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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.
or santa could just use human cloning and defeat the laws of physics
did you forget to take your meds?
Okay guys... what's up?
Did Santa take away your Net connection or something?
I'm pulling 115k/sec on the video downloads and 200k/sec from Blizzard's ftp site...
Everyone knows Santa has a time machine.
Sorry, my karma just ran over your dogma.
He knows when your are sleeping,
He knows when you're on the can,
He'll hunt you down and blast your ass from here to Pakistan.
You better not breathe, you better not move,
You're better off dead, I'm telling you, dude.
Santa Claus is gunning you down!
It's easy. There just aren't that many kids who deserve presents. Bah. humbug.
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.
Santa only delivers presents to kids who have been GOOD ALL YEAR.
That brings it down to like 4 or 5, so he really isn't all that rushed.
Santa really needs to consider selling that authoritative list of "naughty" girls. He could make a killing with that thing.
Learning HOW to think is more important than learning WHAT to think.
Then he could occupy all points in the universe simultaneously- the only way to deliver presents to all the little girls and boys in the Federation.
Give a man fire, and you warm him for the night. Set a man on fire, and you warm him for the rest of his life.
Sometimes i wish i could travel in just 4 dimensions, not more then 4, well maybe 12 or 13 could be fun and allow for me to pass light in the 500 m dash.
it's called parents
I would not be so concerned about that. In my country, we tell children that it is "baby Jesus" who brings the gifts. Yet vast majority of the populace are atheists.
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.
The answer to all of Santa's secrets is simply 42.
Santa has been outsourced. We had to do it. For the price of one Santa we got 3 guys from India. The elves have been outsourced, too, from China. Which is actually a good thing. Now we'll all get electronics.
He's actually a Q.
"It's too bad that stupidity isn't painful." - Anton LaVey
Um...adults...there is no Santa...sorry.
My theory involves robots (which automatically makes it better than yours) and Microsoft's Windows.
As we all know, FedEx won't deliver anything until Monday, that's because all of Santa's robots bluescreen and he has to contract FedEx to deliver all his presents.
It's because it's using the Intel 263 Codec... a brief Google search shows that you can download it from this webpage...
Here are coral cache links to the actual codec downloads:
Intel 263 Codec for Win NT/2K/XP
Intel 263 Codec for Win 95/98/ME
Informative?
(f/x: shakes head in despair...)
What country is that?
With the cyberthalamus, the singularity will happen.
Oh Poop! C'mon Mr. Scrooge lighten up. It's Santa Claus, not life or death. No one past the age of about 6-8 really believe in Santa. It's for fun....
The NORAD Santa Tracker is up and running and ready to track
What sort of torrents do they host?
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Support Indy Music. Buy
I think not. I want my 8 minutes and 26 seconds back.
I beleive in Santa you insensivitve clod! Thanks or ruining Christmas!
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Support Indy Music. Buy
They are, Havent you heard, Santa is an anagram of Satan, because of that, Bush is having NORAD track Santa because he's a Pinko-Liberal-Commie-Terrorist. ;)
Aaarggh...
The background.... it.... burns....
Someone needs santa to bring them some vague sense of aesthetics.
Speaking of how Santa can do the impossible, how did you hear Santa can keep track of how children are naughty or nice? (The old Rankin/Bass Christmas movies had him using a magical crystal snowball that the Winter Wizard taught him how to use.)
GRINCH!!!
Am I the only one who figured that Santa probably uses nondeterminism? Any time he has a choice between two houses to deliver to, he delivers to both of them at the same time.
"Evil will always triumph over good, because good is dumb." - Dark Helmet (Spaceballs)
It's privately sponsored, and completely staffed by volunteers. On a side note, you may want to bend over and remove the stick from your ass, you goddamn grinch.
Yes Schnits there is a Santa Claus. I just said that so the other guy wouldn't feel as bad when he gets nothing in his stocking.
I knew Slashdot catered to a younger audience, but this is ridiculous...
353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and create deafening sonic booms in their wake.
The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.
In conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
Well, I don't anymore.
No kind, gift-giving soul would require RealPlayer to track him!
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
If my parents bought me my last [every] christmas present what does that say about Santa's opinion of me?
:( :( :(
;)
YOU'RE PROMOTING THE DEGRADATION OF BEHAVIOR AS WE KNOW IT
YOU PEOPLE MAKE ME SICK I WANT TO DIE
haha just kidding
Merry xmas
there are only a few country he needs to deliver.. :)
mostly western.. where a few gets visits by baby jesus or he visits early on december the 5th (I got no idea why he switched to so late in december.. it only get colder and darker outside..)
in countries like china, japan, india? afrika, south america he doesn't even visits or he delegates if it all.. this saves loads of time..
the question is could he visit all the kids in the US, canada, new zealand, france?, UK, in one night.. it's hardly the world.. just that small egocentric part
I just hope he's well equiped for when Mars is colonised :)
I still like my Dad's explanation on Santa much better:
"Son, there ain't no (expletive) Santa."
I must've been in kindergarden when I was told this. And it's no surprise that I picked up science as my career choice.
-h
ps. though I do not encourage anyone or myself for that matter to use my dad's answer. I'd prefer telling older kids that Santa Clause does exist in every one of the people who believes in him. The belief would magically turn the persons into Santa Clause on the night of Christmas Eve and bring you presents and happiness in your house....or some sentimental bullcrap like that.
