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Yucks Digest V1 #39
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To: yucks
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Subject: Yucks Digest V1 #39
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From: spaf (Gene "Chief Yuckster" Spafford)
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Date: Tue, 9 Apr 91 13:19:32 EST
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Reply-To: Yucks-request
Yucks Digest Tue, 9 Apr 91 Volume 1 : Issue 39
Today's Topics:
The CIA Stole My Brain For Bizarre Electronic Experiment.
An Eschatological Laundry List.
Cognitive Systems
How to get a head...
news of the weird
No nudes isn't good news
Not on the 9 o'clock news.
our correspondents report...
Paracybernology
Refrigerator & IBM Software
Soon to be another ANSI standard.....
The imperceptibility of Santa Claus
The "Yucks" digest is a moderated list of the bizarre, the unusual, the
possibly insane, and the (usually) humorous. It is issued on a
semi-regular basis, as the whim and time present themselves.
Back issues may be ftp'd from arthur.cs.purdue.edu from
the ~ftp/pub/spaf/yucks directory. Material in archives
Mail.1--Mail.4 is not in digest format.
Submissions and subscription requests should be sent to spaf@cs.purdue.edu
----------------------------------------------------------------------
Date: 1 Apr 91 20:27:55 GMT
From: hadjiyi@cat54.cs.wisc.edu (Simos Hadjiyiannis)
Subject: : The CIA Stole My Brain For Bizarre Electronic Experiment.
Newsgroups: rec.humor
U.S. Woman's Months of Horror ...
The CIA Stole My Brain For Bizarre Electronic Experiment
========================================================
By Reginald Damien.
Secret government agents are zapping and robbing the brains and minds
of ordinary Americans.
So says a respectable, middle-aged New England businesswoman, who
claims she's a guinea-pig victim of a bizarre electronic brainwashing
experiment.
Dorothy Burdick's mind-boggling allegation -- which has direct links
to CIA involvement - is made in a recent prestigious scientific
journal.
And she claims that other unsuspecting Americans are being zapped and
brainwashed by fiendish government sci-fi techniques.
"Some people might think that's nuts, but they've forgotten the
government's long history of experimenting on its citizens," says Mrs.
Burdick.
She gave as examples the spraying of an unknown substance into the New
York Subway tunnels and the more recent charge by a member of the
Canadian Parliament that a CIA-financed psychiatrist tried to
brainwash her.
Mrs. Burdick -- not her real name -- said that the first hint that
something was amiss came when she was making love to her husband. The
words "Dorothy, you're being programmed," suddenly popped into her
head. She burst into tears.
Her concerned husband suggested that she see a psychiatrist which she
did, to no avail. Strange, unwanted thoughts continued to surface in
her mind despite the psychiatrist's efforts to stop them.
She said that she then checked with her brother who she identified
only as a scientist doing research on the H-bomb at M.I.T.
He told her about the top secret government brainwashing program and
said she was one of the people being zapped by laser in an experiment
in mind control.
According to Burdick's new book, Such Things Are Known, a
laser-telescope located at an Air Force base near her Cape Cod,
Massachusetts home is scanning her house and analyzing the electrical
impulses given off by her brain.
"In fact, I'm sure that the computer can decode my brain impulses just
as telegraphers decode Morse code," she said.
"For example, dot/dot/dot/dash/dash/dash/dot/dot/dot in Morse code
means SOS, or help.
"Likewise, scientists have learned that dot/dot in my head means
Dorothy. Now that they know the code, they're shooting dots into my
head and programming my thoughts.
"It wouldn't at all surprise me," a high placed member of a European
intelligence service said.
"We know the Russians have been using radio waves to control the minds
of their citizens. Only recently we had a huge intelligence
breakthrough when some Soviet scientists lent one of the cruder models
of a mind control device to an American veterans hospital. Quite
stupidly, they sent along an operating manual, which clearly specified
its use as a mind control device.
"We know that the Soviets have been beaming highly suspicious radio
waves at the West and I've been involved in several high level
discussions during which the various means of counteracting Soviet
mind control programs were discussed.
"The most compelling course of action suggested at one of those
meetings was that the West must first learn how the snoops are doing
it before we can learn how to counteract it.
"There is no better way to devise a countermeasure to a new weapon
than by learning exactly how the enemy's system works. And to do that
one must actually attempt to do the same things things the enemy is
doing -- which, in this case, quite frankly, is to attempt to control
the minds of people.
"So I'm not in the least surprised to learn that our American
colleagues are doing this sort of thing. It is, after all, a matter
of self-defense."
Mrs. Burdick has adopted her own method of self-defense against the
mind-zapping she claims she's experiencing.
She wears a coat with tin cans attached to it, and a hat filled with
playing marbles.
National Examiner. August 9, 1983.
