Santa Works Hard!!
It's that time of year again. You know, all full of holly, HO HO HO and snow. In fact I've just cleared the desktop in preparation for the celebration. Accountants are never too slow in doing their calculations, and this time of year is no exception.
A mystery "chain fax" that submits that the Father Christmas myth to scientific analysis has popped up in the City, much to the amusement of money men, who are chuckling at the sight of the bearded old fraud being ruthlessly audited. The analysis calculates that there are possibly 378 million children in the Christian world; at just over 4.1 per household, that's 98.1 million homes. "One presumes that there's at least one good child in each".
Time zones give Santa 31 hours of Christmas to work with, which means 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, fill the stockings ... [and] get back into
the sleigh."
The sleigh itself would have to travel at 3,000 times the speed of sound, 650 miles per second. "[The] fastest man made vehicle ... the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey
27.4 miles per second." The sleigh's payload - assuming nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set, weighing 2 lbs, is 321,300 tons and, even if flying reindeer have 10 times the
pulling power of an ordinary reindeer, he will need 214,000 of the beasts.
Finally, "353,000 tons, travelling at 650 miles per second, creates enormous air resistance ... the lead pair of reindeer (you know, Rudolph and chum) will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules
of energy ... per second ... each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously". Santa's whole flying circus, the fax claims, would burn up, like a spacecraft re-entering the atmosphere.
"In conclusion: If Santa ever did deliver presents on Christmas Eve .. he's dead now!!"
The above may be used in Christmas 2008 as a cost saving exercise, and copies distributed
in lieu of presents to children/grandchildren
:thumbsup:
