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Christmas Cheer

The Physics of Santa 172

Roland Piquepaille writes "If you don't believe that Santa Claus can deliver presents to millions of homes in a single night, Larry Silverberg, professor of mechanical and aerospace engineering at North Carolina State University (NCSU), explains that Santa's society of elves has an understanding of physics and engineering that exceeds our own. In fact, Santa Claus and his crew really can deliver presents in one night because of their advanced knowledge of electromagnetic waves, the space/time continuum, nanotechnology, genetic engineering and computer science. For example, he doesn't carry presents. He uses a nano-toymaker to fabricate toys grown atom by atom inside the children's homes. Very entertaining reading... Here is a link to additional details and pictures of Santa and his elves flying over New Zealand."
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The Physics of Santa

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  • by Swimport ( 1034164 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @01:39PM (#17354386) Homepage
    Ive got a bridge and a Messiah to sell you.
    • Ummm, Just who do you think Santa works for anyway? It stands to reason (and faith?) that given this, Santa would have more than a few tricks up his sleeve...
      • by Tatarize ( 682683 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @07:54PM (#17356468) Homepage
        Well, personally I think the idea of Santa is a lot more believable than that God thing.

        I mean, each year millions of kids get presents from Santa. It would take a massive conspiracy on a global scale to pull off that kind of evidence from fraud. One or two houses... maybe... but millions?

        Now, compare that with the actual reliable evidence for God: there isn't any. You can explain the entire God thing with a bunch of bored people in a desert with nothing else to do. To explain the little bits of non-evidence religion provides is downright trivial. But, millions upon millions of presents each and ever year? Those presents actually exist and everything.

        On pretty much every count Santa wins. Where does Santa live? The north pole. Where does God live? Outside of spacetime, where he's exempt from the laws of cause-and-effect in order to be a cause for the universe while not needing a cause for himself. I mean, a simple answer vs. something clearly constructed out of bullcrap... it's your choice.

        As for the whole, watching you all the time and knowing when you're being bad or good old men... I think Santa is much more plausible.
        • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

          Well, good luck to you on judgment day.
        • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

          by ggKimmieGal ( 982958 )
          I highly recommend you read the Good News Bible. It is a protestant bible that gets to the point. Even though you don't believe in God, you should still read the bible at least once. It is the book that has shaped Western Civilization as we know it. By understanding it, you'll have a deeper understanding of most poems and literature. The book also provides evidence of God. :-P You cannot say there isn't any when there is a little bit; just about as much as Santa gets. I'm not saying I'm religious at
          • by Darby ( 84953 )
            It is the book that has shaped Western Civilization as we know it.

            Hardly. Western Civilization as we know it was shaped by the Enlightenment which was largely a rejection of religious dogma in favor of reason. The theocratic horrors of the world shaped by the bible didn't end, but they were curtailed.

            By understanding it, you'll have a deeper understanding of most poems and literature.

            Well, "a lot", certainly. Most? Not so much.

            The book also provides evidence of God. :-P You cannot say there isn't any when
            • by elbobo ( 28495 )
              Heck, there isn't even one single scrap of evidence that Jesus ever lived as a man, let alone a god.

              And also plenty of direct evidence that the Jesus story and Christian beliefs were fictional rip offs of the back story of a competing religion [wikipedia.org].

              Actual genuine belief in the factual accuracy of the story of Jesus, let alone belief in Christian spirituality requires either ignorance and stupidity or outright denial and rejection of known facts.
          • >>Even though you don't believe in God, you should still read the bible at least once.

            Dude. I've read the Bible, the Koran too. For my money, the Koran is better written though still boring as dirt.

            >>It is the book that has shaped Western Civilization as we know it.

            So has racism, war, and disease.

            >>The book also provides evidence of God.

            Books aren't evidence. I've seen plenty of suggested non-evidence before. Look women found the tomb... it must be true (though, each Gospel changes the wom
    • -1 Troll? That was gold man, gold.

