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Seems everyone else hs gone to bed!
If the fat b'stard doesn't turn up, I'm gonna have the milk & cookies for myself!
If the fat b'stard doesn't turn up, I'm gonna have the milk & cookies for myself!
no cos when he stops time he doesn't have to eat or anything :p
Magic is the explaination for everything
Magic is the explaination for everything
FantasyMeister wrote:
All codswallop of course, (gets my word count up though) because we
> all know that Santa stops time when delivering presents using 'magic',
> which has yet to be disproven.
But he still has to do 108,000,000 homes! That would take him years, plus he needs food supplies, and throughout the course of these 108,000,000 homes, the food would rot probably and he'd need to return to the North Pole.
All codswallop of course, (gets my word count up though) because we
> all know that Santa stops time when delivering presents using 'magic',
> which has yet to be disproven.
But he still has to do 108,000,000 homes! That would take him years, plus he needs food supplies, and throughout the course of these 108,000,000 homes, the food would rot probably and he'd need to return to the North Pole.
Hehe DW and FM.
Well, I'm surprised that in that Spy Magazine article they failed to notice that by eating 108,000,000 meals of carrot, mince pie and milk, he would suffer a heart attack after the first hundred and something house and failing that, he would die a few hours after delivering everything, never to return. I think they have 100 santas, incase one dies. We're probably on our 7th Santa by now. Or they have stunt doubles. He distracts them out of his window whilst real santa sneaks in the back door and drops the presents off in a bag with 'Swag' on. I just figured that out for myself, just now. Right here. Right now. At this precise moment in time.
Hell, they even went through two Adam's before they figured out that God's voice would cave your chest in and explode your heart :)
If anyone cannot recognise the above line from a film, you should be punished, or just made to be the 101st Santa.
Think about it, they could make a film about it - 101 Santas, where they all get kidknapped by Glenn Close and it leads to "an adventure of a life-time", as they always say in cinema trailers...
Well, I'm surprised that in that Spy Magazine article they failed to notice that by eating 108,000,000 meals of carrot, mince pie and milk, he would suffer a heart attack after the first hundred and something house and failing that, he would die a few hours after delivering everything, never to return. I think they have 100 santas, incase one dies. We're probably on our 7th Santa by now. Or they have stunt doubles. He distracts them out of his window whilst real santa sneaks in the back door and drops the presents off in a bag with 'Swag' on. I just figured that out for myself, just now. Right here. Right now. At this precise moment in time.
Hell, they even went through two Adam's before they figured out that God's voice would cave your chest in and explode your heart :)
If anyone cannot recognise the above line from a film, you should be punished, or just made to be the 101st Santa.
Think about it, they could make a film about it - 101 Santas, where they all get kidknapped by Glenn Close and it leads to "an adventure of a life-time", as they always say in cinema trailers...
Last night, Santa came while I was talking to Herc. He broke down my doorframe, and strutted in wearing a nifty black and white striped suit, with a mask. He took the pressies away. I think they must have been the wrong ones. Bloody nice bloke, saves me the hassle of sending them back. Now I'm waiting on him returning with the NEW pressies. Huzzah.
Santa was proven dead in this article from Spy Magazine in 1990:
SANTA CLAUS: An Engineer's Perspective
I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18 ) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second --- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
II. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them --- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on
his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
-----
However, 4 years later, this hope bringing article appeared in the same magazine:
The theories outlined in the previous article, while being
mathematically and scientifically correct, are somewhat limited
in scope. I offer some speculations in another direction. I
feel that it is necessary to offer the POSSIBILITY that Santa
Claus (or some iteration of that story) exists, in opposition to
the distinctly negative slant that the aforementioned source
article suggests.
Consider, if Santa Clause started his operation sometime in the
1600's (as legend has it), then it's altogether likely that it is
no longer THE Santa Claus that carries out this yearly
responsibility. I ask for some lattitude at this point, as I am
not a mathemetician, so my numbers, though close, will be
approximate.
Lets examine the possibility of Claus population. At an accepted
average rate of 3.5 generations per century (Population Reference
Bureau), this gives us approximately 14 generations of Claus
breeding to consider. At an average (taking historical
references and averages as a rule) of 4 children per Claus Family
(starting with Santa and Mrs. Claus), producing at least 2 males
per family unit, that renders a total current possible Claus
population of approximately a quarter of a BILLION Clauses
(factoring in the attrition due to the harsh Arctic Circle
climate, reindeer pilot training incidents, elf uprisings,
sibling homicide, and other accidental deaths).
