funkboxing

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – November, 2008 (pdf)

The year 2008 is a great year to be an American voter. It’s an even better year to be an American voting machine. The voting machine is the backbone of our democracy, and it’s time these noble beasts are given due recognition.

Without these machines, by the time the results were released, most people would have forgotten all about the election, if the candidates hadn’t already died of old age. American democracy would be lost without the voting machine. America without the voting machine would be like the Roman Empire without the Segway® scooter.

Human beings are incapable of collecting or counting votes as quickly or as accurately as machines. Though the well-celebrated acts of John Henry, Neo, and Sarah Connor proved that an exceptional human could occasionally kick a machine’s ass, we still can’t count like them. Modern elections require a great deal of counting. Without today’s voting machines, we would be forced to surrender our democracy to a tyrant for the sake of expediency and convenience.

The increasing size and complexity of a modern election requires precision, speed, and accountability beyond what humans alone could manage without exerting ourselves more than we really want to. Technology is the savior of democracy, as it has been since the moment we became overly reliant upon it.

Throughout history, democracies have utilized the latest in technological assets to strengthen and empower the voice of the populace. Thousands of years ago, the Athenians practiced a form of direct democracy in which most adult male citizens could debate and vote on government decisions. The Athenians used the most advanced technologies of the day: yelling at each other, counting how many people raised their hands to vote, and sprinting in sandals to convey information about government business. Though highly functional for the time, these rudimentary techniques certainly could not work in the modern era.

Though not a true democracy, the Roman Republic also faced the challenge of holding large-scale elections. Ancient Rome contributed innumerable technological advancements to the world. Many of these contributions were created by direct necessity of maintaining a republic. Perhaps the most innovative election technologies employed by the Romans were the blade, poison, and a pioneering use of political graffiti.

Early in history, our own democracy was subject to difficulties brought on by a lack of sufficient technology. The earliest American elections relied on small, box-shaped devices that provided no electronic backups or printed receipts. The potential for catastrophic box malfunction was an ever-present threat. Even if the ballot box did not fail structurally, counting ballots by hand opened the door to fraud and human error.

In essence, democracy itself is a technology developed to mitigate the effects of human error. With luck, the average of everyone’s judgment is better than the average individual’s judgment. A representative democracy such as ours is a more efficient application of democratic technology, in that it allows us to elect leaders to make decisions in our name.

The founding fathers’ ambition was to create a democracy based on reason. The framework they created was based on what they had learned from history, with reasonable expectations for the future. The founding fathers did not expect universal suffrage, population growth to over a quarter-billion citizens, or campaign budgets that rival the U.S. gross domestic product at the time of the ratification of the Constitution. America grew quickly, and it took time for technology to catch up to the ambition of the founding fathers.

The first radical change in election technology came with the invention of the incandescent light. The light bulb finally allowed citizens to cast their vote after sunset. This innovation was critical to the rise of the American Vampire Party. Before this time, the American Werewolf Party was the predominant organizational force in politics. After some struggle, the Vampires and Werewolves struck an accord that solidified the coalition of monsters constituting today’s two-party system.

American election technology accelerated quickly in the 20th century. Emerging communications technologies made elections more engaging by providing quick election results, and more expensive and ever more well-rehearsed campaign theatrics.

While paper-ballot technology persists even to this day, box technology has grown by leaps and bounds. From wood to metal to space-age plastic, ballot-box implosion, self-incineration, and mechanical failures are things of the past. Ballot boxes are now 100% as reliable as the people running the election.

Election technology is on the cusp of another breakthrough. Decades ago, digital technology vastly improved the function and proliferation of banking and financial services. It may eventually do the same for American democracy.

The stalwart and reliable ATM is the frontline soldier in today’s fast-paced economy. At great expense and with cooperative commercial effort, these devices have been honed to a fine degree of mechanical reliability, stability, and security.

The analogous advancement that is leading us into the modern age of voting is, of course, the voting machine. While distinctly less reliable than ATMs, we put our republic in the hands of these temperamental creatures as a testament to our faith in technology. Technology has become the representative of capitalism, and capitalism is the badass grandmother of democracy.

