universe.

As my heart opened to Him, miraculously, His Noodly Appendage reached out to me. I accepted His Noodly Appendage into my mouth, and breathed deeply of the air that we breath only through His Grace. It was then that He revealed himself to me.

Man has long suspected that life on this planet began in the sea. Man has long understood that kelp forests are the nursery of the marine world. But through His Divine Wisdom, the true nature of the Beginning of life has remained a secret. Only with my corporeal form stilled by thousands of His Noodly Appendages — and my mind stilled by lack of air — could I see His Truth, revealed to me and me alone as the bearer of His Revelation. I am His Prophet. Hear me now.

About 10,000 years ago, our planet was void and without form, like dough ready to be shaped into pasta. I shall not stoop to refuting the reams of misleading data propounded by our so-called scientists. His ancient texts already explain in great detail that such things exist solely at His discretion. He, in His Infinite Wisdom, did not elect to explain how our world came to be like pasta dough in the first place. Alas, this must wait for another of His Prophets, for another of His Revelations. It is not my lot to know, nor to question Him.

Seeing our world’s dough-like formlessness, He sent His Son, whose name has been revealed to me but I cannot disclose. I seek not to hide His Truth from you, but speaking the name of His Son is blasphemous. It is the Name That Cannot Be Spoken.

His Son came first to the watery reaches of our planet. This is entirely logical, because it is a fact that our planet is two-thirds water. At each place where His Son touched the barren rock of the submarine void, vast forest of Noodly Servants — what we glibly call Kelp — grew up to cover the rocks in His Image.

His Son left His Noodly Servants with elaborate instructions for the creation of All Life on our planet, which His Noodly Servants have followed to His letter in the intervening millennia. These instructions we have condescended to call “DNA”. His Revelation gets a little hazy after that, but it requires only the scantest of Faith to comprehend that cars, the Internet, skyscrapers, open-heart surgery, and MS Windows were the obvious and inevitable result.

As I regained my earthly senses, His Noodly Appendage transformed itself into my regulator hose.

The forests of Kelp — His Noodly Servants — are His Temples on this Earth. He left me with a final warning, which you must pass on to His Other Believers. We must stop harvesting His Noodly Servants, for they are His Cradle of All Life on our planet. He has revealed to me that when the last Kelp forest is harvested — when the last of His Noodly Servants are extirpated — the End of Days will be upon us. He has charged us with protecting His Noodly Servants.

The Kansas School board has recently decreed to include the theory of “Intelligent Design” (ID) into the school science curriculum [1], but in doing so, failed to provide equal opportunity to the similarily respectable and convincing explanations from creationist ideals stemming from Flying Spaghetti Monsterism [2].

Now some adherents to the Christian belief have even gone so far as to suggest, that the pastafarian world-view was indeed covered by the theory of “intelligent design” (ID) on the basis that ID did not specify who the designer was [3] and could therefore include Flying Spaghetti Monsterism.

However, it is absolutely clear to me that ID is in stark contradiction to both central beliefs of FSM and the daily evidence provided by Nature.

The World was Created by a Flying Spaghetti Monster
It is the unshakable belief of millions of pastafarians worldwide (supported by tons of fabricated evidence [4]) that FSM designed and created the world. However, it is a basic tenet of FSM belief that He, Who Created Mountains, Trees, And Midgets is essentially a bunch of flying meatballs wrapped in noodles. Thus, the pastafarian view of the world calls for decidedly un-intelligent, or in other words, idiotic design (I.D.) – especially so, since the I.Q. of meat balls is well-known to be only marginally higher than that of Dan Quayle [5]. Therefore, in the remainder of this essay, I will show that the evidence for I.D. is abundant and argue that this sound scientific theory should also be included in a fair and balanced science curriculum in Kansas schools.

The evidence for Idiotic Design is overwhelming
It is clear that the basic design of the human body contains many shoddy, useless, and even dangerous parts: the vermiform appendix [6] comes to mind immediately, as does the design-bug that forces humans to spent nearly one-half of their life-span asleep [7].

Other examples include hair growth in body parts where it is useless or even harmful [8], forcing a large part of the population to undergo wasteful and painful hair-removal procedures to the point of even employing “hair relocators” [9] to cover the lack of hair elsewhere. Likewise, the human chewing tools are not made out of the most wear-resistant material available (titanium alloys or carbon-enforced fiber would come to mind) thus often having a much shorter lifetime than their user, causing unneccessary suffering [10] and monetary losses.

As well, we needn’t even mention the obvious fallacy in not equipping humans with two heads, wings, a third arm, unbreakable bones, x-ray vision, and an ability to relax and be nice to each other for a change [11].

It is obvious that no intelligent designer was at work here – and it is just the same with the rest of creation: who in his right mind would have designed birds that cannot fly [12], eyes that cannot see [13], singers that cannot sing [14] or a fish with 4 brains and 60 anuses [15]. I could go on here, but others have done so before me [16].

So an intelligent designer is clearly out of question — which will come as no surprise for all Pastafarians. For do we not know that He who created all that we see and all that we feel is a Flying Spaghetti Monster, which implies that He’s all meat balls and noodly appendages – hence no brains, no intelligence, therefore there is little wonder that the world look as if things were thrown together in a high-entropy initial state [17] and then let free to develop according to pure chance and the occasional touches of His noodly appendages [18,19]. Given the ubiquitous evidence [4] for the FSM belief of creation, we therefore have no reason to doubt the existence of an idiotic designer, namely the FSM.

This short argument has conclusively shown that I.D. is – modestly speaking – a scientific theory supported at least as well as ID [17] and by including the former while excluding the latter from the science curriculum, the Kansas school board has committed an unconscionable breach against fairness, balance, and scientific integrity. We demand immediate rectification of this unacceptable situation to protect our kids from indoctrination in the classroom and to ensure the continuing welfare of mankind [21].

Ramen!

References:
[1] link
[2] link
[3] link
[4] link
[5] link, link
[6] link
[7] It occurs to me that the need to sleep is an important bug we need to eliminate from our programming. (Martin J. Ling in transhuman@logrus.org). See also: link
[8] Do you really want to see that? Pervert!
[9] link
[10] link
[11] For some bug and lacking features, see: link
[12] link
[13] link
[14] link
[15] link
[16] link
[17] link
[18] link, link
[19] link
[20] Putting unwarranted modesty aside for the sake of scientific clarity, it should be stated that I.D. clearly kicks ID’s a**.
[21] link

“Its roots stretch back to design arguments made by Socrates and Plato,2 and even the term “intelligent design” is more than 100 years old. Oxford scholar F.C.S. Schiller employed it in an 1897 essay, writing that “it will not be possible to rule out the supposition that the process of Evolution may be guided by an intelligent design.” … From the uses Thaxton ran across at conferences and in his back issues of Science, Thaxton saw that intelligent design was already a functioning term in science, and it was just a matter of extending the term to the process of design detection in natural structures.” – Jonathan Witt, Ph.D.[2]

One of the great problems confronting scientific verification of the incontrovertible existence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster (hereafter: FSM, He, or Him) is that through His Noodly Appendage, he has the ability to transform matter. This circumstance makes verification through physical processes virtually impossible. However, basic facts that are beyond reasonable dispute can be established empirically by using more abstract sciences. As remarked upon above by a Senior Fellow at the Discovery Institute, there is absolutely no problem with using scientific principles that might be deemed “antiquated” by the heretical “Evolutionists.” This provides us with the means of proving His existence in a fashion that is utterly beyond dispute.

The answer to this dilemma is to be found in the Bembine Tablet of Isis. The tablet, also known as the Isiac Tablet, has played a fundamental role in human history by leading to the development of playing cards [3] as well as:

“The Isiac Table, as a work of art, is not of great interest. It is but a composition, rather cold and insignificant, whose figures, summarily sketched and methodically placed near each other, give but little impression of life. But, if on the contrary, after examining it, we understand the purpose of the author, we become soon convinced that the Isiac Table is an image of the heavenly sphere divided in small parts to be used very likely for general teaching. According to that idea, we can conclude that the Isiac Table was originally the introduction to a collection followed by the Mysteries of Isis.” [4]

Needless to say, this tablet, with its established antiquity and scholarly interest – “the image of the heavenly sphere” – is safe from any reasonable dispute. The following is the Benbine Tablet of Isis:

To the devout, but simple-minded, slave to FSM, the tablet might be a disappointment, as it contains no direct representations of Him. Nevertheless, the tablet does contain the incontrovertible proof of His existence. The problem is that the tablet alone is simply a map of the heavenly sphere. As we all know, maps do not look exactly like the subjects they represent and this is exactly the case here. In order for the map to make sense, one has to understand its key.

