Mar 022007
 

It’s commonly believed in the academic world that Sir Isaac Newton was responsible for developing the mathematics of calculus. This is a lie that has been covered up for nearly half a millennium. I’m here to speak the truth and to expose the Great Newtonian Lie for what it really is: a conspiracy to deny the rightful owners of calculus their due respect.

It may ease your indignation to know that, though we do not credit the rightful owners of calculus with its development, we do reward them financially for their efforts. Of course, when I speak of the rightful owners of calculus, I am speaking of the Brooks/Cole publishing company and their star author, James Stewart.

Stewart, working only with quill and ink in his parents’ garage, perfected the radical new arena of calculus called Edition 5E. 5E is not just any college textbook; it is filled with new pictures, graphs, sample problems, and a riveting new preface. The only imperfection in this new edition is that Stewart, in all his modesty, does not rightfully credit himself as the inventor of calculus.

I am not certain of the historical evidence for James Stewart inventing calculus, but the marketplace never lies. I found online that Newton’s Principia is free to download and print, proving it is a worthless document and was most likely plagiarized from Stewart’s work. Calculus 5E, however, is a respectable $120 – used. From this price, we can accurately deduce that it is superior in form, function, and weight. Calculus is a rapidly evolving science: The calculus you learned last year from the Fourth Edition is obsolete now, a dead language like Latin or Canadian. The only way to keep up with the eternally shifting planes of calculus is to accept the Brooks/Cole orthodoxy and purchase a new text each semester, or just drop out and give up.

If you are poor and you cannot afford Stewart’s book, there is simply no way for you to learn calculus. You should accept that you were born into a lower-class life, and you need not burden yourself with education.

You may be tempted and deceived by so-called “open-content” textbooks available on the web. Free, open-content textbooks are free and open-content for a reason: They are lies; otherwise, they wouldn’t be open-content.

Anyone who would develop a textbook filled with public
knowledge and release it to the public at no cost and for no
personal gain is a menace. Knowledge that isn’t paid for in
cash is knowledge not worth having. Anyone who openly
disagrees with the preceding statement is merely confessing
anti-capitalist, anti-democratic, and anti-American
sentiments. The American patriot Sir Isaac Newton knew this
well; that’s why, when he went to college, he was happy to
buck up the $120 for Stewart’s book.

Also, I didn’t want to say anything, but Osama Bin Laden likes open-content textbooks and says James Stewart is the Great Satan, so…you know.

 

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – March, 2007 (pdf)