The same article was published with pictures here!
Look, they're already there, they already have the equipment and resources, and I'd bet they get it all set up on their own time. What does it hurt?
--- Asking inconvenient questions for over 30 years...
I saw a sad thing the other day while shopping at Wal-Mart. There was a dude in a Santa Suit sitting in a chair up front near the check-out stands, and _no one_ was paying him any attention. No mothers shoving their kids up to see Santa, nothing. He just sat there, watching the reality of it all: One goes to Wal-Mart, buys your Xmas stuff, and passes the Big Man right on by. No asking the dude if you were a good little boy or girl, and having him instantly call up your record, and relate that to your chances of getting the gifts you want.
My question is, when, just when, did the "establishment" have Santa run those pesky background checks on the little ones right before Christmas? Was this an invention of the
Elementary School Marms Union? Sure smacks of something your old maid third grade teacher would come up with.
Perhaps the Santa - Database check was dreamed up by depression-era parents too tired to put up with overactive children, so they tied Christmas Presents to Behavior, all
kept on "Santa's List", an impossible database to hack, let alone find.
Anyway, Santa does have a Time Machine, and he has traveled to a place he really does not want to be now...
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
He controls his movement in the 4th dimension?
Analogies don't equal equalities, they are merely somewhat analogous.
According to the NORAD Santa tracker, Santa's position is where today changes into tommorow (I don't know what the exact name of the boundry is). By precisely between today and tommorow, he falls into a rift in time that allows him to do his thing!
As far as buying items, I have to agree with you. I feel that Christmas has become a gift giving thing, and for the most part comercial. What many don't seem to understand is you don't need to express love or friendship with something you have bought. I for one, didn't really want anything material for christmas, and would haver rather have spent time with my family, but I guess we can't get everything we ask for.
Norad is a joint effort between the US and Canada. The Canadians are in on it, Eh.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Sorry, kids, but NORAD will not be tracking Santa this year. A suit filed in federal court on Tuesday by the ACLU and the People for the American Way alleges that any use of government computers to aid the fat man this year constitutes a clear violation of the separation of church and state.
In a related filing, the ACLU and PFTAW are bringing a class-action lawsuit against Santa, citing numerous cases of unlawful entry, breaking and entering, trespassing, as well as a civil complaint alleging illegal operation of a flying craft without proper inspections, piloting without a license, and flying through restricted airspace without proper security clearance and prior authorization.
Sorry, kids, Christmas is cancelled this year, and for the forseeable future. It looks like Santa will be spending the rest of his life in the pen, making big rocks into little rocks.
It must cost millions to play around with the buttons and have someone make a .rm file showing arbitrarily "where Santa is." T is for Troll.
Click here for a free picture of an iPod!
Wait...you mean he's...not real?
OK it's magic... Christmas magic that is.
Rumor has is it that Saint Nick lives in a black hole so with the subtle maneuvering of his molecules he can come out anywhere in the galaxy delivering items stolen from Toys R Us. However, once in a while he goofs and pops out of a quasar. Dr. Who would be impressed.
We are more and more giving music, movies and software as gifts. In this age of digital content Santa simply delivers his gifts via Bittorrent. The Redhat ISO downloading tests certainly show that it is possible to deliver his presents to all children of the world who have suitable upstream bandwidth capabilities. Perhaps someone should re-brand Bittorrent as "SantaTorrent" and rename all the internal classes to "reindeer", "sleigh", "chimney", "jolly old elf", etc.
Well, taking in account Santa works at night, I think I can offer a easier explanation.
This particularity makes possible a Quantum Physics explanation: actually Santa is very very small and travels so fast that what we have is a lot of different small Santa Claus, all of them working hard. Of course, no one can see him, the wave function does not collapse.
Beware this behaviour could be destroyed by a foolish kid, hidden in the dark, watching Santa at work. This would collapse the wave function, rendering the other quantum-Santa Claus impossible. Moral: be sure your children are sleeping tonight!
The elves spend most of the year compiling data on all children. School records, criminal records, first hand surveillance and the like. It was becoming increasingly clear that no one was being good, and Santa was losing his primary asset, that of the ultimate arbiter of good behavior. To solve this, he restructured his parameters and created a system in which every child would be assigned a normalized value. This allows him to simply, a fairly, decide who is naughty and nice. The closer the normalized value is to one, the more nice.
Next Santa throws all children more than two standard deviations out into the naughty pile. This may sound harsh, but if you are nice enough to get above a 0.95, you probably just playing the system, and Santa does not like players. Either group is without merits.
Next Santa takes those in the center, that is one SD out, and subcontract to Wal*mart or Amazon. Since these are just average kids, they can live with average presents.
Finally there are the kids between one and two standard deviations. These are the ones that merit personal, or almost personal, reward or scolding from Santa. The good kids gets a personal visit and a personal gift from Santa. The naughty kids get a Santa branded piece of coal delivered by the special class of santa-like elves.
