Dept. of Jack Sparrow Affairs

Wayne has reminded us here at Open Market that today marks the observance of an important holiday, Talk Like a Pirate Day (if you’re unsure of your expertise at piratical grammar and syntax, you can view a short educational video here). This motivated me to pause and consider the importance of pirates, both in history and in contemporary religion. As many readers may be aware, pirates play an important role in my chosen religion, the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster, or Pastafarianism.

The Church’s founder, Bobby Henderson, has even done some interesting research bringing together the object of today’s holiday with an issue we deal with frequently – the causes of global warming. As you can see in the graph below, the gradual disappearance of pirates on the high seas correlates positively with an observed warming trend.

piratesarecool4_rs.gif

Of course Mr. Henderson’s work is inspired by the spirit of the Flying Spaghetti Monster and not necessarily peer-reviewed (after all, his only peers are the founders of other religions), but his methodology and conclusions are at least as sound as those of most general circulation models.