      I didn't realize there were so many Santa believers in here.
    • Re: (Score:2, Informative)

      by Anonymous Coward
      Actually, Sinter Klass was a real person who was born in 280.
      While the legends just grew from evolving story telling, the person did exist.
      As for "Messiah" that you speak of, the same is true.

      Most people grow out of believing in the magic legend of "Santa".

      Sadly, a majority of people, believe that "Messiah" did things more magic than flying with a bright nosed caribou.
  • Then why am I not floating in a huge B-Field right now?

    I feel the karma roasting ...right....now....

  • by xmas2003 ( 739875 ) * on Sunday December 24, 2006 @01:43PM (#17354426) Homepage
    The local paper wrote a similar story last year - my response from my Santa Tracker page [komar.org] is attached below ... and as noted, the christmas webcams [komar.org] are live again this year looking for the Big Red Guy.


    Todd Neff from the Boulder Camera wrote a Christmas Eve article about the physics of Santa. [dailycamera.com] He included a "Parental disretion advised" notice, but the headline writer argueably got a little carried away. Needless to say, since I live in the Republic of Boulder, [blogspot.com] outraged residents wrote several letters to the editor [dailycamera.com] that were published on December 28th. So I wrote the following which ran on December 31st. [dailycamera.com] Great headline by the Camera and they printed my letter in its entirety (including some subtle attempts at humor) with minor grammatical edits.

    HO, HO, HO - Yes, Virginia, as my Web cam shows

    As a technologist, I enjoyed Todd Neff's piece on Christmas Eve about the physics of Santa; kudos to the Daily Camera for not just reprinting the AP article, but doing some local embelishment that added a nice touch to the story (and ditto in the Dec. 28 piece about the coming leap-second).

    As reported by the Camera's Kate Larsen a week earlier (Dec. 17), I have three Web cams (three more than last year) at my house watching my 26,000 Christmas lights. Needless to say, my 7-year-old and 4-year-old sons were excited to see if Santa would show up on these Web cams. And, not surprisingly, the Big Red Guy (and especially Rudolph) are quite visible stopping by our Lafayette house on Christmas Eve. [komar.org]

    So while it would be (way!) out of place for me to weigh in on journalistic reporting as other letter writers have, I thought I would write to say that while Todd accurately reported that the physics of Santa are a challenge, the conclusion is wrong. Yes, sometimes, the paper doesn't get the story right ... and yes, Virginia, there is a Santa Claus.

    Santa does deliver presents on Christmas Eve to children around the world.

    The magic/miracle is still alive, and I would suggest that Camera readers (and their kids) review the video at www.komar.org to judge for themselves.

    And you'd better believe I'll be watching next year as Santa returns at Christmas.

  • All this debate about a "high-tech Santa" coming from the "Oh, we can't accept that he's a magical being" contingent is getting pathetic. All Heinlein quotes aside, the reason Santa can know who's naughty and who's nice without being accused of being a "Big Brother" by SlashDot and the reason that he can provide gifts to all the good little girls and boys in a single evening without being seen or captured is because he's magic! Get over it, all you hack scientists!

    ::Colz Grigor

    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by partenon ( 749418 )
      Understanding *how* Santa Claus delivers the gifts in Christmas Eve can help us improve our engineering. Where do you think the idea behind Google Search [google.com] came from? Doesn't the pigeons idea looks like Santa's carriers?
      • Doesn't the pigeons idea looks like Santa's carriers?
        Actually I thought they looked like plague carriers.
    • Dr. Who (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Ksevio ( 865461 )
      Obviously Santa uses time lord technology to fly his sleigh around and store all the presents inside it. It's bigger on the inside than the outside.
    • Yes. It is time to turn our attention to the evil that Santa commits. Does his magic also allow him to commit more acts of copyright, patent, and trademark infringement in one night than even the worst pirates do in a whole year? This red suited criminal is stealing millions of dollars of potential revenue from poor starving artists and RIAA executives.

