funkboxing

*originally printed in Red Shtick Magazine – September, 2007 (pdf)
As we go about our daily lives, we are given to forget the things that make our daily lives possible. Part of the reason that we live in peace and comfort is the fact that billions before us died, so they take up less space and generally cause less trouble. Many of them died from natural causes, but others died from supernatural causes, like being killed by some a–hole.

Human life and civilization depend on the death of human beings, so as civilized people, we must cultivate a balanced and moral understanding of the value of human life and death. We must strive to be enlightened humanitarians while still satisfying the need for some people to be dead. Nature will certainly satisfy some of this need, but we are industrious creatures, and to grow and expand, we must provide for ourselves.

Our needs as human beings are only met when we have power over the life and death of other human beings. To protect our right to fulfill this need, we protect our right to bear arms with passion and ambition. In a technologically advanced society, the only way for a population to protect itself is with inexpensive and readily available weaponry. To maintain social equality, the ignorant and lazy must have the right to easily purchase powerful firearms to protect themselves from the hyper-educated intelligentsia and their homemade electro-laser cannons.

Handguns are a simple and efficient equalizer. Handguns give power to the weak and weak-minded: real power, not like the pen, voting, knowledge, or any of that crap. Small, light, concealable, and fun, handguns allow any man, woman, or child to intimidate, maim, or kill as nature intended.

With total equality achieved through mass armament, we must still protect human life and encourage people not to kill each other unnecessarily. Modern civilization has created a mechanism to protect human life from rampant cycles of violence and retribution. The solution is as simple as the problem: Kill people that kill other people. We do not apply this solution indiscriminately; we reserve capital punishment for the most heinous offenders and people we need to kill to prove a point.

Capital punishment should be considered analogous to antimurder or unmurder. It is as antimatter is to matter. The two are tangible and real but annihilate one another, releasing extreme forces. Capital punishment acts as unmurder by discouraging murder while effectively canceling its overall effect on society.

Because of strong unmurder legislation, we have a much lower net murder rate, if we calculate murder and unmurder together. If we include those killed in police raids or by prison rape, we have mathematically eliminated murder in our society.

This mathematical balance is threatened by the growing popularity of suicide. It is especially attractive to those enduring extreme suffering who are so very close to a natural, moral, and legal death.

Suicide is analogous to double murder. It counts as the deaths of both a victim and killer, but it cannot be reconciled by retributive unmurder. The only way to discourage suicide is to legislate its immorality and severely punish those who assist in the process. State-mandated punitive death should be the only legally permissible form of death available to those who aren’t already dead or going to be.

We have the tools to kill each other and the laws to kill each other for doing that. If we apply them wisely, we can maintain a civilized and moral understanding of life and death.

Compassion for all human life is the true measure of our moral values. We are a great people, and the way we run our society today will teach our grandchildren’s grandchildren the value of human life and show them the path to the future. When they arrive at that future, they will appreciate that we are dead and take up less space and generally cause less trouble.

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

There was a commercial once where the guy who wascaptain of the space station on Star Trek: Deep Space Nine said, “I want my flying cars.” He was talking about why we hadn’t moved further technologically than we had at that time. He sounded serious, but it was because he was being paid to sell credit cards or insurance or something.

I don’t want credit cards, insurance, or flying cars. I’ll tell you what I want, Captain: I want that damn space station.

We went to the moon before half the people reading this were born. That’s right, folks: believe it or not, we went there. We walked all over that bald, bucktooth cousin of ours and showed it what city folk can do out in the country. We figured out that it was cold on one side, hot on the other, and really dusty.

We learned in the process. We learned about the universe and surviving in space and whatnot. We united the human race in purpose for a singular moment in history. It was a pretty good ride. After about five years, we went back home for good. That’s the story of our farthest manned exploration of the cosmos. That was nearly 40 years ago.

It took us about 40 years to get from E = mc2 to Hiroshima. It only took about six years once we really got started on the bomb. Later that century, it took us about 20 years to go from DOS 3.1 to the Xbox™. During that time of vital development, we flew the exact same space shuttles. The time from the inception of the Mercury program to the conclusion of the Apollo program spanned about 15 years; that’s about the same amount of time between our wars in the Middle East. We can do a lot in a short time if we have the incentive.

