Does Santa exist???

I found this essay in my e-mails, sent from a friend. It’s an interesting read if you’re a critical historical thinker / Cartesian method scientist, but sucks if you believe that the question “How many angels can dance on the head of a pin?” may have some pertinence. I’m of the later persuasion and thus do believe in Santa Claus; it’s the Easter Bunny that I have problems with, partially because when I was a boy the Santa at the mall told me that the Easter Bunny doesn’t exist!

I love Christmas because of family, good food and the hope of salvation in Christ; which is so glaringly missing in the modern version of “Consumer Fest” previously known as Xmas, a.k.a. Christmas. Anything I can do to debunk this modern myth makes me feel all warm inside.
That said, after reading “Polar Express” to my kids when they were young, causes me to hear the bell and surrender to the myth even at the expense of my dislike for this modern tarnished holiday going on inside the many shopping malls of the western world. I think we’ve missed the point!

Please don't choke on the wrapping!

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Therefore, I submit this essay to you:

Does Santa exist???

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renown scientific journal - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear) to handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 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 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 the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house.Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.This means that 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 on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds.Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - - to 353,430 tons. Again, for comparison - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.

5) 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's 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.

Mmmm... but remember kids, when you stop believing in Santa is when you start getting clothes for Christmas...

GP

Boddingtons: the 100% Mancunian 90% Welsh beer. Say what???

On Thursday 9th September 2004 the staff at Boddingtons at Strangeways Brewery were told of its intended closure at the end of February 2005. This is not the first time that Interbrew the Belgium owners of Boddingtons have tried to move the famous 'Cream of Manchester' out of the city. To read More click here.

“It won't be the Cream of Manchester, it will become the sour grapes of South Wales.”
Franny Joyce, Transport and General Workers' Union - T&G

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Boddingtons: the 100% Mancunian 90% Welsh beer. Say what??? You have to be joking!

How can it be that Interbrew (the world’s largest volume brewer – InBev) could even think of moving Boddingtons Beer, commonly known internationally as “The Cream of Manchester” to a brewery in Wales? Boddingtons Beer has been brewed at Strangeways Brewery in Manchester City England for over 228 years, since 1778. Citing efficiency as the cause, Interbrew UK plans to move 90% of the brewery to its new canning facility in Wales, keeping the beer cask production in Manchester.
I consider Boddingtons Cream Ale (Boddies) one of the finest brews to have ever crossed my lips. The very idea that Interbrew would move the brewery from Manchester is perplexing to me. Its globalization gone mad: you know it is a sad day when your hometown beer becomes an import even though you are still living in your hometown.
I am encouraging you to help the lovers of Boddies worldwide, the citizens of Manchester and the brewery workers to keep their brewery at home by signing their petition to keep Boddingtons in Manchester. You can read more about Manchester’s concerns at their website http://www.savethecream.co.uk/ Remember to sign the petition.” GP

Click on the above image to see a humorous old Boddingtons Ad with Melanie Sykes

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Okay, first a post on football / soceer and now one on beer.Yes, I drink beer, gallons of it. No, I don’t have a bulbous belly and I might very well have a hangover from last nights copious imbibing.But this post isn’t about that! It is about the consequences of World Globalization and how it effects all of our communities. It’s about labourers and the separation they are subjected to from what they make. It’s about trying to come to terms with what’s happening to our societies world wide as fewer people and corporations control even larger amounts of the world’s economy, while the poor have even less. Dang, maybe that’s why I drink – no I just drink to settle the pain of individual alienation. GP

And now for something completely different.

Not unlike a Monty Python skit, I will now take a radical turn from my serious art concerns to present one of my current indulgences as frivolous at it may seem.

I am a big soccer / football fan. As a Dutchman, I would normally support AJAX FC of Amsterdam, The Netherlands. Alas, living in North America makes this very hard to do in terms of watching live games.
About two years ago, I decided to start watching English Premier League (EPL) Football because my TV would permit me to watch almost all the games from each and every team. Still with some bias, I started following some of the Dutch players who played professionally in England, which took me to several clubs at the time. Having loved Denis Bergkamp as a member of the Dutch National Team, I began to watch Arsenal FC, London, for which he played in England. The result was an ever increasing interest in following Arsenal games and not too soon after becoming a complete supporter of the club. Yes, I am a Gooner (Gunner).


Visit Arsenal's website to learn more about this football club. — www.Arsenal.com
Read one of the better Blog's on Arsenal FC — www.ArseBlog.com

Arsenal won their game yesterday with Portsmouth 1-0. It was a sloppy mess of a game. Sol Campbell managed to save the day by hammering in a pile driver of a goal from 22 metres at a speed of about 130 kph. Ouch for Pompey hurray for the Gooners.

Why do I mention this, well I’d be interested in talking football until my fingers developed bruises from typing (well three maybe four fingers - just to elucidate my typing skills).

My first blog.

Its not that I feel I have a lot to say to the world that my art does not already, but every now and then I do want to muse over my current situation, concerns and thoughts - thus this blog. Therefore, I am going to try to post a comment as often as is possible for me, within the constraints of time.