      Any decent artist out there want to make up a cartoon depicting the RIAA suing Santa in a courtroom?
  • Roland (Score:5, Funny)

    by Lord_Dweomer ( 648696 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @01:57PM (#17354508) Homepage
    While this IS technically a Roland story and I should be refusing to post in it (don't be fooled that he has an original link in his post, he still has his ZDNet blog link in there as well) I'd like to take this opportunity to copy/paste one of my favorite Santa posts [slashdot.org] of all time that I found on Slashdot. Props to rev_g33k_101 for this one.

    Santa Claus: An Engineer's Perspective I. There are approximately 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, Jehovah's Witnesses, or Buddist religions, this reduces the workload on 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 that there is at least one good child in each.

    II. Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and rotation of the earth, assuming he travels 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 at least one good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, jump out, go down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump in the sleigh, and move on to the next house. (That's why it's really pointless to stay up and wait for him....)

    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 breaks. This means that Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 times the speed of sound. For the purposes of comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 75.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

    III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child has nothing more than a medium-sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull nothing more than 300 pounds. Even granted that "flying" reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or nine of them; Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the sleigh itself, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizibeth (the ship, not the monarch).

    IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance; this would heat up the reindeer in the same fasion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and causing deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.2 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reaches the fifth house on his trip. Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 miles per second in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 G's. A 250 pound Santa (which seem ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pound of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

    V. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now.

    Don't forget to click my link and read some of the responses to the original post, they're great. Merry Christmas Slashdot!

    • Re:Roland (Score:5, Informative)

      by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @02:20PM (#17354662) Journal
      The "Santa post" you quote is originally from the January 1990 issue of Spy Magazine.
    • As I previosly poited out to someone else when they posted something along the same argument i their journal:

      1. Santa is obviosusly a clone. Look anywhere - there are hundreds of them visible in every shopping mall. Or are you going to deny the evidence of your own eyeballs?
      2. Assuming an "even distribution: is the WORST POSSIBLE distribution, guaranteed to suck up the most time. The real distributin is much more optimal. You'll find most kids have a brother or sister, cutting the number of trips by at least
    • I would add that he also doesn't visit children of Russian and Greek Orthodox religions. Grandfather Frost visits them on 7th January.
      • by Darby ( 84953 )
        I would add that he also doesn't visit children of Russian and Greek Orthodox religions. Grandfather Frost visits them on 7th January.

        That's interesting and all, but get to the meat of the issue: Which one brings the best presents ;-)

  • This guy really couldn't let go his childhood beliefs.
    • Are you kidding? This author's name is Dr. Larry Silverberg. I somehow doubt that Silverberg's Jewish mother would have even allowed him near a Santa or a Christmas Tree. If anything, it is because his parents wouldn't let him participate in the Holiday Season that he feels a need to explain it scientifically. Or, he is just being a wiseass and trying to teach a little physics to the good Christian boys and girls :-)
  • Has anyone notified the President about this ?
    • Of course! He can't wait to see if Santa brought him a Tickle Me Elmo.
    • This came up during the Cold War at NORAD. They wanted to make sure that the Russians didn't send an attack south at the same time Santa was making his rounds on Christmas Eve!!! So they track Santa every year.

      check out here http://www.noradsanta.org/en/default.php [noradsanta.org] for the scoop!!!

      I noticed this year he cleverly missed the middle east... maybe he's afraid of getting shot down this year.... or maybe UN sanctions apply to Santa too!!

  • ... won't somebody think of the children!
    • I think this can help our geek children understand that Santa do exist. Most of geek children don't believe in Santa anymore, and proving Santa is also a geek can help'em.
  • From http://home.tiac.net/~cri/2002/santaring.html [tiac.net]

    (Don't bother hitting the link, here's the text from the page - the author who collected and organized the posts is Richard Harter, and everything from here on down is his effort, with some minor edits to make it past the filter on Slashdot):

    Santa Claus: Lord of the Rings

    In the rec.arts.sf.written newsgroup there was a disturbingly plausible thread connecting Santa Claus and the Lord of the Rings. Learn about fruitcake as mathoms, the sinister Tom Bombadil,
  • Roland! (Score:5, Funny)

    by Wellington Grey ( 942717 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @02:29PM (#17354736) Homepage Journal
    I must say, I've never been one of the Roland haters on slashdot, but then I never knew that he wears orange glasses with a matching shirt [nyud.net]