Luckily, the noted nineteenth-century scientist Eliphas Levi developed just such a key:

With this key, the rest is essentially just simple math coupled with scientific numerology. The formula works like this:

As you can see from the extremely simplistic formula above, He most assuredly exists and an image even appears of him as a natural consequence of writing out the formula. I feel perfectly comfortable in saying – and staking my professional reputation on the notion – that it is absolutely impossible to argue with the case presented above. To present evidence that is beyond reasonable dispute of your preconceived notions is the very heart of science and I – as a great scientist and devout worshipper of Him – take great pride in being able to do so on behalf of Him. May His noodles wrap us all in meatbally beauty.

NOTES:
[1] Throughout this text you will note that I employ the “Dershowitz Methodology” to establish a fact by using rhetorical devices such as: “This is a simple fact not subject to reasonable dispute,” “There can be no reasonable dispute about the basic facts,” “These are incontrovertible facts…” and so on. For an exploration of this methodology, see Norman Finkelstein, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History (U. of California Press, 2005) p. 91

[2] Jonathan Witt, Ph.D. “The Origin of Intelligent Design: A brief history of the scientific theory of intelligent design” The Discovery Institute

[3] “To him [Levi] the Book of Thoth was a résumé of the esoteric learning of the Egyptians, after the decadence of their civilization, this lore became crystallized in an hieroglyphic form as the Tarot; this Tarot having become partially or entirely forgotten or misunderstood, is pictured symbols fell into the hands of the sham diviners, and of the providers of the public amusement by games of Cards.” Gallery of Alchemy and Magic 1

[4] Alexandre Lenoir, cited in the Gallery of Alchemy and Magic 1

A couple of weeks ago I was stuck at home with pneumonia, and one afternoon, after one part or other of the Lord of the Rings trilogy finished, I found myself face to face with Maury Povich. Merciful heavens. I have never seen a more wretched hive of scum and villainy, and I ran a community theatre for over twenty years.

It was almost enough to make one abandon one’s belief in Intelligent Design. I mean, really, who could think that an intelligent force would design creatures capable of those kinds of choices? In one sitting, I saw a woman fail a lie detector test and thus be proven a multiple adulterer; a woman confess to her fiancé that she was having an affair with her female neighbor; and a woman dying of colon cancer confess to her boyfriend that she’d been unfaithful more than 100 times and couldn’t be sure that their two children were his. I missed the segment where a man confessed to his wife that he made pocket money as a male prostitute, but that’s probably just as well.

There ain’t nothing intelligent in the incredibly untidy lives these people have lived, nor in their insane compulsion to confess their missteps, nor to do so on national television. If one were looking for patterns that betrayed the presence of an Intelligent Designer, one would not find it on Maury Povich. Quite the contrary.

I suppose that if one examines the tenets of Intelligent Design, no one is making the claim that this Force (whoever she is) is necessarily benevolent, and I know there will be those who take refuge in the old shibboleth of Free Will, but if I’m going to invent an all-powerful Intelligence who can operate outside the laws of the physical universe, I would hope I at least had the sense to make sure that He/She/It had our best interests at heart.

That got me thinking, in my fevered, antibiotic-induced way, about other particular shibboleths of the IDers. One of their favorites is the eye: how remarkable, how complex it is; surely it couldn’t have just evolved, could it?

Oddly, I remember thinking in 4th grade, as we studied the structure of the eye, that something was screwy with its design. I mean, the cones and rods are backwards, aren’t they? Shouldn’t they face toward the incoming light in order to be most efficient? And what’s up with the blind spot? Why would you run all your cabling out through the middle of your CRT?

