Santa Theory

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Do you believe in Santa?

Yes
7
28%
No
18
72%
 
Total votes: 25
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sammigurl61190
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Santa Theory

Postby sammigurl61190 » Thu Oct 30, 2003 6:35 am

I've been thinking about this since I found out that Santa's...well, if you already know then you know what I'm talking about. :) Wouldn't want to ruin it for someone. :wink:

Here's my Santa Theory.

There are approximately two billion children (people under 18 ) in the world. However, since Santa doesn't 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's at least one good child in each. 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 the average reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (weighing two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, the average 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--LOL). 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 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 to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration 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.

Now how did I know all the calculations? The Internet, science class, and a calculator. Oh, and way too much free time. :wink:
Last edited by sammigurl61190 on Thu Oct 30, 2003 10:44 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Solfius
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Postby Solfius » Thu Oct 30, 2003 10:53 am

well, i think you copied this off somewhere, because I've got a print out that says exactly the same thing :P, still funny though :lol:
rklenseth
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Postby rklenseth » Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:31 pm

There was a real Santa Claus at one time. He was Dutch and in the Catholic Church today he is known as Saint Nicholas. He use to go out in the middle of the night of Christmas Eve and hand out toys to children. That started that whole tradition. He was supposedly a very nice toy maker that loved kids.
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Solfius
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Postby Solfius » Thu Oct 30, 2003 2:49 pm

I can't remember whether it was Dutch, for some reason I thought it was further North, but yeah, I've heard the story
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sammigurl61190
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Postby sammigurl61190 » Thu Oct 30, 2003 7:26 pm

Yes--I've heard that one too. I did get the end part off somewhere, but the very beginning I'm almost positive I did (although it's been sitting on my hard drive for ages, so who knows. :wink: )
west
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Postby west » Fri Oct 31, 2003 10:25 am

the first proto-santa was a guy in Turkey in the Middle Ages.
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Postby sammigurl61190 » Fri Oct 31, 2003 6:34 pm

Turkey? Middle Ages? LOL

People ate turkey legs then! J/K I mean, they did but...nevermind! LOL
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Postby rklenseth » Fri Oct 31, 2003 6:44 pm

Turkey is a country. But in the Middle Ages it was part of the Ottoman Empire.

I really think it was a person in the Netherlands but anyways I'm sure the Santa Claus stories are a little bit of everything here and there.
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Postby Meh » Fri Oct 31, 2003 6:54 pm

I highly recommend visiting Turkey. Great people. Great places. They have the clearest view of how "the west" and "the middle east" interrelate.
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Postby rklenseth » Fri Oct 31, 2003 7:01 pm

Well, the Middle East believe they are the West while the West believes they are the Middle East. They are definitely in the middle. They are Muslim but yet very secular but then again so it Iraq which was also a part of the Ottoman Empire. In fact both capitols of the Ottoman Empire was either in present day Turkey or present day Iraq.
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Postby Meh » Fri Oct 31, 2003 7:13 pm

I always think it is funny when the news or goverment talks of Isreal as the only democracy in the region and/or that Iraq will be the first muslum democracy in the area. What is Turkey? Chopped Hummus?
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Postby west » Sat Nov 01, 2003 9:24 pm

It's not a muslim democracy. It's a secular state.
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Postby Meh » Sun Nov 02, 2003 3:57 am

.west. wrote:It's not a muslim democracy. It's a secular state.


Yes exactly right.
The thing I was trying to say was...

A Secular Democracy where the majority of the population is muslim.
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Darth Tiberius
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Postby Darth Tiberius » Sun Nov 02, 2003 1:40 pm

The Santa we know nowadays is based on a marketing image created by Coca-Cola. They firast created a jolly fat man wearing red and green and so on. From then on we have been using that image of a Santa ever since. Many people do not notice but I promise you if you look back at the history of Santa you can see a shocking connection between Santa and Coca-Cola. And I am serious. This guy who teaching marketing for a university (Cambridge or Oxford) said this in a big article. Santa originally was a small green elfish creature in Germany. And a blue and red fat dude in Finland (Lapland) and in China a thin man who wears a red robe and grants blessings and sort of presents. They all deliver presents.

But nobody in this world would be gullable an dnice enough (unfortunately) to devote their time to making presents for us all. It takes a lot of time, effort and money I bet Santa doesn't have. Santa would be an extremely extremely rich fellow to make all the presents he has. And nobody is that kind anymore. To give for free all the time.

Unless Santa embezles money and works for the IRS. Never trust the IRS!!
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rklenseth
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Postby rklenseth » Sun Nov 02, 2003 1:57 pm

David Goodwin wrote:
.west. wrote:It's not a muslim democracy. It's a secular state.


Yes exactly right.
The thing I was trying to say was...

A Secular Democracy where the majority of the population is muslim.


Acutally, David, I believe there are just as many Christians in Turkey as Muslims and plus Turkey is both considered geographically and culturally part of Europe instead of the Middle East. Geographically due to the fault lines and cultural because it has had more influence from Europe and has given more influence to Europe (ie. Balkans) than iy ever given or got from the Middle East.

If you ever notice most Middle Eastern countries seem to hate Turkey probably because of those reasons and that they were once the center of the greatest Islamic Empire ever that was actually more secular and extremely tolerant than any Islamic faction that ever existed. Though that didn't deter the Romanians under Count Vlad Dracula to try to fight for their freedom. Dracula almost defeated the Ottomans as well. Too bad they eventually got him and killed him though myth in Romania today says that someday he will return. Myth in America today says that he is a vampire because he was caught drinking red wine during the execution of a number of nobles that turned out to be traitors to him and people thought he was drinking their blood.

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