    -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]
  • Zombie tradition (Score:1, Interesting)

    I'm not sure why people insist on keeping this farce alive. I think the parents are duped even more than the kids are, based on my own experience...long before anyone stopped pretending that Santa existed around me, I knew what was up. I got a bittersweet kick out of watching grown men and women tell bald-faced lies to my face. And I played them like marionettes, inventing new devious questions about Santa; just enough to make them visibly scramble for an answer, but not enough to make them think I knew the
    • Seriously...at what point does someone think it's a good idea to lie to their children like this?

      The problem is the other parents. Try raising a child not to believe in Santa and you will be quickly ostracized by other parents. Plus, you don't think any of those parents are going to let your kid play with theirs when the holidays roll around, do you?

      -Grey [wellingtongrey.net]

      • Re: (Score:1, Insightful)

        by Anonymous Coward
        > The problem is the other parents. Try raising a child not to believe in Santa and you will be quickly ostracized by other parents.
        > Plus, you don't think any of those parents are going to let your kid play with theirs when the holidays roll around, do you?

        s/Santa/Jesus/g
      • No problem. Tell them Santa is a game that parents like to play (which it is) and that some kids believe in him.

        I think I stopped with the santa stuff myself when I was old enough to read (about 5 or 6) since it was obvious that if santa came he didn't actually leave any presents... they were already there under the tree and they were from my parents, not a guy in a red suit.
    • Re:Zombie tradition (Score:4, Interesting)

      by Dirtside ( 91468 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @03:18PM (#17355004) Journal
      We've taken a different tack on Santa Claus than most parents. It resembles your attitude, minus the bitter hostility and swearing. :)

      Our son is almost 2.5 years old, and he can already identify Santa Claus as being the fat guy with the beard in the red suit. We haven't told him what Santa Claus (purportedly) is or does; he's simply got a label for the "fat bearded guy in red suit" image now.

      We'll answer any questions he asks, truthfully; at most, we're likely to tell him that Santa Claus is someone who travels around each Christmas leaving presents for children, in order to celebrate the Winter Solstice. We're going to leave out the naughty/nice thing (punishments and rewards for bad/good behavior are, it turns out, not a good idea). We're definitely going to leave Jesus out of it (we're atheists), except maybe to explain that that's what certain people believe the winter holiday is about.

      My mother-in-law once said that Santa is like a "practice God" for kids to believe in, and I pretty much agree; but I'm not going to pretend he doesn't exist as an entity in our culture, and our son is going to have questions about him.
    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by kfg ( 145172 )
      Seriously...at what point does someone think it's a good idea to lie to their children like this?

      And then wonder why their kids don't believe a word they say when they're a bit older.

      Frankly I've always found the myth of people exchanging gifts out of love and kindness for each other far more asthetically pleasing than some fat guy trying to stuff himself down the chimmney, even if just as mythological.

      KFG
    • by Trillan ( 597339 )
      Completely agree with you. If our kids can't trust us to tell them the truth about Santa, what can they trust us with? Do parents who lie to their kids really think there are no consequences when the kid finds out?
    • Re: (Score:3, Insightful)

      by localman ( 111171 )
      Wow, that's a pretty harsh reaction. I'm not a fan of lying to kids either, but I think you're forgetting some of what it's like to be a kid. I sure didn't take it like you're describing.

      I don't actually recall my parents making a big story out of Santa; I think I learned most of the story from books like "The Night Before Christmas", various television specials, and talking with friends. Like most kids, fantasy blends with reality to a large degree and my world included lots of make believe. I didn't e
      • I was trying to think, what my view is on 'santa' Then I thought why am I doing this it's christmas day!
        Merry Christmas my fellow Slashdot readers, lets go and spend sometime with some of the people important in our lives and have some fun.