And then I thought… testicles. Testicles. If there were ever any fleshy bit that just screams out “random selection,” surely it’s testicles. What kind of Intelligence would design something as stupid as testicles? Let’s face it, guys, any one of us could come up with better ideas on how to stow those puppies in a better place.

For one thing, we might have decided to make sperm a little tougher so that they could survive at 98.6° instead of having to be stored in little dangly pouches outside the body. We could have snuggled them up there somewhere and encased them in protective cartilage or something. Could have made that a pretty useful kind of thing, too, sort of a built-in implant kind of thingie.

But no. There they are, all wrinkly and silly, just waiting to be whacked by a teammate or opponent, or a lover, or even an excited 18-month-old. What’s intelligent about that? Not much, in my opinion.

Discernible purpose in the design? I suppose you could make a case for pleasure, that they’re awfully fun to play with—if not to look at—but I don’t imagine that’s the kind of case that most Intelligent Designers are willing to make in public. So what kind of Intelligent Force would design such a thing?

And then it occurred to me, in a flash of inspiration. If one is willing, as that President Bush has recently said, to explore all sides of the controversy, then the answer is pretty obvious: testicles are clearly the product of the fiendish Intelligence of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Isn’t it obvious, guys? We were made in his image, right down to the noodly appendage. This is the only possible explanation that fits in with the agenda of the IDers: Testicles are a testament to the FSM’s almighty power, not to mention his sense of humor, and are a daily reminder to half the population of his presence, or at least of his impetus.

So there you have it: either we can think that testicles are the result of one too many random switches being thrown, an evolutionary path that hung a right instead of a left (sorry…) a long time ago—or we can recognize the overwhelming Intelligence behind their design. Seems an easy choice to me.

Dear Science Creative Quarterly,

Some of my friends and my science teacher tell me that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster. The Kansas School Board says that there is no Flying Spaghetti Monster. My dad said that if you see it in the Science Creative Quarterly, then it is so. I am certain I have seen pirates in Kansas as well. Please tell me the truth. Is there a Flying Spaghetti Monster, even in Kansas? Are there pirates in Kansas?

Signed, Virginia
123 Main Street
Topeka, Kansas

Dear Virginia

Your little friends and your science teacher are very wrong. Yes, there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster, even in Kansas. He is everywhere. Your friends and the Kansas School Board have been affected by the scepticism of a sceptical age. The Flying Spaghetti Monster certainly exists. He exists as certainly as there are mountains, midgets and trees. He exists as certainly as there is avioli, linguini and cannelloni. No Flying Spaghetti Monster? Of course there is a Flying Spaghetti Monster. And proof of His existence is validated by the casual connection, the statistically inverse relationship – between global warming and the number of pirates. That observable evidence is bedrock proof of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Those who do not believe in the Flying Spaghetti Monster would tell you that in the beginning, the world and the universe were created by an unseen intelligent power – in their story called “Intelligent Design”. But they do not tell us who created the designer, thus setting up one of those impossible chicken-and-the-egg circular questions that cannot be resolved.

But all of this is avoided when you consider the Flying Spaghetti Monster. One is unlikely to be be-devilled by such questions when considering a plate of pasta. The existence of midgets, mountains and trees also negates the need for such questions. Intelligent Design is likely to ruin breakfast forever, because one would be so consumed by the unintelligent mysteries of a fake theory that one could never again consume breakfast. In fact Intelligent Design might start mass worldwide malnutrition.

And yes, Virginia, there are pirates in Kansas. Pirates are everywhere, and they help spread the word of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. The recent snowstorms in Kansas are proof of the valiant fight against global warming. It has not snowed because it is winter. Global warming does not respect calendars. No, it has snowed because the number of pirates in Kansas has increased.

And here is a chart to prove it:

Irrefutable statistically valid evidence of the link between the amount of snow in Kansas and the number of pirates. As the number of pirates has increased, so has the amount of snow. The Kansas School Board would like to hide this fact. It would like to keep this simple chart from being part of the science curriculum of the Kansas schools.