Presuming that the maintenance of the secret of the Claus
"situation" is due to limitation or exclusion of outside people,
this would lead us to speculate that the current Claus population
is a product of rampant inbreeding. Generations and generations
worth. So much so that the combination of magnified recessive
gene traits, exclusion of new genetic material, and limited task
training has, in all likelyhood, produced a population of Task
Specific Idiot Savant Clauses who know nothing other than the
functions of piloting sleighs in flight (clear point of
contention with the original article), breaking and entering,
gift distribution, and gorging on any exposed foodstuffs, all on
one specific evening all around the world. I believe that this
massive undertaking is financed by a well established fund
raising program, implemented centuries ago, incorporating the
street-corner and mall residing Santas.
If the idea of a multi-Claus population were proved, that would
guarantee that all of the Santas would then, in fact, be THE
Santa Claus (or more appropriately, _A_ Santa Claus), simplifying
the explanation to children inquiring into why there are so many
Caluses ringing bells, or why Santa was at THIS mall when he was
just at the LAST one. That would also alleviate any guilt on the
parents part stemming from feeling the need to respond to the
child with either the perceived truth that there is actually NO
Santa Claus (surely helping the child along to his/her specific
predestined emotional dysfunction), or the creation and
mainteneance of a lie ("Oh, that's because he's following us,
dear", surely resulting in deep psychological scarring in the
child for life, and producing an unfortunate deep seated fear of
overweight people in red crushed velvet leisure suits and black
patent leather boots). Of course, this also means that every
city and town has a resident population of Clauses, simplifying
local gift distribution.
Back to the numbers. If we do the math, we would see that the
average number of "Active Delivery Units" (which we will refer to
hereafter as ADU's, being described as male-Claus gift
distribution usits, but not with the insensitive intent of
perpetuating the sexist image of the traditional Christmas
figure) is reduced to a paltry 53.5 million ADU's. Keep in mind
that though there are clearly more Male Clauses alive at this
point, some may be children, some in training, and some may be
too old or infirm to engage in the Cristmas eve task. Using the
numbers that you provided in your article, 98.1 million homes,
our numbers would suggest that the average Claus would only have
to deliver to and average of 1.71 homes, and they would only need
to walk an average of a mile and-a-half to get there. Of course,
rural ADU's might have fewer homes and further to walk, where
urban Clauses might have more homes in a more compressed
neighborhood, but Claus allocation would address that.
As far as Payload per household is concerned, we need to clarify
that as a current societal issue. In today's society, we can no
longer afford to judge a child to the extent that what they
receive on Christmas morning is based on their
emotional/psychological/interpersonal performance of the past
year. The modern non-Claus family unit (practicing random
breeding patterns, typically excluding members of their immediate
family) cannot bear the responsibility or social impact of having
raised a dysfunctional child. Thus, we can presume that the
lumps of coal and switches are no longer gift options to be
delivered by an ADU. Our point is, all Christmas participating
non-Claus families with children will receive actual gifts.
Again, based on our current societal standards, the average
family of three children will receive a minimum of eleven gifts
(three for each of the children, and one each for the parents,
regardless of whether or not they believe in Santa). I would
conservatively estimate the average total weight of gifts per
family to be in the 50-70 lbs range, which is no problem at all
for a lumbering idiot-savant who considers the transportation of
this payload to be among the chief ingredients to his happiness
(the delivery of which immediately follows the most satisfying
Breaking and Entering protion of the evening, and the reward of
which would be the removal and consumption of any exposed baked
goods). Engaging in these activities in the house/houses within
his juristiction is the only thing that truly gives him pleasure
(save, perhaps, producing his share of Clauses with his
particular Mrs. Claus). At an average walking speed of 3
miles-per-hour, travel time would be roughly an hour, round trip,
per house. using this theory, the arguments about friction, wind
resistance, and centrifugal force are reduced to insignificance.
The only flames that and ADU might face might be found in the
dying embers in a fireplace, and then only if an ADU insisted on
using the chimney as an access point (probably uncommon nowadays,
and realistically unlikey).