         
    • by Soko ( 17987 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @04:27PM (#17355378) Homepage
      Seriously...at what point does someone think it's a good idea to lie to their children like this? Don't give me that shit about it being a good life experience for children to realize not everything is true. You can find a million other examples to show them, without perpetrating a huge falsehood on your own. It's wrong, you know it's wrong, and you will still try to justify it. Because you enjoy, in a sadistic way, the total power you exert over your children. You love playing the propaganda machine and dictator, and threatening them with retribution from a farce you concocted, and watching them squirm. Yet ten years later, you'll be so fucking ignorant as to why your children never listen to you, or trust that what you have to say might be good advice. Well...they may be right.

      Have issues with our parents, do we? I haven't heard such vitriol in quite some time. Power? Sadism? Please put down the broad brush you're painting with. It's filled with venom.

      It's not a lie - it's a fantasy. It's an opportunity to experience innocence before it is too quickly gone. I didn't lie to my kids - they knew early on that Santa wasn't a real person, but even after they knew, they still played along because it was fun. Fun for them, fun for us. How am I being a dictator doing that?

      I hope you can let go of some of your anger before you have your own kids, friend, lest they be immune to the spirit that St. Nick is supposed to represent - giving, sharing and caring for our fellow humans.

      Soko
      • by Trillan ( 597339 )
        Although I agree about the anger, "it isn't lie, it's fantasy" doesn't help. The difference between a lie and a fantasy is that people know that fantasy isn't true. If your kid knows the truth, there's no harm in sharing the fantasy. If your kid doesn't know the truth, it's a lie.
      • by Trillan ( 597339 )
        Oops. Came across a bit wrong there. If I could edit my post, I'd add this to the end of that post: You are playing it as a fantasy. That's exactly how I plan to do it with my son. But I think "fantasy" is also too broad a brush to paint everyone with. It's clearly a lie for some.
    • by E++99 ( 880734 )

      Seriously...at what point does someone think it's a good idea to lie to their children like this?... Don't buy into this "magical experience" bullshit

      I agree to a point about the lying. We've never played up Santa or told our kids anything that wasn't true about it. It doesn't seem right to lie, and our kids depend on our credibility for so many things. However I think you're wrong to discount the "magic". Our younger two kids, 5 & 7, believe Santa exists, although our older two never did. And the

    • Re: (Score:2, Insightful)

      by Raist1280 ( 648040 )
      Okay, I don't know why people get so hung up on this, but I feel compelled to put my $0.02 into this discussion.

      First and foremost, telling your children that Santa Claus is real is not a lie, Santa is quite real, but it isn't the person that's real, it's the CONCEPT. Santa Claus is a personification of kindness and goodwill, of giving to others for all the right reasons. I realized from a rather young age that there was no person named Santa Claus who dropped down the chimney and left presents under the tr
    • Re: (Score:2, Funny)

      by shoemilk ( 1008173 )
      Yeah! That's it! You tell them, those liars! I'm so totally with you man! The hell if I'm going to let my kids read fiction!
  • Is that the first time one of my boys asks me if Santa is real, I will confirm his suspicion. If I play cute, and my boy goes on the playground saying "My dad says Santa is real!", I am doing neither of us a favor. I will also threaten him not to tell is little brother. Santa is easy, I imagine when they starting asking me the same questions I have about God.
  • by doomy ( 7461 )
    I don't believe Santa exists.
  • by LGagnon ( 762015 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @03:32PM (#17355080)
    This article seems quite preposterous. As Richard Dawkins points out, belief in Santa is unscientific. [mcsweeneys.net]
    • No shit batman. Of course it's unscientific. So is caring about your family, eating turkey, giving to charity.. millions of things are unscientific. Doesn't make them bad. Not everything has to be about science.

