Slashdot Mirror
Ho, Ho, Ho
neutron_p writes "Every Christmas, calculations circulate that cast doubt as to whether Santa Claus could possibly deliver gifts to all the world's good children - and still remain within the laws of physics. To deliver gifts to all who deserve them, they assert, Santa would need to move so fast that he would vaporise due to air resistance, be torn to pieces by gravitational forces or suffer other terrible fates we wouldn't wish for Santa Claus. Now a team of four top researchers looked into the case and concluded: Santa can do the job and Christmas is saved! They concluded that Santa has an ion-shield of charged particles, held together by a magnetic field to solve the heat problem and he probably travels in more than four dimensions." jgaynor writes "Inspired by an old slashdot article , I decided this year to create a 'christmas lights frontend' to our Network Management System. It came out well and has had a definite impact on response times. Videos of the results are here: WMV, AVI, REAL." Mrs. Claus writes "The NORAD Santa Tracker is up and running and ready to track the Big Guy on Christmas Eve. They've got photos of 50 years of catching Santa in the act." And if you didn't listen to the Blizzard Christmas tale we mentioned in the previous post, you're missing out.
If we can tell people the truth about Santa Claus, they can be more immune to all the pseudoscience out there. It's not a big leap from that to astrology, or creationism. In a world where "martyrs" cause havoc in hope of reaching "heaven", what we need is stark reality.
With the cyberthalamus, the singularity will happen.
Shouldn't our top physicists be working on something more important that Santa Claus? Can their Ion shield protect us against this?
Look folks, can't we just let Santa be the exception where we don't bother applying rules of science! What's wrong with just believing in good ol' fashioned Xmas magic?!
/.
Well, I say the exception to the rule...I use the term 'magic' to explain to my parents how technology works.
Oh, and merry holidays
I'm not stressed. I'm just terribly, terribly alert.
Okay not to be anti-Christmas, which I'm agnostic about being neither from America or a christian... But am I the only one who thinks this Santa thing might not be in the best interest of a child? I mean teaching them that gifts come from some magic guy instead of the parents? Or is Santa just a scapegoat so the parents don't get blamed when the kid doesn't get the more outlandish presents he asked for?
my password is private, but unchanged.
You yanks always complain about everything... what are you some PC freak that insists everyone says, "Happy Holidays" rather than "Merry Christmas". Calm down.
Besides, I'm pretty sure it's all voluntary labour on behalf of the officers.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
The NORAD santa tracker is a complete waste of taxpayer money
For one, I doubt it costs much. For another, it's probably a great morale booster. A world run by accountants might seem cost effective in the short run, but long term nobody would want to live there and the effectivness would be lost to dismal morale.
Thousands and thousands of Santas.
Where do they come from? The North pole river. Yeah, that's right. Each Christmas, Santas all swim upstream until reaching the North Pole. After spawning, old Santas lay eggs to produce more Santas. Along with nutrients and materials for growth, these Santa eggs also contain toys, which are molded and shaped in the egg as part of Santa's development process.
Then on December 25th all the Santas begin swimming south in one mass migration - making a streak of red in the otherwise barren north (for this reason, the migration is often known as the yuletide).
Flying reindeer then pick up these Santas to begin the symbiotic relationship - Santas are excellent trackers, capable of finding the incredibly rare forms of food that the reindeer can eat. In exchange, the reindeer carry the Santas to the homes of humans where they can get sustenence by eating milk and cookies.
Most of the time, as a way of ensuring more milk and cookies, the Santas will leave behind their womb toys, or other ones created during the previous year. If frightened, however, the Santas will most often void their bowels, which thanks to a very efficient and unusual digestive system, contain a substance remarkably like coal.
Santa is normally referred to as "he" because it is known that all Santa individuals actually comprise a single semi-intelligent collective being whose thoughts are communicated across the globe by high energy waves, and whose name is most closely pronounced "Santa" given a palate like ours. The Santa being, however, considers this word merely as a singular pronoun.
Now you know how he does it, and what he is. Now let me tell you about the Easter Bunny...
Mod me down and I will become more powerful than you can possibly imagine!
Whoah. Santa is related to religion? I just thought it was a cute story.
I had no idea there was a religion that believed in small elves forced to build millions of toys to be delivered by a fat man in a red suit driving a sleigh pulled by magic reindeer.
The world is neither black nor white nor good nor evil, only many shades of CowboyNeal.
...he probably travels in more than four dimensions
This sure solves _one_ old problem.
Child: "I just saw Santa in that store. How can he be in this store too?"
Parent: "Well, it's simple. Santa is a higher-dimensional being. You're just seeing the projection of his higher-dimensional form onto our four-dimensional universe."
Child: "???"
Parent: "Also, Rudolph's red nose actually generates a ion-shield which allows Santa to travel faster than lightspeed..."
Child: "Uh, can I have a cookie?"
See, problem solved!
He delivers all the gifts at the same time. Why didn't you nitwits think of this? Am I the only Quantum Mechanics Genius around here?