Talk Like a Pirate Day

Have you ever tried to make a serious point about copyright reform or the creeping erosion of our civil liberties, whilst feigning a West Country accent and making numerous references to shivering your timbers and raising your mizzen mast whilst swabbing the poop deck?  Probably not, if you are sensible.  I tried to once, and it is far from easy to explain the need for new legislation whilst talking like a character from Treasure Island.  But for those Pirates who need an excuse for a party (note the small 'p' in party, we do not want any splitters...) then you have a great excuse this Saturday, when it is Talk Like a Pirate Day.  You can find out more about Talk Like a Pirate Day from the official website of the Americans who started it and from the official website of some Brits who did not start it.

If you do want to take Talk Like a Pirate Day semi-seriously, in an offbeat way, let me also suggest you take a look at the Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster.  The Pastafarians, as they call themselves, believe that global warming has been caused by the decline in pirates - or at least they say that to illustrate the threat of pseudoscience.  As a consequence, Pastafarians also celebrate Talk Like a Pirate Day.  The Church was originally formed to parody a decision by the Kansas State Board of Education to include a kind of Creationism as a legitimate subject for science lessons.  After reading the blog of Philip, our Campaign Officer, where he analyses the Green Party's science policy I was left thinking that Kansas Creationists are not alone in having some peculiar responses to the modern world.  The Greens do not link global warming to fewer pirates, but take this excerpt from the Green science policy:

"Technology must not only be regulated but also continually reassessed from as long-sighted a perspective as possible. Both regulation and assessment will require the consistent application of the Green philosophy."

The continual assessment, reassessment, regulation and application of 'Green philosophy' sounds quite chilling.  This also left me wondering how the Greens get to be more long-sighted than everyone else.  Perhaps they should just visit the opticians.  Not many of us can accurately predict the consequences of new technology, and history shows no shortage of people who got their predictions horribly wrong.  Investors often lose fortunes because they bet on the wrong technologies.  The Pastafarians demonstrate how some people will see causation when there is only correlation.  Politicians seem to be especially bad at understanding how technology will change our lives.  We need a Pirate Party because there is so much fear of what happens when ordinary citizens use technology to empower themselves, and not enough fear of the consequences when Big Government and Big Business can control and utilize technology for their own selfish ends.

At least the Greens avoided one important mistake - they did not conclude their policy by saying "Arrr, Jim lad, there she blows..."  We should avoid that mistake too, unless we are discussing politics on Talk Like a Pirate Day.