      • by LGagnon ( 762015 )
        Check the link. I was making a joke based on the parody of Dawkins in the link.
      • The GP was using unscientific in the sense of an insufficiently validated belief. You are using it of words to which either it or its negation cannot apply. Adjectival Type error.
  • Oh come on. Everybody knows that Santa has kept up with the times. The sleigh and reindeer were used at first. At the dawn of the industrial revolution he switched most of his distribution network to rail. Hence the recurring motif of toy trains as a present--they were tchachkis(sp?) that rail executives gave ol Nic when they were competing for his business. He re-gifted a lot of them, the kids turned out to like them, and the idea got traction. The sleigh does, and continues, to make "good will" tour

  • Mystery Science Theater explains Santa Better than anyone:

    Tom: It's quiet in the cold of our own little orbit, starless and bible black. And as I look down on the big blue beam we would call home I think it so near, yet... oh, I wish on that star and I hope that in a little snow-covered house with a warm hearth and a loving family, maybe some kid is looking up tonight and wishing upon us. Oh, and how I hope sweet Santa will fly by tonight, because if he does I'm gonna reach right out and hug that big guy
  • by TeknoHog ( 164938 ) on Sunday December 24, 2006 @04:20PM (#17355338) Homepage Journal
    Rudolph the Red-shift Reindeer.
  • I prefer a much stronger, purely logical proof that Santa exists, which I read in a respected mathematical journal a few years ago. We will prove that Santa exists by proving a stronger statement, namely that an existing Santa exists. Clearly, exactly one of the following holds true:
    a) Existing Santa exists.
    b) Existing Santa does not exist.
    Consider b. It is a contradiction, so it is false. Then a) must be true, therefore existing Santa exists, therefore Santa exists. QED.
  • Lobo - "Hit Man to the Stars" - was contracted by the Easter Bunny to hit Santa. Lobo killed Santa after invading Santa's heavily defended compound along with his bulldog.

    Lobo and the bulldog slaughtered the heavily armed (with pop guns) ELF (Elf Lethal Force) militia, then Lobo called Santa out. Santa, appearing as a burly, cigar-smoking, tattooed biker, whipped out a kukri, whereupon Lobo followed suit, and it was on. Both sides got in a few licks until Lobo chopped off Santa's head.

    Afterwards, Lobo took
  • "He uses a nano-toymaker to fabricate toys grown atom by atom inside the children's homes. "

    Are toy manufacturers aware of Santa's gross disregard of their intellectual property?
    I smell a massive lawsuit with a settlement in the order of (pinky to mouth) a BRAZILLIAN DOLLARS!

    Santa cannot be allowed to continue this flagrant violation of the law. Millions of gainfully employed people in toy factories stand to lose their jobs, due to the selfish actions of this one criminal. Action must be taken, now, so that
    • it's those damn socialist northern countries at fault for this!!! Think.. Finland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Germany, Canada.... Santa is a conspiracy by socialist powers that don't respect proper IP law. The retail chain stores are hurting this year. Santa bringing "free" presents will mean more mommies and daddies out of work next year. Forget DVD John or AllofMP3.. the motherload is SANTA CLAUS! He's copying everything from toys, to books, to CDs and DVDs, to whole computers... At least he respects t
    • And in retaliation Santa will open source his nanotech and put them ALL out of business...

      Or maybe become the Pied Piper and use his nanotech to lure away all the "good little boys and girls" to the North Pole and teach them to become nanotech anarchists.

      Santa needs to prove his nanotech is for "peaceful purposes only". That's it! Have the UN Security Council pass a resolution imposing sanctions on him and preventing his Christmas sleigh ride until he proves his nanotech does not have a "uranium enrichment"

      • And we've just noticed that Santa is dressed all in RED! This means Putin and his KGB thugs are involved!

        All toys recieved by children tomorrow should be checked for Polonium-210 contamination!

  • Was quantum physics involved to allow a person to walk on water? Was a cloning process involved to allow a virgin to have a baby? Or should we not try to compare a legend with reality?
  • I mean isnt that the current test of if something exists, it cant be proven to not exist.
  • All the toys in the world are currently made in China and sent out on a certain number of ocean freighters. That's a lot closer to the Santa Clause legend than it was 100 years ago, when there was no single place where all the world's manufacturing was done.

    As we move forward, the world's toys have to be manufactured in fewer and fewer places by fewer and fewer people because it's more efficient to manufacture all the world's products in one place. The world's toys are being transported by fewer vehicles

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