test
2009-03-30 22:41:18 UTC
No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of
living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects
and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only
Santa has ever seen.
There are 2 billion children (persons under 18 ) in the world. BUT since
Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million
according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census rate of
3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's
at least one good child in each.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time
zones and the rotation of the earth, and assuming he travels east to west
(which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to
say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th
of a second to park, hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimnye, fill the
stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever
snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and
move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops
are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course we know to be
false but for the purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are now
talking aabout .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles,
not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31
hours, plus feeding and etc.This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650
miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison,
the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a
poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles
per hour.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the
sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably
described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more
than 300 punds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (refer to point #1)
could pull TEN TIMES the normal load, we cannot do the job with eight, or
even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even
counting the weight of the sleigh - 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison -
this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entereing the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per SECOND, EACH! In short,
hey will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer
behind them, and create a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire
reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousanths of a second. Santa,
meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater
than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be
pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's
dead by now.
Santa's Rebuttal
NORTH POLE, SANTA'S VILLAGE - For Immediate Release
It has come to the attention of Santa's workshop that there have been
disparaging remarks made in the press recently about Santa's very existence.
Several key points are overlooked by this callous, amateurish, so-called
study.
As was admitted by the skeptics, there is only a very small probability of
finding a flying reindeer. That is precisely because they are all located at
the Workshop. Your very argument against Santa is proof of his existence! As
is widely known (Re: the excellent historical documentaries "Santa Claus is
Coming to Town" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer") the flying reindeer
are not a separate species, but were in fact given the power of flight due
to eating magic acorns, which is passed on in their offspring.
A series of cascading assumptions have been relied upon to show the
"impossibility" of delivering all presents in one Christmas. For example,
there was assumed a uniform distribution of children across homes.
Toronto/Yorkville, or NYC/SOHO, or other yuppie neighborhoods, have less
than the average (and don't forget the DINK/SINK homes (Double Income No
Kids, Single Income No Kids)), while the Catholic (the predominant Christian
denomination) families with 10 children would skew that derived 15% of homes
down a few percent.
You've also assumed that each home that has kids would have at least one
good kid. Let us assure you that anti-selection applies, and homes with good
kids tend to have more than their share of good kids? Still other
single-child homes are notorious for spoiled "naughty" children and average
55% delivery on a good year. Let's drop that number of homes down a few more
percent.
A simple history lesson reminds us that, the first major schism in the
Church split the Eastern Churches, centered in Byzantium, from the Western,
which remained centered in Rome, prior to the Gregorian correction to the
Julian calendar. The Eastern "Orthodox" Churches do not recognize the
Gregorian correction for liturgical events, and their Christmas is, as a
result, several days after that of the Western Churches'. Thus, Santa's
schedule is not as tight as previously indicated.
Santa does indeed FedEx a number of packages ahead of time, since he is not
be able to fly into Air Force Bases, or into tower- controlled areas near
airports. He's certainly not into dodging SCUD missiles over the no-fly
zones in Iraq, so he uses DHL there. Subtract some more homes.
In regards to speed and time, we can't reveal all the details, but let us
remind you of basic relativity theory: The faster you go, the slower time
progresses. Do you think StarTrek came up with the idea of warp drive? So,
if Santa could go faster than light, then he can easily visit all the good
children which are not uniformly distributed by either concentration in each
home or by number of children per household, and get home before he left so
he can digest all those stale cookies and warm milk. (Has anyone thought of
ice cubes?)
Aha, you say, Enterprise has matter-antimatter warp engines, Santa only has
reindeer, where does he get the power to move that fast? The answer is right
before your skeptical eyes! The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3
quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. This is an ample supply of
energy for the maneuvering, acceleration, etc., that would be required of
the loaded sleigh. The reindeer don't evaporate or incinerate or get crushed
because of this energy; they accelerate! What do you think they have antlers
for, fighting over females? Think of antlers as furry shield generator
arrays.
The issue of weight constraints and delivery methods also shows a shocking
lack of knowledge of basic matter/energy relations and beginning quantum
physics. (Picture a two dimensional complex function mapped to the surface
of a sphere with approximately 9000 nodal surfaces, and 18 million regions
of relatively high amplitude.) Assuming this is getting way ahead of most
people's conceptual limits, we'll just say that Captain Kirk wasn't the
first to say "beam me down." Transporters, replicators, and holo-projections
have been standard equipment in some workshops and certain aerospace vehicle
way before the 24th century.
If that's not enough, watch the news on the 24th at 11 o'clock. NORAD (one
of the few government agencies with more than 3 initials in it's name and
therefore more trustworthy than the rest) tracks Santa every year and
displays radar shots of him approaching from the North Pole. They haven't
bombarded him yet, so they must believe too, right?
We certainly hope this clears up any damage caused by the bad press. Santa
dead, indeed-some people will twist any statistic model to "prove" their
cynical theory
More at http://www.funnyemails.za.net
living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects
and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only
Santa has ever seen.