The ATM is the hard-working, older sibling of the promising, though petulant and immature, voting machine. Unlike the well-standardized ATM, voting machines are manufactured with a wild variety of operating principles, requirements, and sophistications. Machines may collect votes using optical scans, punch cards, buttons, levers, touch screens, printers, tactile genital analysis, or any combination thereof.

Voting machines are exotic and strange, and yet they are becoming more familiar to us with each election. They hide behind curtains in school and church gymnasiums, quiet and unassuming, watching and waiting. They are much like the engine that lurks under your hood, the humble server racks diligently delivering your favorite web page, or the graceful satellite silently imaging your house and thoughts from geosynchronous orbit.

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – August, 2008 (pdf)

Electrons are very energetic particles. They carry a negative charge and move around at nearly the speed of light. Depending on what material they are moving through, electrons can perform a number of useful and interesting tasks. Most notably, electrons can be used in various ways to create and manipulate motion, light, and sound. However useful electrons may be under the right circumstances, they are very negative and tend to disagree a great deal. Because of this disagreeable tendency, technology has seen fit to create electron prisons, known as “batteries.”

Much like American prisons, electron prisons hold particles that have been charged with being more negative than the average negativity of the surrounding particles. Also like American prisons, the efficiency of an electron prison is rated by the density and negativity of its inmates. Current electron prisons are far less efficient than the highly effective, privately owned and operated prisons that provide America with security, jobs, and a false sense of moral superiority.

The success of the American, privatized prison industry has inspired politicians to try to emulate that success in the field of electron incarceration. Presidential hopeful John McCain has proposed an incentive for private research and development of electron prisons. This incentive takes the form of a 300-million-dollar prize to be awarded for the development of a high-density electron prison capable of powering the next generation of hippie-mobiles.

Electron prisons have an impressive history. Historical evidence of the first attempts at incarcerating electrons was found, appropriately, in Baghdad. The mysterious “Baghdad Battery” is essentially a clay pot with copper and iron electrodes that could be filled with an acidic liquid to start an electrochemical reaction. These ancient devices are over 2000 years old and are postulated to have been used for electroplating and to power the neon signs in Baghdad’s ancient red-light district.

The Baghdad Battery remains a historical mystery. If it is indeed a battery as claimed, it would predate the credited discovery of electrochemical energy by 1700 years. Though this abominable possibility exists, it is much more palatable to go with the assumption that Europeans discovered electricity just like they always said they did.

The formal study of electricity began with a man named Luigi Galvani. In 1780, Galvani began poking frogs with various pieces of metal. Through methodical poking and analysis, Galvani found that certain combinations of metal would induce a dead frog to twitch. Though initially thought to be nothing more than a potential culinary novelty, the twitching frogs were actually the first demonstration of electrochemical manipulation, and they paved the way for important advances in prisoner interrogation.

The era of frog poking came to an end when Alessandro Volta developed the “voltaic pile” in 1799. This system was simply a stack of electrochemical cells connected in series to achieve nearly 50 volts. Volta is given broad credit for the invention of the battery, though he never clearly understood the nature of electrochemical reactions.

After this discovery, Volta enjoyed enough name recognition to allow him to retire. He now tours with his own wicked awesome tribute band “Mars Volta.”

In 1830, Michael Faraday explained Volta’s electrochemical reactions in terms of the corrosion they caused. With Faraday’s explanations came the development of more advanced battery systems.

The first batteries were simple, organic, and fairly weak. Modern battery technology utilizes reactions with far more longevity and higher energy levels. The most common battery technologies are lead-acid, nickel-cadmium, nickel-metal hydride, and lithium-ion. Though battery technology has advanced considerably, there is still no technology that will allow us to store electricity on the scale we require for today’s energy demands.

The solution to this problem lies in the ingenuity and inventiveness of today’s scientists, engineers, and crackpots. The necessity for this invention is clear, and developers are hard at work. Unfortunately, they are not working hard enough or fast enough to satisfy the rest of us, who want that freaking battery like yesterday. Politicians have heard our whining and have taken decisive action.

The initial response was to fund the construction of a time machine, so that after the batteries are finished, they can send them back to yesterday to satisfy voter demand. After sufficient pork-barrel funds were distributed on the time-machine project, attention was shifted to developing the actual batteries. Unfortunately, most politicians are unfamiliar with the principles of engineering, so nearly a million dollars was spent on duct tape, fishnets, and prostitutes before the first prototype was complete.

