Politically correct seasons greetings

TK sent me this today, so I'm passing it on. Enjoy...

From me ("the wishor") to you ("the wishee"):

Please accept without obligation, implied or implicit, my best wishes for an environmentally conscious, socially responsible, politically correct, low stress, non-addictive, gender neutral, celebration of the summer/winter* (*delete as applicable) solstice holiday, practised within the most enjoyable traditions of the religious persuasion of your choice, or secular practices of your choice, with respect for the religious/secular persuasions and/or traditions of others, or their choice not to practice religious orsecular traditions at all.

Further, I wish you a financially successful, personally fulfilling and medically uncomplicated recognition of the onset of the generally accepted calendar year 2007, but with due respect for the calendars of choice of other cultures or sects, and having regard to the race, creed, colour, age, physical ability, religious faith, choice of computer platform or sexual preference of the wishee.
By accepting this greeting you are bound by these terms that :
* This greeting is subject to further clarification or withdrawal.
* This greeting is freely transferable provided that no alteration shall be made to the original greeting and that the proprietary rights of the wishor are acknowledged.
* This greeting implies no promise by the wishor to actually implementany of the wishes.
* This greeting may not be enforceable in certain jurisdictions and/or the restrictions herein may not be binding upon certain wishes in certain jurisdictions and is revocable at the sole discretion of the wishor.
* This greeting is warranted to perform as reasonably may be expected within the usual application of good tidings, for a period of one year or until the issuance of a subsequent holiday greeting, whichever comes first.
* The wishor warrants this greeting only for the limited replacement of this wish or issuance of a new wish at the sole discretion of the wishor.Any references in this greeting to "the Lord", "Father Christmas", "Our Saviour", "Rudolph the red nosed reindeer" or any other festive figures,whether actual or fictitious, dead or alive, shall not imply any endorsement by or from them in respect of this greeting, and all proprietary rights in any referenced third party names and images are hereby acknowledged.

Teacher denies Santa's existence!!!

Last evening's BBC news was full of the story about a teacher in a primary school who had insinuated to the pupils that Father Christmas did not really exist. There were interviews with 'the man himself' as well as with parents and dark talk of said teacher being hung, drawn and quartered - or something similar. The following thoughts passed through my mind:

The children in question were 9 and 10 year olds. In all my teaching career, I have only known of one child of that age who still believed in Santa so they were hardly likely to be too traumatised.
Why, when it is now recommended by our wonderful politicians that children as young as 5 should be being introduced to the facts of life, is it so awful that the question of the existence of Father Christmas should be raised with 9 and 10 year olds?

However, a far more pressing concern arose this morning when Declan on 'BBC Breakfast' interviewed Father Christmas. Whilst last night, Father Christmas's accent was decidedly of a Midlands persuasion, this morning, he was definitely West Country.
Now how do you explain that to the children?

Not to be read by children!

I have seen this or something similar before but it is definitely worth a second visit. I got it this time here

Engineers and Santa Claus!

There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist (except maybe in Japan) religions, this reduces the workload for 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 there is at least one good child in each.
Santa has about 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming 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 a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park his sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stocking, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get onto the next house.
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 stops or breaks. This 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, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.
The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets 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 no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the "flying" reindeer can pull 10 times the normal amount, the job can't be done with eight or even nine of them---Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship not the monarch).
600,000 tons travelling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion 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 creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team would be vaporised within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the same time that Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.
Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accelerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s in 0.001 seconds, would be subjected to acceleration forces of 17,000 g's. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo. Therefore, if Santa did exist, he's dead now. Merry Christmas.
Author Unknown!

Chirstmas cards

We had a great time making our Christmas cards last week - loosely, very loosely based on our Design & Technology work this term on 'Moving Pictures', so we had Santas popping out of chimneys and being forcibly ejected from stockings and, of course, the usual clouds of cotton wool and acres of gold and silver felt tip pen.

What do you think?

Nigella Lawson or Fanny Craddock?

It looks like I might have a challenge to meet on Boxing Day. Keith's family come for the day and Keith, being the Jamie Oliver of the partnership, always undertakes to produce the culinary delights. But this year, it looks as though he might have to pass that task on to me. Unfortunately, I don't really 'do' cooking. One of my colleagues as horrified the other day when I told her that, under normal circumstances, Keith does most of the cooking as I only have two menus - salmon with salad or salmon with vegetables. I did exaggerate slightly but Keith is so much better at it. For one thing, he's actually interested in doing it. As the French say, the French live to eat whilst the English eat to live and I'm afraid I am very definitely in the English camp there.
Still I shall have Keith shouting out orders from his couch of pain and if it turns out to be inedible, well we will have been spared the burden of exercising it all off in the New Year. Come to think of it, maybe that's why his first thought was to cancel the visit....
I mean, no-one's going to die of starvation, are they?
Hmmm, I'm starting to get nervous now.