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.

There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But since Santa doesn’t (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total–leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house.

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 stocking, 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 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. That means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 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, at tops 25-30 miles per hour.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child gets nothing more then a medium sized LEGO set (2 lbs), 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 the “flying reindeer” can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine–we need 214,200 reindeer. This increased 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 HMS Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force. In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, he’s now dead.

Back when Star Trek: TNG was on Fox every week I use to watch it all the time. Out all the episodes that I have seen there are two quotes that have always stayed with me. One is by Brent Spiner who played Data, an android who could feel human emotions. In this episode there is a dark cloud in front of the Enterprise. All sensors on the ship are showing that there is nothing in front of them but they can still see it. They can see that is has a shape, it has mass and there for must have weight but there sensors are showing that it has no dimensions. Thats when Data asked the question “Is no dimension at all a dimension within its self?”.

That in a round-about way led me to the book Flatland by Edwin A. Abbott. Its the story of a square living in a two dimensional world (Flatland) when he is visited by a sphere from the three-dimensional world (Spaceland). The sphere tries to tell the square about Spaceland but the square doesn’t understand till he is taken from Flatland into Spaceland. From there the square starts to wonder if a forth, fifth, and sixth dimensions could be.

As luck would have it you can check out this book online with Google Book Search and many other places. But I would rather read the book with it in my hands then online and you can get it from Amazon for under $5.00. Not a bad deal at all.

I was going over all the stories I have Dugg over the past two years and cleaning out all the crap. Stuff like The iPod Flea Ad Spoof, links to the old, but at the time new, Longhorn wallpaper and the huge list of wi-fi passwords that has been posted to the site many times. That is when I came across a list at Zeropaid for torrent sites. 299 torrent sites to be exact. Now if you can’t find whatever your looking for on that list you don’t need it.

My day job is working on traffic signals. Day in and day out that’s what I do. Nobody stops and really thinks about them till they are not working but everybody understands them. One thing that most people don’t know is how much power it takes to run traffic signals at a intersection. That’s why when I read the following at autobloggreen.com I thought it was cool that someone was taking notice.

Seville (Spain) has decided to replace gradually all the old halogen and incandescent traffic lights (that use 35 and 70W bulbs) for LEDs, which have a power output of only 6 to 15 W. This is claimed to save the city up to a 85 percent in the traffic light electricity bill, plus a bigger lifespan of the product. Savings are up to almost 4 million KWh which reduce CO2 emissions in 4,000 tons.

Here in Wichita, every new signal is LED’s and as old ones go bad they are changed over to LED’s. What Seville is doing is no different then what most city’s are doing but its nice that someone understands why there being changed to LED’s.

Here is the links for all of them.

30 Seconds with Phone Guy
The Apple Phone Show
Apple Quick Tip of the Week
Ask A Ninja
Ctrl+Alt+Chicken
Download Squad
Drum&Bass Arena Podcast
Great Speeches in History
Hidden Universe HD
The Illumination Project
InDigital
The Linux Action Show!
MacBreak Weekly
The Merlin Show
Mysterious Universe
Onion News Network
this WEEK in MEDIA
this WEEK in TECH
The Totally Rad Show
Windows Weekly with Paul Thurrott
X-Play Daily Video Podcast
Xbox Live’s Major Nelson Radio

Stop smoking =

20 MINUTES
Blood pressure drops to normal.
Pulse rate drops to normal.
Body temperature of hands and feet increases to normal.

8 HOURS
Carbon monoxide level in blood drops to normal.
Oxygen level in blood increases to normal.

24 HOURS
Chance of heart attack decreases.

48 HOURS
Nerve endings start regrowing.
Ability to smell and taste is enhanced.

2 WEEKS TO 3 MONTHS
Circulation improves.
Walking becomes easier.
Lung function increases up to 30%.

1 TO 9 MONTHS
Coughing, sinus congestion, fatigue, and shortness of breath decrease.
Cilia regrow in lungs, increasing ability to handle mucus, clean the lungs, and reduce infection.
Body’s overall energy increases.

1 YEAR
Excess risk of coronary heart disease is half that of a smoker.

5 YEARS
Lung cancer death rate for average smoker (one pack a day) decreases by almost half.
Stroke risk is reduced to that of a nonsmoker 5-15 years after quitting.
Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat and esophagus is half that of a smoker’s.

10 YEARS
Lung cancer death rate similar to that of nonsmokers.
Precancerous cells are replaced.
Risk of cancer of the mouth, throat, esophagus, bladder, kidney and pancreas decreases.

15 YEARS
Risk of coronary heart disease is that of a nonsmoker.

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.

There are 2 billion children in the world (persons under 18). But since Santa doesn’t (appear to) handle Muslim, Hindu, Jewish, or Buddhist children, that reduces the workload by 85% of the total–leaving 378 million according to the Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that’s 91.8 million homes. One presumes there is at least one good child per house.

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 stocking, 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 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, etc. That means that Santa’s sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3000 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, at tops 25-30 miles per hour.

The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming each child gets nothing more then a medium sized LEGO set (2 lbs), 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 the “flying reindeer” can pull TEN TIMES that normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine–we need 214,200 reindeer. This increased 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 HMS Queen Elizabeth.

353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy per second, each. In short, they will burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating a deafening sonic boom in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa meanwhile, will be subject to centrifugal forces of 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by a 4,315,015 pound force. In conclusion, if Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas eve, he’s now dead.

I went to Best Buy to pick up Tomb Raider: Legend for the 360 because it was only $30 and as I got to the check out I remember why I don’t shop there all that much. In most parts of the world if you want to buy something you just pay with money or credit and your on your way. Not at Best Buy.

I know that going to pay for anything they are going to ask me for my phone number and before I just gave them my cell number. This time I told the lady that I didn’t have a phone thinking that would be the end of it and I could buy my game and be gone. But snice they don’t have a number to type in I guess they think im new and ask me for my address. Still don’t know why you need my address to take my money but whatever. So I give the lady my address but not my apartment number. Yay, were done and I can pay for this now. Not really. She hits enter and the system won’t take it without a phone number. I tell her to just try a 555 number but still won’t work. She then asks me for my work number. I tell her that theres no reason you need my work number so after thinking about it for a little bit she puts in the number for the store. Finally were done and I can pay for this dam game.

So thats about the last time I am getting anything from Best Buy. There is no reason that anyone should need your phone number, address, fingerprints, DNA or blood type just to give them money for a product. Bye Bye Best Buy.