The first prototype battery was, of course, a prostitute in fishnets duct-taped to the hood of a Rolls Royce. While impressive in form, the function of this battery was not satisfactory. Undeterred by their failure, the politicians went back to the drawing board, which was, of course, a naked prostitute they drew on with licorice-flavored markers.

Though John McCain is a respectable politician, he has no experience with prostitutes whatsoever. This handicap would seem to make him an unlikely candidate to head development of a new battery technology, but McCain chose a radical new route for development, one that did not require prostitutes. McCain’s direction for development saves recurring legal and pimping costs, but relies heavily on a very expensive and scarce resource in America. The resource McCain hopes to exploit is called genius.

The going rate for genius in America is around 1 million dollars per idea, and it takes about 300 ideas to ensure at least one of them does not involve prostitutes. McCain’s proposal for 300 million dollars for an effective battery is a finely calculated figure. This amount should be sufficient to inspire those who need money for prostitutes to think about something else for a little while.

McCain’s proposed 300-million-dollar prize is currently only a proposal. As a proposal, it serves as an economic incentive while costing taxpayers nothing. While it would be great to have an efficient and effective battery, it would be even better if we could get one without paying 300 million dollars for it. McCain knows this, and he knows that once we have our battery, no one will care who made it or if they got paid or not. McCain also knows that the 300-million-dollar prize would almost inevitably end up going to some brilliant foreigner, and nobody likes foreigners with more money than us.

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – June, 2008 (pdf)

If you are reading this article, then you indubitably have bones. That is not to say that literacy is entirely bone-dependent, but bones play a large part in the process. For instance, if you did not have bones, then the eyes you are reading with would be covered with large flaps of your face, or they might be displaced from their sockets by the pressure of your head collapsing into a loose wrap of flesh around your neck. Not to mention, your neck wouldn’t be much more than a limp tube connecting your squishy head to the rest of your squishy body. Suffice it to say: bones are important.

To contradict that last statement – it is not sufficient to say bones are important. Bones are really important. Of course, deriving the importance of bones by imagining their absence is not only gross but also quite meaningless. The human species could not have developed and/or been created without utilizing bones. In fact, the original draft of Genesis described how God initially tried Styrofoam®, rebar, carbon fiber, and LEGOs® as a skeletal structure for humans, but He settled on bone as the most cost-effective building material.

Bones also provide a good basis for understanding the path that intelligent design took after God relinquished control of the process to Mother Nature and Father Time, around four billion years ago. Though it has become clear that Father Time and Mother Nature padded their resumes in order to get hired on with God’s creation department, they’ve since demonstrated that they are a capable middle-management team.

The evidence of Nature’s and Time’s management techniques is in the remains of their creations. All things that are alive do a number of similar things. They live, eat, poop, and die. In these activities, living things leave notable traces, including tracks, burrows, poop, and conveniently, themselves, usually in the form of bones.

The people who study these traces are called paleontologists, and they are some of the most hard-core nerds in science. Respect. Paleontologists study fossils, which used to be bones; ichnites, which used to be tracks; and, of course, everyone’s favorite – coprolites, which were once ancient Browns headed to a prehistoric Super Bowl.

Paleontology is the study of ancient life, even though it has been dead for some time. The study of ancient dead things began, appropriately, with people who subsequently became ancient dead things themselves. The Greek Xenophanes and Chinese Shen Kuo both observed very early in history that some rocks had bones and shells carved into them, and they deduced that this was probably not the work of tiny sculptors.

With the 17th century came the amusingly classified “Age of Reason.” This is the same age that brought with it the Atlantic slave trade, colonial subjugation, and judging from the overwhelming whiteness of the era, probably mayonnaise. Despite the pervasive reasonableness in this century, the formative work of naturalists such as John Ray and Martin Lister was largely ignored. Ray and Lister proposed that fossils looked like bones because they used to be bones, but this theory was considered highly counterintuitive. Most people stuck with the more reasonable conclusion that, despite their clear similarity to bones, fossils are just clever rocks and have no organic origin whatsoever.

