Journal Entries
Christy...
Posted Feb 2, 2004
The cats on my keyboard so ignore the shoddy typing (shoddy meaning Crap). Anyone seen christy?
this being my first post in a long time. How are you all doin BTW? Freya - dammit woman stop givin ppl my addy! :D
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Latest reply: Feb 2, 2004
Have A Good Christmas
Posted Dec 24, 2003
Hey beautiful people of H2G2.
im away over christmas and im just writing this to wish you all a brilliant and not too much of a alcoholic Christmas!
Hope you dont all give into the Global commercial side of christmas and take time to spend with your family and enjoy of the gifts your recive.
Take time to appriciate the Fake Suprise of the knitted jumper you Granmas been knitting all year round, and how much love and care she put into it. Take time - even 5 minutes to remember those that havnt had a great christmas and havnt got all the luxeries you have or even just visit a person whos alone this year, trhough the loss of someone or who is just alone, physically or spirtually.
Have a great Christmas and pass the message on to all.
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Latest reply: Dec 24, 2003
Santa Vs Physics...
Posted Dec 18, 2003
cOriginally from the January, 1990 issue of Spy Magazine [kids edition insert] [Heavily revised by Tim Gorski, M.D.]
Some considerations relevant to the perennial question:
(1) No known species of reindeer can fly. But, it is estimated that there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified. Most of these are believed to be insects and germs, but this does not completely rule out flying reindeer.
(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 total378 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'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 0.78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting pottie stops, plus feeding, etc.
(4) 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 ever, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a pokey 27.4 miles per second through the vacuum of deep space. A conventional reindeer can run, by the way, tops, 15 miles per hour.
(5) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized Lego(R) 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 if we assume that "flying reindeer" could pull ten times the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We would need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payloadnot even counting the weight of the sleighto 353,430 tons. Again, for comparisonthis is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the cruise ship, not the monarch herself).
6) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft's heat shield when re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Per reindeer. In short, they will burst into flames 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 times greater than that of 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 summary, the Santa story, while not disproved, should be viewed with some skepticism in light of all of the considerable physics problems involved.
http://church.freethought.org/9612.physicsofsanta.html
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Latest reply: Dec 18, 2003
Any Help?
Posted Dec 6, 2003
Dammit, I just wrote it and Xed out the box thinking it was a PopUp 
The basic story is that im meeting my girlfriends parents tonight and they hate me - they do despise me. i think the reason being that emma (My gf) has changed alot since we met, personally i think its for the best but its a matter of opinion, shes become independent and become mur individual and less of a sheep.
I understand that shes still her baby girl an all but agh they whole basis of our relationship rests on me meetin them. i know its just a relationship but i really like emma, mur than anyone ever before and i dont want it to end over sumthin stoopid.
Theres no real question to ask you guys i jsut wanted a moan at people that could really affect it in anyway unless you wonderful people offer advice. to be honest im sh*tting it.
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Latest reply: Dec 6, 2003
Im still kinda alive
Posted Dec 3, 2003
Hey gorgues people of the planet...well of no planet... Hey gorgues of people of the hitchhikers cyberspace place..thingy... hmm well anyways
Just lettin ye all know, im still alive and i luv ye all still but im really sorry, not that any of you really care that much. that ive not been on for a while, computers been screwed up n took me a while to find that rght dwnload from www.microsoft.com, why if i couldh ave 5 minutes alone with bill gates and a air rifle.. so anyhoos im sorry. im thinkin about mur journals but i cnt think of anythin to do so im a just float about. luv ye.
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Latest reply: Dec 3, 2003
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