As far as the reindeer are concerned, I think that you have not
fully examined their usage from an operational standpoint. I
have considered that with common herd thinning, and attrition
through losses when flying over countries with sensitive military
airspace, they might have phased out the usage of flying reindeer
altogether. Understanding that each ADU has only to walk a
couple of miles to reach a target household, the use of reindeer
as transportation on Christmas Eve would be a waste of reindeer
technology and resources. However, if we discount the herd
thinning, and apply the same formulas to reindeer mating as we
have to the Claus Principle (excepting, we hope, the incest), one
would end up with an enormous herd. This would provide a
wonderful stock delivery service from the manufacturing site at
the North Pole (assuming that they have not followed suit with
other modern manufacturing companies and either built remote
manufacturing sites, or out-sourced their operations altogether)
directly to the residence of each ADU. Understanding that the
ground speed of a laden reindeer is approximately 15
miles-per-hour (factoring in variables in terrain, un-navigatable
obstacles, and hoof soreness), we might then grant an airborne
reindeer a possible forward airspeed of perhaps 75 miles per
hour. At that speed, the distribution process could begin as
early as August.
It is clear to me that the author of the previous article was
very negative on the possibility of an actual functioning Santa
(or Santas). It is evident that science has blinded that
author's perspective, and it is my hope that my article might
correct any damage that might have been caused to any children
that might have happened upon that author's most narrow-minded
opinion.
-----
All codswallop of course, (gets my word count up though) because we all know that Santa stops time when delivering presents using 'magic', which has yet to be disproven.
SANTA CLAUS: An Engineer's Perspective
I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18 ) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau). At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.
II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he travels east to west (which seems logical). This works out to 967.7 visits per second.
This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second --- 3,000 times the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
II. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them --- Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).
IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second crates enormous air resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on
his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.
Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.
-----
However, 4 years later, this hope bringing article appeared in the same magazine:
The theories outlined in the previous article, while being
mathematically and scientifically correct, are somewhat limited
in scope. I offer some speculations in another direction. I
feel that it is necessary to offer the POSSIBILITY that Santa
Claus (or some iteration of that story) exists, in opposition to
the distinctly negative slant that the aforementioned source
article suggests.
Consider, if Santa Clause started his operation sometime in the
1600's (as legend has it), then it's altogether likely that it is
no longer THE Santa Claus that carries out this yearly
responsibility. I ask for some lattitude at this point, as I am
not a mathemetician, so my numbers, though close, will be
approximate.
Lets examine the possibility of Claus population. At an accepted
average rate of 3.5 generations per century (Population Reference
Bureau), this gives us approximately 14 generations of Claus
breeding to consider. At an average (taking historical
references and averages as a rule) of 4 children per Claus Family
(starting with Santa and Mrs. Claus), producing at least 2 males
per family unit, that renders a total current possible Claus
population of approximately a quarter of a BILLION Clauses
(factoring in the attrition due to the harsh Arctic Circle
climate, reindeer pilot training incidents, elf uprisings,
sibling homicide, and other accidental deaths).
Presuming that the maintenance of the secret of the Claus
"situation" is due to limitation or exclusion of outside people,
this would lead us to speculate that the current Claus population
is a product of rampant inbreeding. Generations and generations
worth. So much so that the combination of magnified recessive
gene traits, exclusion of new genetic material, and limited task
training has, in all likelyhood, produced a population of Task
Specific Idiot Savant Clauses who know nothing other than the
functions of piloting sleighs in flight (clear point of
contention with the original article), breaking and entering,
gift distribution, and gorging on any exposed foodstuffs, all on
one specific evening all around the world. I believe that this
massive undertaking is financed by a well established fund
raising program, implemented centuries ago, incorporating the
street-corner and mall residing Santas.
If the idea of a multi-Claus population were proved, that would
guarantee that all of the Santas would then, in fact, be THE
Santa Claus (or more appropriately, _A_ Santa Claus), simplifying
the explanation to children inquiring into why there are so many
Caluses ringing bells, or why Santa was at THIS mall when he was
just at the LAST one. That would also alleviate any guilt on the
parents part stemming from feeling the need to respond to the
child with either the perceived truth that there is actually NO
Santa Claus (surely helping the child along to his/her specific
predestined emotional dysfunction), or the creation and
mainteneance of a lie ("Oh, that's because he's following us,
dear", surely resulting in deep psychological scarring in the
child for life, and producing an unfortunate deep seated fear of
overweight people in red crushed velvet leisure suits and black
patent leather boots). Of course, this also means that every
city and town has a resident population of Clauses, simplifying
local gift distribution.