For centuries, the natural sciences competed with theology to explain why the heck God left all these crazy, bone-looking rocks laying around. Christian theologians explained concisely that God left these rocks here because He freaking felt like it, and if you ask again, we’ll send an inquisitor to beat some faith into you. This explanation was not satisfactory to some, and they endeavored to find more compelling explanations that required less beating to understand.

The conclusion that fossils are actually bones was eventually accepted. The problem that remained was that some of these fossils clearly did not come from any species that still lived. What kind of critter dies and leaves its bones, but doesn’t bother to reproduce so that its offspring have the opportunity to do the same? This question was eventually answered, but as with most answers, it didn’t satisfy everyone asking.

Charles Darwin, better known as Chuck D, published The Origin of Species in 1859. In so doing, Chuck pissed off the Western world on a scale we didn’t see again until Hollywood destroyed Heinlein’s classic novel Starship Troopers by turning it into a feature-length episode of Saved by the Bell.

The Origin of Species discussed what Chuck found when he chartered a Beagle conspicuously named H.M.S. Boat to paddle to the Galapagos Islands and bring back several finches. When the Beagle returned, Chuck found that the various finches on these islands had developed in such extreme isolation that they had become unique species.

Chuck used his findings to support a radical new theory: evolution. Evolution is the heretical idea that God did not use clay and magic to create life, but instead, He set in motion a complex developmental system based on physical laws which allows for perpetual alteration of creatures in response to their environment. Later, Chuck pissed more people off when he synthesized these ideas to encompass human biological development in his book The Descent of Man, a title his wife suggested as an alternative to the book’s original title It’s All Pink on the Inside.

Subscribers to Chuck’s theories initially faced ridicule and threats of excommunication. Even today, Chuck’s theories are scrutinized and debated. Supporters and opponents of evolution have come to utilize various bastardizations of the Ichthus, the Christian fish icon, to proudly display their common ignorance of symbolism and eagerness to segregate themselves by ideology. Though the respectable scientific community has declined to debate zealots on the issue, less respectable kooks are perfectly willing to fill the void and provide lively, bizarre, and non sequitur arguments so that people who don’t like to think can feel their positions are well represented.

In their quest to unearth evidence and truth about the history of life on earth, modern paleontologists employ seismic imaging, chemistry, and techniques learned from extensive studies of the Where’s Waldo? series. Patient, methodical surveys and digs, tireless cataloguing and analysis, and brilliant scientific observations and deduction lead to new discoveries in the field every year, yet paleontology is still very far from providing a clear and irrefutable explanation of how and why God created life. Unfortunately, all paleontologists are atheists, Cretans, and likely drug users, so they are unlikely to do anything other than piss off God enough to cause another mass extinction. Then His creations can get back to evolution without humanity constantly asking stupid questions about their existence.

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – April, 2008 (pdf)

The year is 1905. You are a zany German, working in a Swiss patent office. You are young, trying to impress women, and without warning, you grow a head of hair that challenges classical physics. All you want are fast women and fast, horseless carriages. Your hair wants to change the world.

This was Albert Einstein’s life at the age of 26. He was faced with a choice: cut the wild hair and get back to his life, or let it grow and allow each strand to wander into new dimensions of truth. Einstein made the choice to let his profound hairstyle define his life and, thereby, define a new understanding of nature.

Einstein’s exotic hair weaved knowledge into his mind, which he used to create a series of papers now called the Annus Mirabilisor “Miracle Year.” In these documents are revolutionary ideas on basic physics that are still pretty much incomprehensible to most people 103 years later.

The first of these ideas is the photoelectric effect. Einstein found that the luminous glow created by his hair was emitted in discrete packets of energy called quanta. Before this discovery, the infinite divisibility of energy was considered the basis of electromagnetism as understood by Maxwell, who apparently didn’t understand jack. Ironically, the idea that energy is discrete became one of the pillars of quantum mechanics, which Einstein often rebuked as “crazier than a straitjacketed Nazi in a French gay bar.”

In these papers, Einstein also discussed Brownian motion, for which he created a means of measurement on a relatively large scale. Brownian motion is a concept relating to molecular movements. That last sentence is so laden with potential for scatological abuse that I feel it’s best left alone.