This system keeps the number of trips that Santa much make to aroud a few hundred million, assuming only about half the world celebrates christmas. This is the most that he can make, which is around five deliveries every millisecond. The implication of this system is that every child must be on their guard to be exactly good enough every year. Any mistake could bump you into the larger class of no Santa visit. This is going to be more important as the world population grows, even if the Christmas celebrating population declines. Certain cost cutting measure have already been instituted, the most significant was in the 1999 season when Santa stopped visiting those that were in the first SD of being 'good'. As the world economy falters, Santa may no longer be able to afford a full night of support, or the gear that allows him to visit all the houses. Any season now, cost cutting and unfair taxes on corporations might force him to visit only those areas in that are friendly to the independent spirit.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
Previous post brought to you Mr. Ebenezer Scrooge. I don't know anything for sure, but I wouldn't be surprised if you get visisted by a couple ghosts tonight. Maybe 3. I'm just saying.
Here's the 'truth'. A guy who's got 8 (or possibly 9 if you believe some modern revisionism) flying reindeer has already shown stark disregard for the laws of physics. Don't try to explain Santa Claus, just stay out of his was. Whatever he's doing, he moving pretty fast and just becaus he isn't subject to the laws of physics, doesn't mean you aren't.
MikeAtIF*ckStuffedAnimalsDotCom
Atlantis.
MikeAtIF*ckStuffedAnimalsDotCom
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.
Step one, get rid of that stupid sig. You're talking way crazier than a belief in Santa Claus. Maybe a little less of that is what we need.
"Beware of he who would deny you access to information, for in his heart, he dreams himself your master."
I'll tell you my gripe with the Santa myth. Young kids have no idea that it's their hard-working, loving parents buying them all the loot, so they ask for all kinds of outlandish stuff. Parents in turn, feel obligated to get this stuff for their children, stressing themselves and their bank accounts.
Then who gets the credit? Not the parents, but a MYTHOLOGICAL man!
Not to mention the fact that it's a bit disconcerting for a child to find out that the whole thing is a big lie.
On a side note -- why do we lie to our children so much anyway? The stork? Santa Claus? These things just make reality more confusing for them. I mean, I know children need magic and mystery and all of that, but they can usually manage to find plenty on their own without being outright deceived.
Disclaimer: Not a parent, but I have a seven year old brother (I'm 21). And yes, we do the whole Santa thing with him, but that's our mom's call, not mine.
vi ~/.emacs
Is your network travelling at > c ?
Santa is a lie. Why are you lying to yourself?
after all, it is snowing in Houston Texas right now...
No one cares what your captcha was
Houston TX, USA
It's really not a question of reality. It is a lie. Fun, not fun -- it is a lie at the expense of small children who believe it.
People give all sorts of rationale. People can explain it away -- but in the end the practice is horrific. Lie to your kids. Be judged by everyone else if you speak the truth. I wonder what other societies had these values?
It is interesting to see how Santa Claus is becoming more and more a part of Christmas. He has become the icon of secular Christmas. Christmas has religious origins though the celebration of the birth of Jesus for many, if not most, Americans has been pushed aside to the place of irrelevance. The politically correct replacement has been Santa Claus. I find it to be a poor replacement.
Reprinted here this morning.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Before the suprnova-collapse there were DivX or XviD-versions in good quality out there.
If you hate Quicktime and Real as much as I do, it may be wise to check your local p2p (or ftp, whatever) for something. The good versions are out there.
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Remember people, Santa's payload and speed are nothing we haven't seen and debated at our bi-mon-sci-fi-cons before. These figures are quite close to those for the starship enterprise or a dozen other sci-fi show equilivilents entering the atmosphere. We've already debated these so I guess old St Nick is just a subset of these discussions.
Replace Toys with Tritanium Hull and Reindeer with impluse engines and viola!
May the Maths Be with you!
Go on then, determine the optimum Travelling Salesman problem for Santa Claus.
Now where's the spirit?????????? It is Christmas eve.
He did go to Afghanistan once, in case you forgot :)
Not Buzzword 2.0 compliant. Please speak english.
Did you ask Santa for a cure for cancer? I think not.
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
I bet there won't be an iPod for me then tomorrow, with all those Windows-friendly video file formats listed up there.. Is Santa even in touch with realtity? I bet he uses Explorer 5.5SP2, too..
Ok, smart guy, if Santa is a lie, who have I got bound and gagged in my basement? Huh?
...oh crap!
Giving a child that happiness and excitement is probably one of the best things about being a parent. At least for the first four or five years.
Wow, who would of though that /. could be so depressing on xmas eve. Every other post is turning the harmless Santa myth into some from in an ideological battle. Who the hell really cares? It's Santa, he exists as much as we want him to do, and is real because he exists in our heads and collective conscious. Hell, folk, he is as real as George Washington, whom I have never met, or any other historical figure, hell he might be more real than Socrates.
/me realizing how sad it is to be /.ing on xmas eve, goes to help his family make some xmas chili.
Santa Claus is FUN! Boring ideologies aren't, and people who choose them over anything that might bring light to the hearts of children should just, then, shut up for a couple days a year. Let children beleive. It's a harmless tradition. And, I know you won't agree, but holidays are about tradition, not terrorism, coporate monopolies, unjust(or just) wars, and politicians you don't agree with. They are about being happy, making others happy, and being with your family and freinds for one calm, peaceful night of the year. I like my traditions, and am not going to let some mindless idiologues ruin them with their heady political views, or rationalism (for that fact).