There are 2 billion children (persons under 18 ) in the world. BUT since
Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist
children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million
according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census rate of
3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's
at least one good child in each.
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time
zones and the rotation of the earth, and assuming he travels east to west
(which seems logical). This works out to 822.6 visits per second. This is to
say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th
of a second to park, hop out of his sleigh, jump down the chimnye, fill the
stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever
snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and
move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops
are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course we know to be
false but for the purpose of our calculations we will accept), we are now
talking aabout .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles,
not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31
hours, plus feeding and etc.This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650
miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison,
the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a
poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles
per hour.
The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the
sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably
described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more
than 300 punds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (refer to point #1)
could pull TEN TIMES the normal load, we cannot do the job with eight, or
even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even
counting the weight of the sleigh - 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison -
this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
spacecrafts re-entereing the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per SECOND, EACH! In short,
hey will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer
behind them, and create a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire
reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousanths of a second. Santa,
meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater
than gravity. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be
pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's
dead by now.
Santa's Rebuttal
NORTH POLE, SANTA'S VILLAGE - For Immediate Release
It has come to the attention of Santa's workshop that there have been
disparaging remarks made in the press recently about Santa's very existence.
Several key points are overlooked by this callous, amateurish, so-called
study.
As was admitted by the skeptics, there is only a very small probability of
finding a flying reindeer. That is precisely because they are all located at
the Workshop. Your very argument against Santa is proof of his existence! As
is widely known (Re: the excellent historical documentaries "Santa Claus is
Coming to Town" and "Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer") the flying reindeer
are not a separate species, but were in fact given the power of flight due
to eating magic acorns, which is passed on in their offspring.
A series of cascading assumptions have been relied upon to show the
"impossibility" of delivering all presents in one Christmas. For example,
there was assumed a uniform distribution of children across homes.
Toronto/Yorkville, or NYC/SOHO, or other yuppie neighborhoods, have less
than the average (and don't forget the DINK/SINK homes (Double Income No
Kids, Single Income No Kids)), while the Catholic (the predominant Christian
denomination) families with 10 children would skew that derived 15% of homes
down a few percent.
You've also assumed that each home that has kids would have at least one
good kid. Let us assure you that anti-selection applies, and homes with good
kids tend to have more than their share of good kids? Still other
single-child homes are notorious for spoiled "naughty" children and average
55% delivery on a good year. Let's drop that number of homes down a few more
percent.
A simple history lesson reminds us that, the first major schism in the
Church split the Eastern Churches, centered in Byzantium, from the Western,
which remained centered in Rome, prior to the Gregorian correction to the
Julian calendar. The Eastern "Orthodox" Churches do not recognize the
Gregorian correction for liturgical events, and their Christmas is, as a
result, several days after that of the Western Churches'. Thus, Santa's
schedule is not as tight as previously indicated.
Santa does indeed FedEx a number of packages ahead of time, since he is not
be able to fly into Air Force Bases, or into tower- controlled areas near
airports. He's certainly not into dodging SCUD missiles over the no-fly
zones in Iraq, so he uses DHL there. Subtract some more homes.
In regards to speed and time, we can't reveal all the details, but let us
remind you of basic relativity theory: The faster you go, the slower time
progresses. Do you think StarTrek came up with the idea of warp drive? So,
if Santa could go faster than light, then he can easily visit all the good
children which are not uniformly distributed by either concentration in each
home or by number of children per household, and get home before he left so
he can digest all those stale cookies and warm milk. (Has anyone thought of
ice cubes?)
Aha, you say, Enterprise has matter-antimatter warp engines, Santa only has
reindeer, where does he get the power to move that fast? The answer is right
before your skeptical eyes! The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3
quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. This is an ample supply of
energy for the maneuvering, acceleration, etc., that would be required of
the loaded sleigh. The reindeer don't evaporate or incinerate or get crushed
because of this energy; they accelerate! What do you think they have antlers
for, fighting over females? Think of antlers as furry shield generator
arrays.
The issue of weight constraints and delivery methods also shows a shocking
lack of knowledge of basic matter/energy relations and beginning quantum
physics. (Picture a two dimensional complex function mapped to the surface
of a sphere with approximately 9000 nodal surfaces, and 18 million regions
of relatively high amplitude.) Assuming this is getting way ahead of most
people's conceptual limits, we'll just say that Captain Kirk wasn't the
first to say "beam me down." Transporters, replicators, and holo-projections
have been standard equipment in some workshops and certain aerospace vehicle
way before the 24th century.
If that's not enough, watch the news on the 24th at 11 o'clock. NORAD (one
of the few government agencies with more than 3 initials in it's name and
therefore more trustworthy than the rest) tracks Santa every year and
displays radar shots of him approaching from the North Pole. They haven't
bombarded him yet, so they must believe too, right?
We certainly hope this clears up any damage caused by the bad press. Santa
dead, indeed-some people will twist any statistic model to "prove" their
cynical theory
More at http://www.funnyemails.za.net