The concepts in the Annus Mirabilis that had the most immediate and far-reaching consequences for physics are special relativity and the equivalence of matter and energy. One of the most frequently referenced formulas in science is E=mc2. This formula is only slightly less popular than the punch line to the classic Boudreaux and Thibodaux joke – pi(r) round. Both of these formulas describe the fundamental nature of the universe: one of them finds the circumference of a circle; the other finds the circumference of wasteland we can create when politicians and generals dictate the utility of scientific discoveries.

Contrary to popular belief, Einstein most certainly did not create the nuclear bomb. His contribution to nuclear warfare was much the same as the prehistoric inventor of the wheel’s contribution to rush-hour traffic. Einstein’s formula gave matter a rest energy, which was distinct from classical potential and kinetic energies.

The rest state of matter turned out to possess a metric ass-load of energy. Under the right circumstances, it was believed that certain elements could be induced to split or combine in ways that might release this energy. In a controlled reaction, the release would be steady and contained.

Of course, most people immediately began considering how immensely wicked it would be if we could start an uncontrolled reaction and drop it on people who mess with us. So, a bunch of people who weren’t Einstein set about using Einstein’s brilliant ideas to kill lots of people. Seems like, if Einstein was so smart, he would have seen that coming and just kept his mouth shut. All is vanity, but with hair like that, who can blame him?

When the move towards nuclear weapons began, Einstein made his feelings on the subject very clear with his famous quote: “Those who believe in the necessity of nuclear weapons have no penis.” Einstein was known to have several penises; each of them was over 10 inches long, and they boasted a collective IQ of 235.

Among Einstein’s many ideas and penises, he conjured perhaps his most famous and profound discovery of nature: Special Relativity. His discourse into this subject was titled “On the Electrodynamics of Moving Bodies,” which is also the name of a new Cirque du Soleil performance in which several acrobats perform Lorenz transformations in mid-air using gravitational harmonics. If you know what a Lorenz transformation is, you’re cool. If you can actually calculate one, I love you. Really.

Classical relativity assumes that all inertial reference frames are subject to identical laws of physics. This means that, if you’re standing at the back of a short bus moving at 30mph, and you throw a tub of Boudreaux’s Butt Paste towards the front at 30 mph, the relative speed of the Butt Paste to a stationary observer is 60mph. That all sounds quite reasonable.

Einstein decided that it was entirely too reasonable and there had to be something wrong with it. Special relativity postulates that, while classical relativity holds true at all reasonable speeds, once you start moving at unreasonable speeds, unreasonable things start to happen. The speed at which the universe becomes completely unreasonable is c, the speed of light. If you want to know just how fast light is, look it up; let’s just say it’s freaking way fast. It is so freaking way fast that it isn’t really a speed at all; it is a speed limit. Nothing can travel that fast, except light, because it’s special. The specialness of light is not just due to the fact that it can go way fast. Light is special because it is always traveling at the same speed, to any observer, in any inertial frame of reference. I wish I could do that.

This time, the short bus is cruising at half the speed of light. You shine a Boudreaux’s Butt Paste flashlight towards the front of the bus. One might expect a stationary observer to judge the light from the bulb to be traveling at 1.5 times the speed of light. Special relativity states that the light from the bulb is traveling at exactly the speed of light to all observers. From what science can effectively measure, it has been proved time and again that Einstein was right on the money.

Big, unconventional ideas often spring from big, unconventional hair. In one year, Einstein and his hair documented logical and intuitive leaps that dwarf the lifelong efforts of some of the cleanest-cut minds in science. After this astonishing year of revelation, Einstein’s hair took about ten years off. He grew dreadlocks, got into Rasta for a while, and then decided that he and his hair had more riddles to solve. Gravity had always been a thorn in Albert Einstein’s side. His hair defied it, so he had no choice but to stand with his hair and face the challenge. Together, they battled Newton’s Law of Universal Gravitation. Find out who won next time on…something about science…

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – February, 2008 (pdf)

Any geologist worth his basalt will tell you that the Earth is overdue for a Brunhes-Matuyama reversal. That’s when the Earth’s magnetic poles flip-flop like they’re running for office. This impending geomagnetic reversal means that, sometime soon, magnetic north will be south and vice versa.

Scientists are still debating what causes this event, let alone the consequences. The prevailing theory is that the Earth’s chewy, caramel interior ripens and becomes too delicious. This induces subterranean unicorns to poke holes in the Earth’s candy shell to equalize the flavor gradient.