Hell, if I was a purely rational individual I wouldn't even be celebrating today, I'd be at work, or something smart. I'm not a Christian, therefore the historical reason for this holiday is personally meaningless to me. But... The deeper reason is just as valid, I'm celebrating my family and freinds, my life, good food, a pretty tree, and the goodies beneath it, in this order.
It is the one bastion of sanity in this world, the holidays. Why don't you just shut up, stop thinking, and go home to whoever you love, and give them something to show you love them.
Diatribe out of the way.
Merry Xmas my fellow geeks!
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
You are a frump. Why is anyone listening to you.
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Merry christmas the Limited Edition DVD release of Willie Wanker and the Fudge Packing Factory you wanted is on its way.
Happy Holidays !
People who bite the hand that feeds them usually lick the boot that kicks them
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Infinite_Improbabilit y_Drive
Word has it that Santa's Ion Shield (tm) is running Linux. This year he's upgraded to the 2.6 Kernel, allowing him to process your cookies more efficiently.
Bah! Humbug ;)
I completely disagree with your post.
Especially this whole "Santa is as real as george washington is" arguement. It's odd since I've heard the EXACT same comparison to George Washington before. Now, of course Washington has his own mythologies but he was a real person! Santa was based on a person (I think, I might be wrong) but the myth has long forgotten whoever it was based on. It is a LIE.
Then people wonder why thier children dont trust them!!! My parents never used anything like that when I was a child. Admittedly I was Jewish, but the did have mythological people who did things for me (tooth fairy and Mr. Pumpkin head), but they let me know it was for fun and they werent real. I never had to find out that my parents had been decieving me for years and wonder what else they hadn't been telling me about. My parents have always told me the uncensored truth about everything. Lying to children is dispicable.
Have fun not thinking and enjoying life without thought of the consequences.
Circular arguments, hasty generalizations, straw-man arguments....it's a logical fallacy cornocopia!
Wow. Who would have thought trying to prove that Santa can do all that he is proported to do could rest on logical fallacies. The article looks like something that you would have found in the 1980's Pravda. But I guess this is what you get when you have to prove something. Oh well.
The views expressed are mine own and do not express the views of my employer.
Here is the real Santa...., http://www.samsungexplore.com/playing/games_arcade /AdventCalendar/day24.html
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/53/
Fuking cool....,
Reclam the wasted time from the NORAD crap...,
----------
"Clutch my testes, bloody squirrel humpers!!" -Happy Noodle Boy
Santa gets the job done the same way most Slashdotters do: Through distributed networking.
By that token, his personal existance is irrelevant, as the network continues to exist and operate without the central hub.
Happiness is relative, Based upon the way we live.
Okay, his ion shield explains how Santa doesn't get fried by air friction, and maybe it also protects him when he plops from the chimney in the furnice, which is going full blast on this cold night.
But, how the heck does he get out of the furnice, and once he gets out of the basement, why doesn't he set off my motion detectors?
Slow down, cowboy! It has been 4 hours since you last posted. You must wait another few hours.
Here is the real Santa...., http://www.samsungexplore.com/playing/games_arcade /AdventCalendar/day24.html
http://www.weebls-stuff.com/toons/53/
Fuking cool....,
Reclam the wasted time from the NORAD crap...,
----------
"Clutch my testes, bloody squirrel humpers!!" -Happy Noodle Boy
After some careful examination a team of scientists has determined that it would be impossible for Santa to carry all the presents to be delivered in his sleigh or for an army of elves to have the manpower to create them using traditional methods. It has also been determined that his bag of gifts does not in fact hold a rip in in space-time opening to an alternate "santaland" universe.
So how does he do it?
Spy satellites that used to monitor the Soviet Union have determined that instead of carrying the mythical bag of presents on his sliegh he instead carries a highly advanced fusion reactor which is used to create gifts from pure energy. But where does this leave the elves? They are in fact nuclear scientists and engineers that keep the whole show going. Radiation exposure during the early years resulted in the physical deformations in their genetic line.
You gotta find first gear in your giant robot car
lemme guess, someone gave you an education. which, as we all know, is somewhat like a transmittable sexual disease. it makes you unsuitable for a lot of jobs and you have the urge to pass it on.
quote from the Hogfather by Terry Pratchett.
People replying to my sig annoy me. That's why I change it all the time.
They're not only on it, they're also giving him an F-18 escort... ;D
You are a jack ass.
can't sleep slashdot will eat me
Click here. Taken from my site. ;)
Ant(Dude) @ Quality Foraged Links (AQFL.net) & The Ant Farm (antfarm.ma.cx / antfarm.home.dhs.org).
Fry:
[1] This is disturbing to me somehow while contributing to Slashdot.
I really enjoyed this article from Scott McNealy (CEO of Sun Microsystems). Pokes fun at some of our favourite companies (IBM, Microsoft, HP, Red Hat, Intel) and the IT business in general.
:)
Good stuff.
People that believe in their opinions don't post AC.
The Japanese love Santa and Christmas, spending a lot of money and effort into celebrating it. So it has to be good thing, right?
History of Santa Claus
1689--Spanish-German explorer Santa Claus discovers the North Pole, and establishes a small base camp.
1691--Because of harsh and meager living conditions, Claus' crew abandons him.