Back to the numbers. If we do the math, we would see that the
average number of "Active Delivery Units" (which we will refer to
hereafter as ADU's, being described as male-Claus gift
distribution usits, but not with the insensitive intent of
perpetuating the sexist image of the traditional Christmas
figure) is reduced to a paltry 53.5 million ADU's. Keep in mind
that though there are clearly more Male Clauses alive at this
point, some may be children, some in training, and some may be
too old or infirm to engage in the Cristmas eve task. Using the
numbers that you provided in your article, 98.1 million homes,
our numbers would suggest that the average Claus would only have
to deliver to and average of 1.71 homes, and they would only need
to walk an average of a mile and-a-half to get there. Of course,
rural ADU's might have fewer homes and further to walk, where
urban Clauses might have more homes in a more compressed
neighborhood, but Claus allocation would address that.
As far as Payload per household is concerned, we need to clarify
that as a current societal issue. In today's society, we can no
longer afford to judge a child to the extent that what they
receive on Christmas morning is based on their
emotional/psychological/interpersonal performance of the past
year. The modern non-Claus family unit (practicing random
breeding patterns, typically excluding members of their immediate
family) cannot bear the responsibility or social impact of having
raised a dysfunctional child. Thus, we can presume that the
lumps of coal and switches are no longer gift options to be
delivered by an ADU. Our point is, all Christmas participating
non-Claus families with children will receive actual gifts.
Again, based on our current societal standards, the average
family of three children will receive a minimum of eleven gifts
(three for each of the children, and one each for the parents,
regardless of whether or not they believe in Santa). I would
conservatively estimate the average total weight of gifts per
family to be in the 50-70 lbs range, which is no problem at all
for a lumbering idiot-savant who considers the transportation of
this payload to be among the chief ingredients to his happiness
(the delivery of which immediately follows the most satisfying
Breaking and Entering protion of the evening, and the reward of
which would be the removal and consumption of any exposed baked
goods). Engaging in these activities in the house/houses within
his juristiction is the only thing that truly gives him pleasure
(save, perhaps, producing his share of Clauses with his
particular Mrs. Claus). At an average walking speed of 3
miles-per-hour, travel time would be roughly an hour, round trip,
per house. using this theory, the arguments about friction, wind
resistance, and centrifugal force are reduced to insignificance.
The only flames that and ADU might face might be found in the
dying embers in a fireplace, and then only if an ADU insisted on
using the chimney as an access point (probably uncommon nowadays,
and realistically unlikey).
As far as the reindeer are concerned, I think that you have not
fully examined their usage from an operational standpoint. I
have considered that with common herd thinning, and attrition
through losses when flying over countries with sensitive military
airspace, they might have phased out the usage of flying reindeer
altogether. Understanding that each ADU has only to walk a
couple of miles to reach a target household, the use of reindeer
as transportation on Christmas Eve would be a waste of reindeer
technology and resources. However, if we discount the herd
thinning, and apply the same formulas to reindeer mating as we
have to the Claus Principle (excepting, we hope, the incest), one
would end up with an enormous herd. This would provide a
wonderful stock delivery service from the manufacturing site at
the North Pole (assuming that they have not followed suit with
other modern manufacturing companies and either built remote
manufacturing sites, or out-sourced their operations altogether)
directly to the residence of each ADU. Understanding that the
ground speed of a laden reindeer is approximately 15
miles-per-hour (factoring in variables in terrain, un-navigatable
obstacles, and hoof soreness), we might then grant an airborne
reindeer a possible forward airspeed of perhaps 75 miles per
hour. At that speed, the distribution process could begin as
early as August.
It is clear to me that the author of the previous article was
very negative on the possibility of an actual functioning Santa
(or Santas). It is evident that science has blinded that
author's perspective, and it is my hope that my article might
correct any damage that might have been caused to any children
that might have happened upon that author's most narrow-minded
opinion.
-----
All codswallop of course, (gets my word count up though) because we all know that Santa stops time when delivering presents using 'magic', which has yet to be disproven.
I know your parents have been lying to you, Wookie, so I'll break it to you, now that you're old enough to understand
Santa is dead. Killed whilst drink driving on his sledge...
Santa is dead. Killed whilst drink driving on his sledge...
I dunno...
But he best turn up soon, i'm getting tired of waiting...
But he best turn up soon, i'm getting tired of waiting...
Seems everyone else hs gone to bed!
If the fat b'stard doesn't turn up, I'm gonna have the milk & cookies for myself!
If the fat b'stard doesn't turn up, I'm gonna have the milk & cookies for myself!