There is a great deal of speculation about what consequences this shift may bring. Some say it will be another Y2K nightmare. Still others say that this event deserves a much more ominous acronym, something including a hexadecimal so only nerds understand it. However catastrophic the impending shift of the Earth’s magnetic poles may or may not be, the most catastrophic thing we can do in the meantime is not worry about it incessantly.

The Sun, the source of so-called “solar energy,” is actually a giant fusion reactor run by Entergy. It floats around in deep space and says, “What?! What?! That RIGHT, yo! I’m the Sun, beyotch! Ya’ best step!”

For all its boasting, the Sun isn’t really that macho and likes having friends like the Earth. The Earth is part of the solar system, and without a bumpin’ system, the Sun couldn’t impress other stars at red lights.

Turns out, the Earth’s magnetic field isn’t just planetary mating plumage. We have a symbiotic relationship with our Sun, but it is wicked powerful and likes to fling devastating radiation at us for no reason. To protect us from this lethal exposure, the Earth backs up her big, sexy, tight, round, magnetic field and takes one for the team.

When the Bruno-Whatever reversal takes place, the Earth’s magnetic field will temporarily weaken and become saggy, lumpy, sort of flat but still bulging around the sides, and all dimply. It will provide no protection when the Sun gives us a spanking.

Some scientists have concluded that the reversal will be slow and will not affect us for another thousand years. Other scientists believe that those scientists should get bent, because they don’t know what the hell they’re talking about. These scientists have found evidence that God is pissed, and He’s about to get His wrath on.

The prevailing Caramel and Unicorn Theory suggests, by its nature, that this shift will be a rapid and apocalyptic one. Caramel is like Kryptonite to unicorns and so, to equalize pressure across the candy layer, they must poke holes rapidly through the shell. Scientists who support this theory suggest that the effects of this rapid poking will be initially satisfying, but may ultimately leave the Earth colder and less responsive to our needs.

If the Earth’s magnetic field is disrupted, even for a short time in geologic terms, it could mean the end of human civilization as we know it. Even if we could protect ourselves from exposure, the intense radiation would make any surface activity or communications intensely dangerous. Unfiltered solar radiation would cook electronic devices and electrical equipment instantly. It could also give you a deep, brown, luxurious tan – on your bones. Scary stuff. Scarier than Armageddon: The Musical.

Our mighty scientists have yet to offer any technological breakthroughs that could offer salvation. Einstein is dead and his brain is pickled. Hawking is still alive, but he’s too busy doing cameos and pissing off evangelicals to really tackle the issue. Not to mention, neither of them is a geologist.

With Einstein dead and Hawking gone all celebrity on us, who can we turn to for help in geology? Do you know any helpful geologists? No, they’re all running around, picking on helpless rocks. We could look it up on Wikipedia, but that is full of useless facts. What we need are opinions, loosely based in science, but interpreted for us so that they don’t offend or frighten us, unless it’s profitable or consolidates power.

The most trustworthy opinions come from people who are outside of mainstream science, because they are not subject to the “groupthink” that has come to be called “the scientific method.” That’s where I come in. You’re welcome.

I’ve come up with the most obvious solutions: build a giant magnet, or go underground and live with the unicorns. Since I am openly prejudiced against all unifolk, including Cyclopes, I support an initiative to build a giant magnet, possibly coercing unikind to serve as a labor force.

Fortunately for you the reader, it is statistically probable that you won’t have to worry about any of this nonsense. Even if this article weren’t a complete fabrication, loosely based on about three sentences of actual geology, statistics prove that most cataclysmic events take place in the future. The future is really, really big, and so is the past. Turns out, you don’t have to worry about anything big happening in your lifetime, because it just won’t be that screaming long. The likelihood of you being alive during any event on a planetary scale is astronomically low.

It’s okay to not worry about things that will certainly wipe out your species, as long as you’re sure you won’t be a part of that species when it happens. Truth is, the Brunhes-Matuyama reversal probably will not occur for thousands of years, and I’d hope, by that time, we’d all be able to cruise out to Proxima Centauri until things settled down. If not, our descendants will have to deal with it. Screw them; I’ve got rent to pay.