Do not believe the Kansas School Board, Virginia. Believe in the power of charts. These offer observable, irrefutable scientific evidence of the existence of pirates, pasta and the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

Signed, Anonymous
A Kansas pirate who intercepted this letter on its way to the Science Creative Quarterly.

A classic argument for the existence of God is known as the Ontological Argument (henceforth OA). This argument was developed by St. Anselm in the eleventh century, but has been greatly improved upon in the ensuing years. The argument, in a nutshell, is that a perfect being must necessarily exist. It is part of the very nature of a perfect being to be real- all beings which do not exist are by definition imperfect. This is because it is better to exist than to not exist (i.e. to exist brings you closer to perfection). So if we can merely conceive of a perfect being, then it must, on pain of contradiction, be real.

In a popular formulation of the OA, we are asked to imagine a being of which no greater can be conceived. One might motivate this process by creating a list of perfections. Reasonably, such a list would include omnipotence, omniscience, benevolence, being the creator of all of reality, and so on. We are then asked to compare this list with one in which the characteristic of “actual existence” has been added. Obviously the second list describes a more perfect being. It is clear then that the first list was not a description of a being of which no greater can be conceived. No matter what characteristics we have imagined, actual existence would be an improvement. Hence whatever characteristics we attribute to our perfect being, existence must be one of them.

While there have been many criticisms of the ontological argument, from Kantian metaphysics to modern quantificational logic, we believe all such challenges can be answered. However, we do not have time to review the nuances of this debate. (For more detailed information, please visit here).

Traditionally it has been argued (to be frank, it has generally only been assumed) that the necessarily existent perfect being fits comfortably into the Judeo-Christian mold. Now surely any perfect being has the characteristics listed above: it is omnipotent, omniscient, benevolent, and the creator of all of reality. Here we have no quarrel with tradition. However, we will soon see that there are several other characteristics which have been overlooked (or suppressed) by philosophers and theologians during the last millennium. We propose that a careful review of the reasoning behind the OA will indicate that rather than the God of the Judeo-Christian tradition, the OA indicates the existence of a mass of starchy substance capable of gravity resistance. Such a being must necessarily be, and so all denials of its existence involve blatant logical contradiction.

We will begin our argument with an experience most people can share. When a young person moves away from home and goes to college, he finds himself confronted for the first time with the task of providing himself with the necessities of life. For many a college freshman, this proves a nearly insurmountable task. While one can survive without paying the gas, electric, and phone bills, all living things require sustenance in order to continue to live. And what is the staple diet of the impoverished student? Ramen noodles, macaroni and cheese, and spaghetti. But it is not merely college students in first world nations who subsist on this food. The staple diet of a large portion of humanity is starchy noodles. The unique properties of this foodstuff make it the most popular form of subsistence in all of recorded history. Noodles are high in caloric content, they are nutritious, and they are simple and easy to produce. Clearly then, noodles are an objectively superior food. Indeed, noodles are the perfect food.

We will demonstrate that our perfect being must be made of the most perfect food. Before we continue, however, a potentially serious objection must be met.

Some will argue that because rice is a staple diet of so many people in the world, it must be the more perfect food. On the contrary, we argue that rice is a profoundly evil form of sustenance. The corrupting nature of rice should be evident to anyone who has taken seriously the twentieth century battles against the evils of Communism. This small, deceptive grain has provided the fuel for millions of Communist soldiers, Communist spies, and Communist infiltrators. What countries remain Communist in the twenty-first century? China, Vietnam, and Korea come to mind immediately. Now what food is most commonly associated with these nations? Certainly not spaghetti! The case against rice should be immediately clear. (As a side note, this result should be of more than casual philosophical interest. A central part of modern struggles against tyranny should involve changing the eating habits of those living under oppressive regimes.)

Now, why must a perfect being be composed of the perfect food? The argument is surprisingly straightforward. Since food is necessary for life, and life is more perfect than non-life, food is the fundamental substance, or substratum, of all living things. All living things are made of food. The perfect being exists, and because it is a being (rather than a non-being, such as a very small rock), it is necessarily alive. But of what shall our most perfect being be made? The most perfect food. Hence, the perfect being is made of some kind of pasta.

