Is there a Santa Claus?

Is there an answer to the age old question; "Is there really a Santa Claus?"
 FYI: (I'm not a grinch, just a logical thinker)

Lets look at some facts, shall we?


Consider the following:

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 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.



-Praise Sharp

My Small Silver Bag

As I stood before the massive wooden doors, gazing at the delicate designs and carvings on it, I trembled with apprehension. In my hand was a small silver bag that contained my broken heart. Every hardship that I had been through, one by one, day by day, and fight after fight, had reduced my heart into a pile of grey dust. I could no longer bear to leave it in this condition. So, I went about on a journey to find some one who could repair my cremated heart. Its strange that one so young as I at that time and place could have a heart in such poor condition.

I had heard about the man who knew how repair broken hearts. But I had never met him personally, I had only heard about him from others who had stood at these same doors that stood before me that life changing day. It was like standing on the edge of a dock preparing to jump into a body of water of unknown depth, "Will I drown?" "Is this what I really need?" So many questions and fears plagued my mind, that I began to feel uncertain.

In a small step of faith, my quivering hand reached forth, my fingers curled around the brass knocker, "Knock, Knock." Silence. Perhaps I didn't knock hard enough. Just as I began to reach for the knocker again, the doors slowly opened. Light of unexplainable luster shone out from the entrance, I quickly shielded my eyes as I walked through the doors.

The inside of this dwelling was beyond everything I had imagined, so many bright colors of blue, green and gold, millions of hearts of all shapes, sizes and types hung on the enormous walls of marble around me. All kinds of little trinkets of character such as, love, joy, peace and happiness were stacked neatly on the shelves in the room. "Oh," I though, "To have just one of the trinkets for myself." But I knew that these things were highly valued and to purchase one with what little I had would be perposterous.

"Ah!" a deep voice said, "There you are, little one. I've been waiting for you." My body jolted with shock, I turned around then looked up. Befor me stood a tall and enormously large man. His countenance was as pure as a fine cut diamond, his eyes held wisdom and love beyond all human comprehension that saw directly through my soul, and his voice sonded like an stringed orchestra composed of well trained musicians. He beconed me to come closer, despite my apprehensions, and timidness and bent his enormous figure down to my eye level.

I gulped, and my lips quivered as I said, "Um, sir? C..Could you help me? I..I heard that you can fix anything, Could you fix this?" I held up my small silver bag. He nodded and extended his enormous hand towards me. I placed my small silver bag in it. I couldn't help but notice that on his wrist was a circualr shaped scar, It looked as though someone had inflicted this upon him with brutality and force.

He walked over to his work area and sat down on the large wooden chair. I stood on the tip of my toes to peer over the desk. He opened my small silver bag and emptied its contents in his right hand. There my cremated heart laid in countless pieces, like sand on a large plate. His eyes filled with compassion as he placed his left hand over my cremated heart and began to mold it back together. As he did this I felt the bending and tuning of every movement, after all it was my heart and its connection to me was not broken. Occasionally, I would feel a slight pain, especially when He took out an uncecessary chunk of rubble that had found its way in my heart.

At last he was finished. I looked at my heart and overwelming joy filled my soul. It wasen't scattered in a billion bits anymore, it was finally whole! He handed my heart back to me, and I stared at it in wonder and excitement. "Oh, thank you!" I exclaimed. I offered to pay him but he said it was already paid for. I had to give him something to express my thankfulness and joy. I had nothing of value that I could give him but my heart. The very thing that he repaired so carefully, I gave back to him. I placed my heart back in the small silver bag and returned it to its healer. He assured me that it would be safe in his arms and I could visit any time to check on it. I left the shop with more than I expected, I had all the priceless things that I thought were too expensive. I also had the reassurance that my heart in the small silver bag would be taken care of by the one who repaired it.

By

Praise Sharp

Courage

“If we're growing, we're always going to be out of our comfort zone.”

Have you ever had one of those days where you know something that has never happened to you before is going to happen? What do you do? I personally, panic.


To me, new things are like standing on the edge of a cliff. I look down and see nothing but darkness. I toss a rock down into the crevasse, it bumps into a few things on the way down, but I never hear it hit the bottom. I am wearing a parachute, but I'm not sure if  it works or not and the only way for me to get where I'm going is to jump and pull the string. Sheer terror, grabs hold of my soul and begins to torment me with ideas of what might happen if the parachute fails to open. Falling, falling, falling down into a realm of which I am not familiar with...unknown things wait for me at the bottom. Is there a treasure waiting to be discovered? Or is there a hideous, grotesque monster waiting for a snack? Do I remain in the familiar territory or do I plunge into the unknown?

Courage is the ground in which great individuals grow, so if I plan to grow a little I'm going to have to take some chances. Wether it be jumping off a cliff with a parachute or stepping into unfamiliar territory. If courage was easy, all mankind would be brave as lions.

To blog or not to blog...that is the question..

So, as several of you might or might not know...I decided to start a blog account. I have no idea why. But, some friends have complained that I don't share enough of my thoughts with the humans around me. Might I say that, I have no idea what the term, "blog" means so until someone gives me a better definition I have come up with a few of my own:

1. A bloated log
2. a bleeping frog
3. a boggy smog
4. a rather interesting lumpy and jello like substance
5. blabbering while being logged in...