Evil Wordsmith

The Prince and I both are picking the Titans in an upset over San Diego. Come on, it’s Christmas day; miracles can happen. I’ll be wearing my #28 Chris Johnson Jersey (I just love that kid, man he is good!)..who knows what luck may come our way!

The Prince is also making a bold upset pick with Detroit over the 49′ers. Who knows, he’s been right on weird upset picks before. Course he just told me that his picks are based on his favorite team, the Eagles, Ravens, Cardinals, Jags, Bengals…..basically all the animal teams are his favorite team. Though he is very partial to the Eagles. Not sure Momma who grew up with the Redskins is totally ok with that, but he’s cute; so what are ya gonna do.

So here are our basic party line picks for the week. Go Titans!!  Although I love my Redskins, I got burned on picking them last week from the heart. Even hoping can’t beat a better a team. So I’m ignoring my heart this week and picking…gag..do I have to say who.. No I don’t. I’m not picking my Skins this week and we’ll leave it at that.

Awe Man….the Saints lost. I can’t believe they lost. We are stuck with the void of Comcast in the boonies of the non-digital world, so we have no way of watching games on the NFL. But I’m hoping that they lost because they didn’t play their starters and they’re resting up for the playoffs. I’m crossing my fingers anyway. And Woohoo the Colts are still undefeated. I love when someone defies the odds. And I like Peyton; that boy not only has talent, he’s also got to be a great guy. Only someone with a healthy confident in themselves would play a part where they get laughed at in every commercial they’re in. And I love his commercials. I mean come’on, giving a mouth guard to a middle aged lady..that’s funny.

My Titans won. I’m so excited they won. And in overtime too! I kept waiting to see all the replay shows run the miraculous interception that bounced through several players hands before it wound up in the possession of the Titans, but no one seems to think that was kewl but me.

The surprise to me was the Panthers taking Minnesota. Brett’s front line seems to have crumbled here in the late part of the season. Where’s the protection for the pocket for goodness sake. I know they’re missing some guys, but the fill-ins are supposed to be professionals and should step in and show what they’ve got. Don’t they get it’s an opportunity to audition for a permanent spot?

Ok, enough of the review; here’s how the Prince and I ended up for the week. It was a 50/50 week for me. The 6 year old didn’t fair so well with his picks. But he tends to pick who ever I don’t pick. That works sometimes.

Here’s the picks:

There was one good bet, but then the spreads moved. Oh well…

Here’s how the playoffs look to me:

E.W.

About cheerleaders in coats… There is a commercial on lately where a bunch of cheerleader types jump and do a cheer, but they are in jeans and flannel shirts. It occurred to me that without the outfits, cheerleaders are just annoying.

While having lunch with The Prince yesterday, we discussed how Santa is able to get to all of the kids houses overnight. So I did some back-of-the-napkin calculations to figure out if Santa’s excursion violates causality. I should probably point out that I am neither a physicist, mathematician or doctor, but I play all of them on the Internet.

Ok, so… just how many places does Santa have to hit worldwide? According to Wikipedia (Yeah I know… and if you’re reading this and don’t know, don’t bet on facts from Wikipedia. It’s just a good starting place.), there are 2.1 billion Christians on Earth. Now, since it appears to me that most of them are in Texas, I’ll use the average family size from the U.S. Census: 3.14 people. Hmm… Pi. That means Santa has to hit 670 million homes.

Next I’ll assume that they are evenly spread across the earth. Several sources indicate that the total area is about 150 million square kilometers (The Prince says, “What’s a kilometer?” so make it 93 million square miles). That works out to 4.5 km²(1.7 mi²) per home. Now make that area circular and we get a radius of 1.2 km (.75 mi). So from house to house is about 2.4 km (1.5 mi). So the total length of the trip is 360 million km (220 million mi). That’s more than a thousand times farther than my Chevy truck has gone.

For the time, he does this overnight but if we’re figuring an even spread over the earth, he actually has 24 hours of darkness to work with if he plans his trip carefully. And if you’re going 360 million km, you plan your trip carefully, just ask NASA. That means his average speed has to be 15 million km/hr (9.3 million mph). That’s pretty fast, again, just ask NASA.

So… how fast is that compared to light speed? Light speed is 300,000 km/s which works out to be 1.1 billion km/hr, much faster than Santa. Santa ain’t Superman. But Santa is fast, 1% the speed of light fast.

This, kids, is why you can’t ever see Santa. Even if you sit up all night watching the tree you won’t see him. He’ll just wait till you blink. And by the time your blink is done, not only has he hit your house, he’s already finished with the next 260 kids.

This also explains a number of Santa Clausian phenomena. For instance, what if you have a roaring fire in the fire place? Why doesn’t Santa get burned? Well, at 1% the speed of light within the atmosphere, it’s obvious that Santa has some fantastic thermal protection for his sleigh and reindeer. The space shuttle heat tiles get up to 1300°C (2300°F) at a speed far less than Santa’s sleigh. You would have to be seriously pumping a bellows into the coals in your fireplace to get it that hot. So a fire is nothing for Santa’s thermal suit.

How come he doesn’t get dirty in the fireplace? Well, considering that Santa’s sleigh doesn’t cause a sonic boom, it’s clear that part of his technology involves moving without disturbing the air. Basically, he doesn’t stir the air, so it’s like he never touches it at all. If he can do that, he also doesn’t touch the soot either.

Don’t have a fireplace at all? No problem. Every home has many small entry ways, vent pipes, dryer exhausts, range hoods, etc. Yeah but how does fat jolly old Santa fit through them, you say? Easy, for a brief moment (by brief, I mean like fast enough that he can do it a million times while you’re in the middle of a blink…) he accelerates to a substantial fraction of the speed of light and spirals in through the opening however small it is. The Lorentz contraction allows him to be smaller than the hole to get through.

Rudolf’s red nose? Simple, just let enough heat through the shielding and you get a nice red glow. Actually it could glow any color you like at those speeds, even X rays.

Those craters on the Moon? (If you read that and thought “Huh??”, good, you’re paying attention.) Not all of them are meteor strikes. Ever wonder why only the reindeer have the magic flying dust? Well, it’s because the dust is DANGEROUS! During early testing, many dozens of Santa candidates tried flying without the reindeer. They took a little dust, tried taking a little bitty step, and BOOM! right into the moon! That’s how they named the craters (Wikipedia-List of Craters on the Moon). Finally, someone discovered that reindeer are patient enough to keep the speed down to 0.01c.

This is also why NORAD couldn’t possibly have shot Santa down. Let’s say your reflexes are fast, very fast. So you can acquire your target and squeeze the trigger in 1/100th of a blink. Santa’s already moved 6 km (4 mi) down range. Even if you led the target perfectly, his slightest evasion move will out pace any modern weaponry we have. And remember, he can surge to very much higher speeds to make himself small. In his time frame it looks like the missile you just shot at him is stuck in molasses. He has time to read a bedtime story to the reindeer while your missile gets out of the launcher.

E.W.

It was either “Santa Clausian” or “Kris Kringelian”, I knew he was Klingon…

QISmaS botIvjaj ‘ej DIS chu’ botIvjaj

While watching his team, the Philadelphia Eagles take on the San Francisco 49′ers:
“Momma, Cheerleaders with their cloths on look better.
Without their cloths, not so much.”

SirEvil Daddy - “Boy are you crazy?”

Momma - “That’s right honey, they do look better that way.”