Another perfection is gravity resistance. Modern science holds that gravity is a “weak” force. However, this is in clear contradiction to the evidence. Anyone who has ever climbed a flight of stairs, fallen from a great height, or hiked up a mountain can attest that gravity is a strong force indeed. The scientific elites tell us otherwise, but the contradictions in modern physics are evident to even the most casual observer. If gravity were a weak force, then surely the rotation of the earth would cast us all into space. Does electromagnetism keep Mt. Everest in its place? Even a child can see the contradictions here. Only someone with an overabundance of education could deny the evidence of their senses in such an absurd way. Contrary to modern physics (which is corrupted by naturalism, evolutionism, and anti-pasta-ism), gravity is the strongest force in the universe. Surely, then, a perfect being is capable of resisting the greatest force in His creation. Hence, our perfect being is capable of gravity resistance (i.e. flight).

We hope this essay enables the reader to see the rational necessity of belief in the Flying Spaghetti Monster.

The truths of this world are not difficult to find, and much effort (and money!) could be saved if we were willing to accept the futility and error of so-called “scientific” reasoning and spend our time in careful contemplation of His Noodly Greatness.

NOTES:
(1) The arguments which demonstrate that a perfect being would require mortals to dress as pirates are too obvious to merit inclusion in this essay. This derivation is left for the reader.

(2) On the matter of spheres of meaty substance in the pasta matrix, we remain agnostic. One must not extend one’s reasoning beyond what is available in terms of first principles and evidence. Some room must be left for faith.

A definitive, simple experiment that can be reproduced the world over with conclusive results:

1. Gather a group of people together. Officemates or family work. For good scientific sampling, though, get at least a sample size of 9 with a good mix of gender and race.

2. Ask the question, “How does everyone feel about Italian for dinner tonight?”

3. Observe how many affirmatives are posted in the group.

From years of extensive, observed behavior, most people in the group will give positive answers like:
– “Cool”
– “Sounds good.”
– “Sure.”
– “I guess.”
– “Anything but Mexican again.”
– “Oh my fucking god Charlie! That was William Fucking Shatner!”

Obviously, there’s some innate trait humanity has that makes us predisposed to wanting Italian food. There are two theories for this behavior:

1. We did not have this trait to begin with and gained it through evolution. We lived in an environment that put Italian food all around us and we all picked up the trait to like Italian food. Economic factors helped because Italian food is generally cheap to mass produce, leading to a glut of product and selection at affordable prices for even the “common man” to purchase. The economic factors also leads to more companies putting out marketing campaigns for their products, adding contributing visual, sound and even scent-based influences in our everyday lives. Italian food is generally easy to prepare, giving sympathetic behavioral factors to make people want to eat more Italian food because it is less of a tax on our daily work life. All of this combined over a period of time has made humanity evolve into a society that is predisposed to wanting to eat Italian.

2. Humanity was created from an Italian source that imbued the predisposition from the beginning. Now, we know that while Italy was one of 4 birthplaces of modern civilization, other facts have shown that not all of humanity could have started from that one location on the planet. So, how could everybody in the world gain this trait? There must be some invisible, Italian entity that created all human life and spread them across the whole planet. This one source of Italian influence, the Flying Spaghetti Monster, and it’s hand in our species existence can answer the question of why everyone is cool eating Italian. It’s grace that allowed us existence also gives us a desire for starch, oregano and cheap table wine.

The scientific method tells us to follow the wise old words of Occam, “Given two equally predictive theories, choose the simpler.” What’s the simplest explanation for how that desire to eat Italian food has embedded itself into the core of humanity? To use the first theory, we would have to agree on the influence of multiple sources (economics, social behavior and conditioning, etc.) that, over time, evolved our entire society into what it is today. On the other hand, the second solution just needs one element for it to work, that there is a FSM out there that created humanity and gave us the desire to honor it at its red-and-white checkerboard tables of worship. It answers the empirical evidence simply, cleanly, and just as equally as the evolution argument. Thus, it should be scientifically obvious that there is a FSM.

