Lets destroy the Moon!

Since the dawn of human history, man has yearned to free the night sky from the Moon's luminescent tyrrany. Its attractive affects have wrought havoc on the regularity of our tides and seasons, and its psychological affects have brought sane men to commit attrocities. For the first time in history, man wields such dominance over the forces of nature that he finds himself in a position to put the mark of human progress indelibly upon the night sky. But what about the side affects of this 'radical' proposal? Is destroying the Moon really a solution to our terrestrial problems? In order to answer these questions, we need to gain some historical perspective.

The Navaqoi people (aprx. 4000b.c.e.-1200c.e.) of north Wisconsin certainly had no qualms with the idea. According to their religion-fetish, the Moon ('Pwan-no-wan-hee') is actually the aging, filthy afterbirth of the great cosmic creation. It was emitted as a byproduct into the sky when absolute darkness and absolute lightness gave birth to the Sun, the Earth and the stars. It is often depicted as a the discarded husk from which all these celestial components emergered. In the Navaqoi culture, all creative decisions are thought to have a light and a dark side. Much of their ceremonial rituals were attempts to minimize this dark side so that only the desired consequences of our actions are realized. As a by-product, the Moon is less divine than the rest of the sky, and its presence is a foreboding reminder of our impotence as mortal creatures. The Navaqoi would hold annual ceremonies ('Pish-taw-nawk') during which various rituals would be performed in the hopes of banishing the Moon from the sky. In most cases these ceremonies culminated with all the warriors of the tribe firing a volley of arrows at the Moon.

Primitive peoples weren't the only ones wary of the Moons presence. Isaac Newton, the great mathematical philosopher, saw the irregularities in the moons orbit as an affront to the simplicity of his universal laws of motion. "Should the situation persevere, that I cannot maintain conformity between the laws and the phenomenon, I have naught but this conclusion to draw: that the Moon is a corrupt being, inferior in all ways to the remainder of the heavenly bodies, irrational in its motions and invirtuous in its affects on the animal spirits of men. Should I have found myself in the company of these thoughts in a world where men had greater efficacy to transform and renew the corpse of nature, I should be the first to affirm what seems to me to be the only rational dictate concerning these matters; that man should expend every resource available to dethrone this cosmic tyrrant."

Oh, wait, I made all this up. It would be cool to watch the moon blow up, though.