Shortage of shepherds
There is something wrong with the Nativity crib on display in Pattaya Klang. The infant Jesus is surrounded by Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. Meanwhile Joseph’s head is hanging sideways after what was evidently a gruesome execution.
Identity Confusion
A Farang was trying to explain to his Thai girlfriend what Christmas is all about. ‘You see, we are celebrating the birth of a baby who changed the course of history’ he said. The girl looked puzzled. ‘Then why does he always dress in red and wear a long white beard?’ she asked.
Food for Thought
“Eat Christmas dinner at home this year” A Thai restaurant in Pattaya is offering a free mincing if you spend 200 baht. Not to mention the white saucy desert, what ever that is. Chances are, if you ask for all the trimmings with your turkey, they’ll tell you to get stuffed.
Christmas Happenings
Many hotels and clubs will be presenting special Christmas programmes next week. Check out the Las Vegas Go Go in Soi Post Office Xmas eve - free food and prizes (Bar fines in a parcel). TQ2 & TQ1 will once again be filled with snow on Xmas eve & Xmas day respectively.
Santa Analysis
After much research, a group of aeronautical engineers have made a report on the theory of Santa:
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 & 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 that there’s at least one good child in each.
3. Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with. This is due 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/second. That is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 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/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 eating, etc. So Santa’s sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/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/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/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 lb.), 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 lbs. Even granting that “flying reindeer” (see #1) can pull 10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9, reindeer. We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.
5. 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a 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 vaporised within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250 lb. Santa, being very conservative in terms of guessing Santa’s weight, would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force. If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he’s dead now. A Merry Christmas to one and all!