1692--Claus is rescued by the Viking ship Hvorfor. He returns to Europe, bringing some items along with him from the North Pole. He finds he is able to sell them quite easily, making a small profit.
1703--Claus saves up enough money to buy a small ship and crew, and returns to the North Pole. Upon arriving, he finds his base camp, half-buried but still intact.
1704--Claus returns to Europe with a shipload of North Pole artifacts, and is successful in selling them. He makes enough profit to increase his crew, and buys building materials to expand his polar base.
1705--Claus returns again to the North Pole, and builds quarters for him and his crew, and sets up the Polar Exports Company.
1716--After six shiploads of exports, the European market is flooded with polar artifacts, as well as the phony ones making charlatans rich. Seeing this decline, Claus decides to invest his money by starting a toy company in his native Germany.
1720--Claus Toys becomes the largest toy company in Germany, but only because of Claus' underhanded business dealings. (It was also rumored that Claus was dealing with enemy countries as well). Competitors urged government officials to begin an investigation.
1721--Enough evidence is found, and charges are drawn up against the Claus Toys Company. Claus himself refuses to release his records.
1722--The German Supreme Court finds Claus guilty of tax evasion and of treason. When news of this breaks, Claus' employees all turn against him and his company.
1723--Claus is exiled to Sicily, and shortly before leaving, he absconds with all of the company's funds.
1724--A search party is sent to the Mediterranean to recover the funds, however, Claus hears of this ahead of time, and he and his Sicilian wife flee for their lives. (Some say he went into Northern Africa, but it is generally assumed that this was only a ruse to lure the searchers off course. He is believed to have returned to his North Pole base).
1725--Claus II is born en route to the North Pole.
1725-1734--The Claus' lay low at the North Pole. Claus teaches his son the arts of toy making and business dealings.
1735--Rumor has it that Claus has hired Scandinavian builders to construct a castle for him at the North Pole, making use of almost half of the company funds.
1739--The castle is finished, and is one of the largest in the world. Claus II reaches his fifteenth birthday, and in the same year, Claus' wife dies, accidentally falling from a balcony in one of the castle's great halls.
1740--Claus, mourning his wife, becomes increasingly ill.
1745--Santa Claus II becomes of age, and begins taking care of the castle and of his sick father.
1747--Using the remaining company funds, Claus II builds a small city around the castle to attract workers and craftsmen.
1748--Word of the North Pole settlement reaches Europe. The Elves of Eastern Europe, quickly becoming political outcasts and striving for a better life, begin immigrating in waves to the North Pole.
1753--All the elves have left Eastern Europe and have become firmly established at the North Pole. Claus II begins his father's toy company once again, with an estimated 30,000 elves employed. Claus I dies, at age 89.
1755--The North Pole officially becomes a nation, and Claus II and his wife take the throne. The toy business continues to flourish, and the elves enjoy prosperity. Claus III is born.
1757--The great stables are built, and scientists are secretly hired by Claus II to begin an ambitious
Buy Steampunk Clothing Online!
We all secretly wish to have that innocence and imagination to look up into the sky at night and seeing the blinken lights of Santa's sleigh soaring over us. Imagination, excitement... What a boring world it would be without them.
Dear Editor, I am 8 years old. Some of my little friends say there is no Santa Claus. Papa says, "If you see it in The Sun, it's so." Please tell me the truth, is there a Santa Claus? Virginia O'Hanlon.
Virginia, your little friends are wrong. They have been affected by the skepticism of a skeptical age. They do not believe except they see. They think that nothing can be which is not comprehensible by their little minds.
All minds, Virginia, whether they be men's or children's, are little. In this great universe of ours, man is a mere insect, an ant, in his intellect as compared with the boundless world about him, as measured by the intelligence capable of grasping the whole of truth and knowledge.
Yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus. He exists as certainly as love and generosity and devotion exist, and you know that they abound and give to your life its highest beauty and joy.
Alas! how dreary would be the world if there were no Santa Claus!
It would be as dreary as if there were no Virginias. There would be no childlike faith then, no poetry, no romance to make tolerable this existence. We should have no enjoyment, except in sense and sight.
The external light with which childhood fills the world would be extinguished.
Not believe in Santa Claus! You might as well not believe in fairies. You might get your papa to hire men to watch in all the chimneys on Christmas eve to catch Santa Claus, but even if you did not see Santa Claus coming down, what would that prove? Nobody sees Santa Claus, but that is no sign that there is no Santa Claus.
The most real things in the world are those that neither children nor men can see. Did you ever see fairies dancing on the lawn? Of course not, but that's no proof that they are not there. Nobody can conceive or imagine all the wonders there are unseen and unseeable in the world.
You tear apart the baby's rattle and see what makes the noise inside, but there is a veil covering the unseen world which not the strongest man, nor even the united strength of all the strongest men that ever lived could tear apart.
Only faith, poetry, love, romance, can push aside that curtain and view and picture the beauty and glory beyond. Is it all real?
Ah, Virginia, in all this world there is nothing else real and abiding.
No Santa Claus!
Thank God he lives and lives forever. A thousand years from now, Virginia, nay 10 times 10,000 years from now, he will continue to make glad the heart of childhood.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
Remember, he is SAINT Nicholas. When you have God and all his angels to help you, delivering presents to 33%+ of the households in the world is no big feat at all.