The lessons of history teach us that our efforts are most united by two things: war and money. The past 40 in particular have taught us that technological advances come from the same incentives. Since we cannot count on an alien attack, if we wish to explore space, we must find money in it.

Making space exploration a public priority isn’t an easy sell, because there is little incentive. It takes a great deal of imagination to think of space exploration as a benefit to humanity. It doesn’t really seem to benefit anybody except  the guy in the spacesuit floating around out there, and he could be out drinking if it wasn’t for the stupid mission.

Space exploration would be a hard political platform to run on, and as an issue, it’s special-interest at best. Guys in spacesuits who’d rather be drinking don’t even constitute a special-interest group. Politicians have learned to stay away from space issues as a talking point, because other than the occasional mention of a mission to Mars, it sounds a little frivolous and kooky.

Furthermore, anything that is of benefit to humanity as a whole can be seen as a threat to national security. Politicians focus on running the government, and that takes money. Politicians spend our money to make more money to be sure we have money to run the government and make more money…for the economy, of course.

Many believe that NASA has been a drain on the economy since its first mission. Only a few, really nerdy people derive any satisfaction from the pursuits of this agency. The gains from the space program are outweighed by the fact that it costs us valuable tax dollars that could be better spent on defense contracts, campaigning, political favors, outright bribes, and other expenses that grease the wheels of democracy.

NASA also creates problems, such as the knowledge that huge meteors and comets might someday destroy human life on earth. This knowledge is counterproductive to economic growth, because it is a threat to security that cannot be  shocked and awed into submission. These abstract fears are not conducive to the political process.

Any political group who worries too much about a cosmic apocalypse might as well get tinfoil hats and hang out with L. Ron Hubbard’s crew. God is in charge of the apocalypse, and if He wants us to prevent it, He will provide the economic incentive to do so.

The Ansari X Prize was a boon to space exploration, because it gave us a tangible incentive to think about space: money. Financial incentives were offered, and we achieved more in space than we could ever have hoped with socialist ideas of exploration for the benefit of science.

In 2004, SpaceShipOne was launched in low orbit and claimed victory for all mankind. For this achievement, some rich guy claimed the $10-million prize. Nearly $100 million was invested in research towards this goal.

The Vostok 1, piloted by Yuri Gagarin, completed the same feat in 1961, but Yuri didn’t win $10 million, and the research was done by commies, so it didn’t benefit their economy. It took only 43 years for us to find the means to promote space exploration with direct capitalist incentives.

Science observes that space and time may be infinite, and so, the universe may contain infinite means for human survival within it. There is a hidden danger in this interpretation. To regard the universe itself as an infinite material and scientific resource simply violates the principles of supply and demand. We need demand to run the economy, and with an infinite supply of anything, we lose all demand and the economy crashes.

We must set limits on ourselves regarding space exploration. If we do not, we may find ourselves exploring space with no money to spend once we find somewhere that will take a Visa.

Commercializing space travel allows us to pursue spaceborne technologies with a mind towards concise goals. Goals like getting me that damn space station. Government-funded research and other socialist abominations can lend themselves to wasteful and frivolous studies not pursuant to economic goals. Commercial space travel will allow us to harness the infinite cosmos to sell more expensive vacation packages and support vast service industries that will fuel our economy.

It may also provide us raw materials and scientific data, but any available resource will be properly fought over to establish ownership. These future wars and conflicts over resources in space will give us new technologies to go deeper into the universe to seek more and more wealth to fight over.

I want that space station, and I’d join the Federation or the Alliance or the freaking Empire to get it. I want that space station because I want to see the universe and hire really smart people to go study all of it and tell me what it’s all  about. I think a space station out in the Gamma Quadrant would be a good start.

I’d need money to run the space station and hire all those smart people. Fortunately, a space station is also a great source of revenue from tourism, commerce, and people paying to not be exposed to the vacuum of space.

To provide even more economic incentive for space exploration, I present the Gimme Space Station U Prize. The winner will be the first person to get me that space station, and the prize will be $50 in MySpaceStation Bucks and a gift certificate to not be exposed to the vacuum of space.

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)