Ho Ho Ho - Ouch

[austin-ghetto-list@pairlist.net]

This is old but still funny, folks.

Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective

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 (except maybe in Japan) 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, assuming that there is at least one good child in each.

Passing through different time zones and compensating for the rotation of
the earth, and further 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, hop down the
chimney, fill the stockings, distribute 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.

Santa's sleigh must thus be moving at 650 miles per second, or 3,000 times
the speed of sound. For purposes of comparison, the fastest manmade
vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second,
and a conventional reindeer can run (at most) 15 miles per hour.

The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that
each child is to receive 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).

600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
resistance. This would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a
spacecraft reentering 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 to the impact 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 this matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating
from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in the space of .001 seconds,
would be subjected to an acceleration force of 17,500 g's. A 250 pound
Santa (which would in fact mean an unusually svelte Santa) would be pinned
to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly
flattening him, crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a
quivering film of pink goo.

Therefore, even if Santa did exist, he has been annihilated.

Merry Christmas.

NOTE:
When Santa Runs Out Of Prozac...


Dear Santa,

I've written you for three years now asking for a fire truck. Please, I
really really want a fire truck this year!

Love, Joey

Dear Joey,

Let me make it up to you. Christmas Eve, while you sleep, I'm gonna torch
your house.  You'll have more fire trucks than you'll know what to do
with.

-	Santa


Dear Santa,

I don't know if you can do this, but for Christmas, I'd like for my mommy
and daddy to get back together. Please see what you can do.

Love, Teddy

Dear Teddy,

What, and ruin that hot affair your dad's still having with the
babysitter?  He's banging her like a screen door in a hurricane, son!  Let
me get you some nice Legos instead.

-	Santa


Dear Santa,

I left milk and cookies for you under the tree, and I left carrots for
your reindeer outside the backdoor.

Love, Susan

Dear Susan,

Milk gives me the shits and carrots make the reindeer fart in my face. 
You want to be a kiss-ass? Leave me a bottle of Jaegermeister and a couple
of Cohibas!

-Santa

Dear Santa,
I wud like a kool toy space ranjur for Xmas. Iv ben a good boy all yeer.
YeR FReND, BiLLy


Dear Billy,
Nice spelling. You're on your way to being a career lawncare specialist. 
How 'bout I send you a fucking book so you can learn to read and write? 
I'm giving your older brother the space ranger, at least HE can spell!

-Santa

Dearest Santa,

We don't have a chimney in our house, how do you get into our home?

Love, Marky


Mark,

Firstly, stop calling yourself "Marky"; that's why you're getting your ass
whipped at school.  Secondly, you don't live in a house, that's a low-rent
apartment complex you're living in. Thirdly, I get inside your pad just
like all the burglars do, through your bedroom window. Sweet Dreams!

- Santa


Have a pleasant (and sober) one.


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