If you look at the About Us page, you'll see lots of "Corporate Sponsors," including Akamai.
From the looks of things, the bandwith and servers necessary to deliver the site are not being paid for with your precious tax money.
Yes, Santa *is* an anagram of Satan. But I don't know how much weight I put on it. I *do* believe however that the whole Santa thing does take away from the true spirit of Christmas which is remembering Christ's birth, that He is the Gift to the world and His purpose was to die on the Cross.
In Scripture, we're never told to remember the Birth of Christ, but we are commanded to Remember the Death, Burial, and Resurection of Christ (and remember it often, not just at Easter).
I do celebrate Christmas and give and receive gifts (especially for my 4 kids) but the whole Santa thing doesn't happen in our house.
I've been told (and CAN'T PROVE as I haven't researched it) that Santa is really a product of the Coke-a-Cola company (Red and white and he always Drinks Coke -- you notice that?) I don't really know, and quite frankly don't care.
"You keep Christmas in your way, let me keep it in mine." -- Scrooge. Scrooge's lack of charity and general Spirit of Joy aside, it is a true statement.
Anyway, Merry Christmas to all you slashdotters in parts of the world where it's already Christmas Day.
God Bless.
-- DuckWing
What database does the North Pole use for the Naughty or Nice list, and for that matter how many terrabytes is it?
Ubiquitously - A Ubiquity Developer Community
If this article isn't /. in a nutshell, I don't know what is..
-- jimmycarter
is the secret to Santa's success...
And compute it to make him as efficient as possible.
http://saveie6.com/
Actually Santa's offical postal code is H0H0H0
That's like H zero H zero H Zero, U know Santa 1337 speak.
...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?
I thought the same way you did when I was 21. Just wait until you have kids. The magic of Christmas only exists in children. I, for one, would hate to deny it too them.
And on another note, a lot of us aren't christians. We like our (lack of) religion and we want it kept that way. There's nothing christianity can do to make me a christian. Do you hear me, Christianity? Stop trying to convert me, I don't care!
-gjr
I mean have you seen kids these days? Spoiled little brats they are. They get toys and games every week and most are just forgotten or thrown away in a few days. They have no respect for parents or teachers. All they care about is themselves.
So Santa isn't very harding working these days you know.
No, he isn't. He's a renegade Time Lord and the sleigh and reindeer is his TARDIS (but with a working chameleon circuit).
Karma: Frotzed (mostly due to the Frobozz Magic Karma Company)
Comment removed based on user account deletion
However, the prevailing story we all have is the one our parents told us growing up
... the commercial actions people take perpetuate self-hatred and false expressions of love. ?
As you so freely admit, adults hang on to the beliefs told to them as children. Is it really so horrible that we adults try to believe the lie told to us as children, where a kind jolly old man rewards them simply for being good people?
What would you prefer to teach them? That
I sincerely hope you have a happy and merry christmas.
Write a traveling salesmen problem but instead of avoiding the same airport twice the variables would have to be dependant on making sure Santa does not stop at the same house twice.
/. article about it. Gotta go, G'nite, all...
While it's not too hard to get "good" solutions to airports, it's much harder to get an optimum airport solution. There are many times more houses (even limiting it to those where at least one good child lives) than airports, and the computational time of this problem increases with the square (or perhaps it's the factorial (!)) of the number of points, so this is practically impossible, even with all the world's computers working on it for a year (and remember, some bad children become good, and some good children become bad, some children grow up, others are born, so the problem changes every year). Thus, there is no Santa Claus.
And compute it to make him as efficient as possible.
Of course I'm totaly wrong about there not being a Santa Claus, and I must go to bed within the hour, but first leave out some milk and cookies.
But think of this: The existence of Santa Claus shows he has solved this problem, so he must have access to something Really Cool such as Quantum Computing!!!
Maybe we can get Mr. Claus to write a
Tag lost or not installed.
Isn't it obvious.. Santa is the master of quantum mechanics.. he can be everywhere at once watching everything (naughty/nice). After that feat delivering packages is a trivial exercise for him
How How how?
no no no it
Ho Ho HO.....
a text file and Edlin on an old MSDOS system. It seems crude by today's standards, but it's a vast improvement over those 800,000,000 3x5 cards he used before. Just think of the number of trees he saves...
Tag lost or not installed.
Sure, if you want to be a poop, it is a lie. But, if we take everything to this degree we realize that most everything else is a lie to. Freedom, justice, love, progess, right, wrong, good and evil, all of these are empty terms that have no real meaning, and are completely culturally constructed, and thus lies we tell ourselves to help ourselves sleep at night. Hell our beloved science is a lie as well, we just coddle ourselves with the fact that we grew closer to some truth, when in fact all we have are a bunch of falible inductive instances, which we, for mere convention, take as fact.
Children don't trust their parents because their parents lie about much more important things than Santa Claus. Kids don' trust their parents because adults are, for the most part, not to be trusted. I am one, and I don't trust anyone who claims to be adult and mature, on principle.
I tell you, the least traumatizing thing as a child was finding out that my dad ate those cookies that I left out. Really didn't have much of an effect on me, besides making realize that my parents loved me, and making me feel like I was in on the joke.
