Happy PC Holidays to all!

[Michelle Miller]

Rudolph was a four-hooved ungulate, who, incidentally, possessed a nasal appendage of a maroon luster. Consequently, if circumstances were to present themselves that he ever came into your view, You would most undoubtedly remark at to its illuminative qualities.

The multitude of other members of the population in his ecological community had previously teased, chuckled boisterously and dubbed him unspeakable pseudonyms -- the objective of which was to lower his self-esteem and make him miserable.

They also excluded him from participation in leisure activities consistent with their species.

However, on the twenty-fourth of December in an unspecified year a mythological, supernatural being inherent to western culture (who symbolizes the Christmas attitude and allegedly brings gifts to children) arrived through the supersaturated, humid air.

He formally invited Rudolph, due to his extraordinary nasal characteristic to stand at the forefront of his snow vehicle with the express purpose that he navigate through the nocturnal mist.

At that point, the multitude of other members of the population in his ecological community who had previously teased, chuckled boisterously, and dubbed him unspeakable pseudonyms, reversed their disposition toward Rudolph to a more congenial, amicable relationship.

They consequently exclaimed with great exaltation and fervor, Rudolph, the antlered mammal with a maroon nasal appendage, you shall most certainly be recorded in the annals of time and your memory will be preserved for posterity!

_________________________________________________________


On the 12th day of the Eurocentrically imposed midwinter festival, my Significant Other in a consenting adult, monogamous relationship gave to me:

TWELVE males reclaiming their inner warrior through ritual drumming,

ELEVEN pipers piping (plus the 8-member pit orchestra made up of members in good standing of the Musicians Equity Union as called for in their union contract even though they will not be asked to play a note),

TEN melanin deprived testosterone-poisoned scions of the patriarchal ruling class system leaping,

NINE persons engaged in rhythmic self-expression,

EIGHT economically disadvantaged female persons stealing milk-products from enslaved Bovine-Americans,

SEVEN endangered swans swimming on federally protected wetlands,

SIX enslaved Fowl-Americans producing stolen non-human animal products,

FIVE golden symbols of culturally sanctioned enforced domestic incarceration,

(NOTE: after members of the Animal Liberation Front threatened to throw red paint at my computer, the calling birds, French hens and partridge have been reintroduced to their native habitat. To avoid further Animal-American enslavement, the remaining gift package has been revised.)

FOUR hours of recorded whale songs

THREE deconstructionist poets

TWO Sierra Club calendars printed on recycled processed tree carcasses

and...

ONE Spotted Owl activist chained to an old-growth pear tree.

[Kay]

Obligatory Seasonal Euphoria
Kay

[Kendra Lynn]

Got a real politically correct kick out of reading that!
And a happy solstice/winter festival/new year to all!
Peace-- Kendra Lynn ("hippie cheerleader").

[Gaven McLaren]

Happy Yule. Merry Christmas, Happy Chanukah, Happy Kwanza, and any other winter holiday around this time.

[Jillian]

An Engineer's Perspective (retrieved from any number of semi-anonymous websites):


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, presuming there is 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 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 stocking, 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 onto 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 a conventional 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 (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousands tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 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 re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would adsorb 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 17,000 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.

Merry Christmas!

[Absaroka]

Very nice.

However according to Cheech and Chong Santa avoids these problems by taking the freeway,man. Or he did till immigration stopped him at the border and took him into another room....now he just stands around asking for spare change outside of supermarkets with his little bell and a pot.

Absaroka