[VoIP] More "Authentic" CNET

[Jayson Smith]

On the subject of a fat man hopping down chimneys and delivering presents 
all around the world, a few years ago I found a humorous tidbit I thought 
I'd share. I know this is totally off-topic, but who cares? For what it's 
worth, as a kid, I seem to remember thinking that Santa got around some of 
these physical limitations by there actually being several Santas, each of 
which handled a different region of the country. I guess I wasn't thinking 
about the rest of the world. Funny what kids think, huh? I also had it in my 
head that, if Santa brought you stuff, and you didn't get up early enough on 
Christmas morning, he'd come back and take your stuff away, since you 
obviously had no interest in whatever he had brought.
Jayson.

Santa Facts
Subject: Happy Holidays!
From: Randy Kuehn
Date: Tue, 20 Dec 1994 02:26:15 -0600

SOME FACTS ABOUT SANTA CLAUS

1) 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.

2) There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But since 
Santa doesn't (appear) to handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist 
children,
that reduces the workload by 85% of the total - leaving 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 is at least one 
good child per house.

3) Santa has 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 822.6 visits per second. This is to say 
that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000 the 
of
a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the 
stocking, 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 purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about
0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting 
stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, 
etc.
That 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, at tops 25-30 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each 
child gets nothing more then a medium sized LEGO set (2 lbs), the sleigh is
carrying 321300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as 
overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. 
Even
granting the 'flying reindeer' can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we 
cannot do the job with eight, or even nine - we need 214200 reindeer. This 
increased
the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh to 353430 tons. 
Again for comparison, this is four timed the weight of the HMS Queen 
Elizabeth.

5) 353000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air 
resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as 
spacecrafts re-entering
the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of 
energy per second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost 
instantaneously,
exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in 
their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 
thousandths
of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 
17500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb Santa (which seems ludicrously 
slim)
would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force. In 
conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, he's now 
dead.