I tell you what, you have fun over analyzing trivial things, or I guess that your not allowed to be having fun because of some underlying pompous ideology. Seems to be endemic these days. And my consiquences are well though out, being happy, enjoying family and a good laugh. If some kids poor ego is twisted by a harmless myth, I don't care, they were obviously psychologically weak anyways. If something like Santa Claus can shatter you later in life, then anything could, you have problems that stem from a deeper source than a harmless xmas myth, one of the few frivolous myths we still allow ourselves (not under he guise of positivism). Millions of children have grown up with Santa, and we still exist as a species, and as a culture, so it must not have many side effects, especially since he existed as a comforting fiction in previous, and happier days, as well as todays idiotic ideological doomsday.
Sacraficing fun, and happiness for ideology is dispicable.
And reguardless, this is not the time of year for this, so Happy Holidays, go drink some egg nog, with lots of brandy in it, it sounds like you need it. (:
A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government. -edward abbey
Good god people! I had this Santa Claus thing figured out by the time I was 24! What is your problem? Don't get out enough? Sheesh!
I support a variety of charities throughout the year, but this simple act seams to outdo them all.
'Course I've been dropping 20s into Sally Ann kettles for most of the past week whenever I picked up something at the local supermarket -- using a debit card to pay as usual, and "add a 20 for the bellringer", to get cash back. A couple of times people behind me in line followed suit.
The sight of people with what must have been a couple hundred dollars of groceries in their carts, rushing to get to their cars, completely ignoring this Christmas hallmark, not even dropping a dollar in, was depressing. I guess their credit card debt is strangling them. Rather fitting, perhaps.
Oh yeah, fuck you Target.
You could've hired me.
I guess "Christmas Spirt" is out of the question Mr. Scrooge.
"It takes considerable knowledge just to realize the extent of your own ignorance." - Thomas Sowell
"On a side note -- why do we lie to our children so much anyway? The stork? Santa Claus? These things just make reality more confusing for them."
We lie to our children for 2 reasons:
1: To tell a story - in this case a great big story that lasts for years. And at the end of the story, some kids are pissed, some want to read it again.
2: To shield them from that reality to which you are so eager to expose them. Reality sometimes sucks, but that is what parents do - protect their kids from things that suck. Some go overboard and protect them from everything - we call them spoiled. But the kids who aren't protected from anything are far worse off.
As for having my kids feel grateful to Santa instead of me - BFD! I do for my kids because I love them and it's a duty I asked for, not so that I have a little bunch of emotionally indentured servants who "owe" me their gratitude. If I do my job right they will be grateful later. I can wait.
"As God is my witness, I thought turkeys could fly." A. Carlson
May as well post something informative...
I grew up in Japan, and we celebrate Christmas pretty much like in the west, except we don't have the christian religious meaning to it. To us, it's just a fun holiday that's an excuse to give toys to kids. Parents tell their kids about Santa, and they do believe in him until they grow older.
The more traditional Japanese holiday is new year's, for which the family gathers around to have a feast on new year's eve, much like the American thanksgiving holiday. The day after, most people go to a shrine to greet the new year with blessings, and some still dress up in traditional clothes to do this.
On new year's day, relatives will often travel to visit one another and give gifts of money to young children. This is called "Otoshidama", and it can be as much or more than what's spent on christmas gifts.
Anyways, I usually liked christmas, but Japanese new years was a bit more fun, since I got to see my cousins and stuff. Japan tends to have a lot of fun holidays for kids, check out the wikipedia article http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Japanese_festivals
an unexplained event causes the white house to be filled with coal..
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
your parent spent all the Christmas money buying an Apple computer...
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
This is stupid. He doesn't need to travel. All he needs is a complicated manifold where all the fireplaces in the world are sewn to portals inside a huge factory in the north pole. He can have the elves throw presents into the holes all night; if each elf can throw one package per ten seconds, he can get stuff to each of the, what, billion children in the world, in 10 hours, with like 300,000 elves.
you could have a Yule Tide!
Like a great blue salmon of justice, the mighty Tick courses upstream to the very spawning grounds of Evil!
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
It is practice lying to get the young'uns to believe in a god. Children really don't need adults to artificially inflate their imaginations.
"Then who gets the credit? Not the parents, but a MYTHOLOGICAL man!"
yes, the lesson which becomes apparent(pun intended) later is that the parents gave just to give, not to recieve anything, including praise.
who tells the stork story? I know of no one who was told that story. The only stork reference I can remember are from dumbo, and varies jokes.
"Not to mention the fact that it's a bit disconcerting for a child to find out that the whole thing is a big lie."
Not really. most children figure it out anf question it. Thats where the rubber meats the road. do you continue with the myth, or explain santa is a way to teach children about giving? Also an opportunity for people to give, just to give.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
How does he taste?
And what wine should i use?
-- f00!
burning for a week. . .
how about God?
I have always truste my parents, and we were raised with Santa. Most of my friends trust their parents.
es, Santa, the original, is based on a real person who gave toys to shildren, just cause.
teaching children to give just becasue it is a good thing is an important lesson.
"My parents have always told me the uncensored truth about everything. "
uh-huh.
daddy, how are babies made:
"well son, first the mom gets on her knees and talks like a 1000 dollar hooker, then she is flipped over and..."
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
and to all a good night!
Don't forget, Christmas is coming, and I check my list twice!