Q.E.D

To begin, let us look at the forms of life we can see on this planet. They all exhibit a certain degree of complexity, which is not found in non-living matter. A dog is much more complex than a rock. To express this, we can use the concept of Kolmogorov complexity. Living things possess high Kolmogorov complexity, because their DNA is decidedly uncompressible. As an example, consider the string of bits 10101010. This string has very low Kolmogorov complexity, because it can be compressed to ‘write 10 four times’. On the other hand, the string 0100101, is uncompressible in the same sense that DNA is. It has very high Kolmogorov complexity. That string was generated by me by tapping the ’0′ and ’1′ keys on my keyboard.

If I had a keyboard with only ACGT, I could similarly write random DNA. If we put that DNA into a cell, and tried to make a living organism out of it, I very much doubt we would get anything living, much less good at living. Therefore, the uncompressible complexity we observe in living things is also non-random. It has been created for a purpose: the purpose of building living things.

So, if the DNA has been created, then there must be a creator. Some choose to posit the Christian God, other choose intelligent aliens with amazing technology. The problem is that both of these choices also must have extremely high Kolmogorov complexity. My chances of randomly hammering out the code to a divine being on my four-key keyboard are even less than that of coming up with a living animal. These are really just restatements of the same problem; we still don’t know where the complexity came from. We could posit an endless string of Gods each who created the one before it, thus accounting for the extremely high complexity of a God. However, this string just results in higher and higher degrees of complexity and gets us nowhere. What we need is a way to get high complexity from low complexity.

If you’ll indulge me a brief tangent, I would like to discuss the properties of Spaghetti. Imagine a box of uncooked spaghetti. It’s essentially a series of straight lines. A box of 200 pieces of spaghetti has very low Kolmogorov complexity. You could easily compress the data contained in those 200 pieces. Now imagine a plate of cooked spaghetti, complete with sauce and, if you like, meatballs. Imagine the process of untangling this mass. It would take hours to individually sort each piece of spaghetti, clean off the sauce, and put it in it’s own separate place, and pick out the meatballs. This plate of spaghetti, all tangled up, and covered with delicious, delicious sauce, has very high complexity. Spaghetti has the astounding property of being able to go from very low, to very high complexity.

Now, let’s return to our search for a creator. Clearly Gods and super intelligent aliens don’t help us in our problem. A spaghetti God, however, could. It is reasonable that something of low complexity might come into existence on its own. We don’t look at a rock in the woods and feel the need for a designed. So, low complexity, uncooked spaghetti does not require a creator, it is quite capable of arising through random, natural processes. Then, when cooked via the infusion of energy, it can come to have a high complexity. Consider the difference between uncooked, and slightly cooked spaghetti. Slightly uncooked spaghetti has slightly higher complexity than uncooked. There is a continuous spectrum from low to high as the spaghetti is cooked. The more the spaghetti is cooked, the more energy has been infused. In order to create a flying spaghetti monster capable of creating life, which would have an extremely high level of complexity, we would need an extremely high amount of energy to do the cooking.

There is only one place where we might find the required amount of energy: the universe immediately following the Big Bang. Temperatures of 100 billion degrees Kelvin would certainly be sufficient to generate the high Kolmogorov complexity of spaghetti with the power to create life.

Thus, we have found a solution to the question of where the Kolmogorov complexity of life comes from. Uncooked spaghetti arose naturally (quite possible because of its low Kolmogorov complexity) during the first instants of the universe. It was then cooked by the extremely high temperatures, causing it to rapidly gain complexity to the point of being able to create life. Further increases in complexity granted it the ability to fly, and monster status.

There will likely be some neo-Darwinian, Ivy League, science elitist who will come up with some other object that can rise in complexity when cooked. In order to prove that the true form of the creator is that of a flying spaghetti monster, I will employ a version of the famed cosmological argument:

1. You don’t need a reason to enjoy spaghetti.
2. Everything (else) has a cause.
3. Nothing can cause itself.
4. Everything is caused by another thing.
5. A causal chain cannot be of infinite length.
6. There must be a first cause.
7. The first cause had no cause.
8. Spaghetti is the only thing that can have no cause, thus must be the first cause.

Q.E.D. bitches.