The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster - Bobby Henderson [55]
Figure 2b
We averaged Pirate activity from 1605 to 2005 for each ocean grid cell. While recent Pirate activity is weak and concentrated off 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 SSTs 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 the ejectee, our model predicts a reduction of roughly 10 percent 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 ICRs and ATO are preferable to IVIs, because they offer finer control of upwelling effects.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
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). c. 250 b.c.e. On Floating Bodies. 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, Fla., USA.
Emanuel, K. A. 1987. “The Dependence of Hurricane Intensity on Climate.” Nature, 326, 483–485.
———. 2005. “Increasing Destructiveness of Tropical Cyclones over the Past Thirty Years.” Nature, 436, 686–688.
Haqq-Misra, J. D., et al. 2006. A Predictive Ocean Circulation Model. In press.
Henderson, R. 2006. The Gospel of the Flying Spaghetti Monster. Villard, New York.
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.
Life, Kolgoromov Complexity, and Delicious Spaghetti
Nick Moran
To begin, let us look at the forms of life we can see on this planet. They all exhibit a certain degree of complexity that is not found in nonliving matter. A dog is much more complex than a rock. To express this, we can use the concept of Kolgoromov complexity. Living things possess high Kolgoromov complexity, because their DNA is decidedly uncompressible. As an example, consider the string of bits 10101010. This string has very low Kolgoromov 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 Kolgoromov complexity. That string was generated by me tapping the “0” and “1” keys on my keyboard.
If I had a keyboard with only ACGT, I could similarly write