The argument presented has one big fallacy. Most kids don't do cause and effect. Even precious few teenagers and adults do cause and effect. I mean when was the last time you heard a teenage boy say 'she won't have sex with me because it was not the right place and we were not old enough and it was a time of the month when she probably would get pregnant.' Yeah, maybe you hear that once or twice, but it is mostly 'she doesn't love me'. Even adults get into that 'you would buy the expensive toy if you loved me' deal.
Some people call the 'you don't love me' argument magical thinking, and it tends to be the child's primary thought process. If some desire of the child is or is not met, it is not because of a complex series of factors, but simply how the world feels about the child. The child wants a pony. The child does not get the pony. This is probably because the family does not have the resources to acquire and maintain a pony. The child cannot understand this, so thinks that he or she did something wrong, or that the parents do not care. Realistically there is no way to counter this process, so Santa is used as a proxy. The child was not good enough for a pony, and Santa is the ultimate and fairest arbiter.
As far as the confusion et al, it is caused by growing up, not by any stories we tell. As long as we are reasonable consistent in answering questions, creating rules, and applying consequences, most everything else is ok. The child is naturally confused, and the confusion is what drives learning. The child learns that it is separate from mother. The child learns that there are consequences for specific actions. The child learns that not every desire can be met. All these are extremely painful lessons. When a child is upset about the 'lie' of Santa, it is probably because a fundamental assumption of life, that all needs can be met if the child is just 'good enough', has fallen. No one told the child this assumption was true, and no one could tell the child that it isn't.
You kid sib will learn that Santa is fake, and it will make him very sad. When he does, you will know he is growing up, and maybe be sad because it is happening too fast. You will learn that life expects so much from you, maybe more than you can give, and your parents will be sad because they were not able to protect you from it forever.
"She's a scientist and a lesbian. She's not going to let it slide." Orphan Black
The NORAD tracker for a bittorrent one and had it shut down.
The ACLU hits hard against Christianity whenever they can.
So the christians can mobilize a political machine, and that's okay.... but when somoene reacts they're evil. Cute.
I'm 21 and on much the same wave of thought... personally, I'd love to never involve my kids in such outright lies and deceit. I'd explain it simply, that Santa is a fairy tale just like any other story from their favorite book. It's a 'game' that many people play each year where the parents 'pretend' to be Santa for fun and tradition.
It's quite possible to have magic and adventure without outright tricking your kids and ruining their complete trust in your word. I imagine it would do a lot for their intelligent view of the world as well. The only problem would probably be convincing their mother of all this, which, if I had to guess, is why this all continues.
http://atheism.about.com/b/a/102743.htm
he visits only good children.
By franchising his gift delivery logistics to local licensees and shifting his backoffice operations (primarly the implementation of his merit determination database) offshore, Santa is able to focus on his key value-adding activity of saying "ho ho ho!" a lot.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
...but if I had to give up Christmas to get rid of monuments to the 10 commandments, school prayer, abortion clinic bombers and all the other crusaders and proselytizers out of my life, show me where to sign.
ho ho ho
Even with the military adaptation, engineers could not work out the "Christmasseyness." Note the Christmas angel appearance.
Ignorance is curable, stupid is forever.
That was a great post, fermion. As usual, I'm without points when I really want to mod something up.
Where do you think Genetic Savings and Clone got the idea?
And when you have that many cryogenic freezers to run, it's much cheaper to locate somewhere really cold.
Maybe our understanding of time is less than that of the mighty Claus. Perhaps the merry ol' Saint Nick can expand time in front of him and compress it behind him so that while he moves at extrordinary speeds due to our relative time frame. He will see us in near stationary movement. THEREFORE, the number 4 proves that Santa can do it in about 1 hour in relation to our relative time frame.
You *will* care 5 milliseconds after you die. But by then, it's too late. Remember my words when you stand before God at the Great White Throne Judgment and are cast into the Lake of Fire.
It's sad people think like this. They don't know the value of their soul/spirt.
Oh well. I don't believe in forcing people to believe (as that doesn't work). But I hope one day, the Holy Spirit of God does touch your heart, before it's too late.
God Bless. Merry Christmas.
-- DuckWing
Fuck you. Remember my words when christianity finally falls apart.
-gjr
It saddens me to think that you find it impossible to have fun without lying to yourself and loved ones.
You listed: Freedom, justice, love, progess, right, wrong, good and evil as lies. They aren't lies, they are ideological concepts. Entirely different from the Santa myth. Science isn't a lie, its a best guess. It always has been. Thats what seperates scientists from 'the rest' to put it crudely. Scientists accept that they do not know everything. Personally, I don't really accept anything as fact and I am happy knowing that I don't know.
;)
Existance is fine for some people, but I'd like to do better than just existance.
Sacraficing rational thought for basic indulgences is dispicable.
Oh yes, and that brandy does sound nice. Despite what you people who have responded to me on slashdot think, I love a good time just as much as the next guy
10-4
I believe that in this contemporary globalized world, santa should create a south-pole base, to help distribute his gifts. Of course, the slay would be carried out by *flying penguins*!... This way children fron the south hemisphere could start creating their own christmas folklore. It's sad to live here where christmas is in the summer, and see all that snow and furry coats when it's hot as hell...
Nicolau Werneck - NIC1138
"The secret of genius is to carry the spirit of childhood into maturity" -- Thomas Huxley