[Hmmm, I think I dated her sister.... --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: 30 Mar 91 18:28:17 GMT
From: hadjiyi@rt6.cs.wisc.edu (Simos Hadjiyiannis)
Subject: An Eschatological Laundry List.
Newsgroups: rec.humor
An Eschatological Laundry List
==============================
(A partial register of the 927 eternal Truths)
==============================================
1. This is it!
2. There are no hidden meanings.
3. You can't get there from here, and besides, there's no place else to go.
4. We are all already dying, and we will be dead for a long time.
5. Nothing lasts.
6. There is no way of getting all you want.
7. You can't have anything unless you let go of it.
8. You only get to keep what you give away.
9. There is no particular reason why you lost out on some things.
10. The world is not necessarily just. Being good often does not pay
off and there is no compensation for misfortune.
11. You have a responsibility to do your best nonetheless.
12. It is a random universe to which we bring meaning.
13. You don't really control anything.
14. You can't make anyone love you.
15. No one else is any stronger or any weaker than anyone else.
16. Everyone is, in his own way, vulnerable.
17. There are no great men.
18. If you have a hero look again: you have diminished yourself in some way.
19. Everyone lies, cheats and pretends (yes, you too, and most certainly,
I myself.)
20. All evil is potential vitality in need of transformation.
21. All of you is worth something, if you only own it.
22. Progress is an illusion.
23. Evil can be displaced but never eradicated, as all solutions breed
new problems.
24. Yet, it is necessary to keep on struggling toward solutions.
25. Childhood is a nightmare.
26. But it is so very hard to be an on-your-own-take-care-of-yourself-
cause-there-is-no-one-else-to-do-it-for-you grown up.
27. Each of us is ultimately alone.
28. The most important things, each man must do for himself.
29. Love is not enough, but it sure helps.
30. We have only ourselves, and one another. That may not be much,
but that is all there is.
31. How strange, that so often it all seems worth it.
32. We must live within the ambiguity of partial freedom, partial
power, and partial knowledge.
33. All important decisions must be made on the basis of insufficient data.
34. Yet we are responsible for everything we do.
35. No excuses will be accepted.
36. You can run, but you can't hide.
37. It is most important to not run out of scapegoats.
38. We must learn the power of living with our helplessness.
39. The only victory lies in surrender with ourselves.
40. All of the significant battles are waged within the self.
41. You are free to do whatever you like. You need only face the consequences.
42. What do you know...for sure...anyway?
43. Learn to forgive yourself, again and again and again and again...
------------------------------
Date: 31 Mar 91 18:55:41 GMT
From: hadjiyi@rt6.cs.wisc.edu (Simos Hadjiyiannis)
Subject: Cognitive Systems
Newsgroups: rec.humor
Really-From: Jonathan Slocum <LRC.Slocum at UTEXAS-20>
Two days ago I was in Houston, at the Open House for the new Symbolics,
Inc., regional office. Cognitive Systems [Roger Schank's company] was
represented by Steven Shwartz and Ann Drinan, and they gave a "live" demo
presentation of their new English-to-database interface, supposedly
already delivered to a local customer. This system promises understanding
of UNRESTRICTED English queries [emphasis mine] COMPARABLE TO A HUMAN'S
(within the subject area covered by the database). To quote from their
slide, "DISADVANTAGES: None". To open their talk, they went over the
failure of Machine Translation in the 50's and early 60's, and how
enormous amounts of world knowledge was necessary to correct the glaring
deficiencies of those [20-year-old!] approaches. In their demonstration,
they were following a fixed, prepared script (if you'll pardon the pun).
Then it happened: when they said something about spelling correction, and
how wonderfully better their program does it than anyone else's in the
world, someone in the audience (a Houston bank officer, or something such)
asked them to misspell "scale" as "scle" in the pending command. I sensed
a distinct reluctance to try this (a [prepared] example in a subsequent
query was promised), but they did it anyway. The resulting input was
Use a scle of 1 inch to 2000 feet.
The response was
There are two states where Bibb county is located: Alabama and
Georgia. Pick the state you mean.
Wow! But the topper was the following: in the subsequent prepared query,
there was a real ambiguity: the query mentioned Bibb County without
specifying a state. The system responded with EXACTLY the same request
for clarification -- which, in this new context, was precisely the right
thing to do. Hmmmm....
------------------------------
Date: Tue, 2 Apr 91 02:12:39 PST
From: from one of our correspondants
Subject: How to get a head...
To: spaf
Thieves Dump Six Medical Heads
NEW YORK (AP)
A doctor's mistake. Car thieves. A protective and curious cabbie.
Put them together in Manhattan's East Village and you've got an
errant box of partially dissected human heads.
The six heads, facial features intact, were found in a box in a
gutter early Monday, said Officer Scott Bloch, a police spokesman.
The story begins with Dr. William Portney of New York Eye and Ear
Infirmary, who decided to leave the sealed carton of heads in the
back of his hatchback when he parked in the East Village.
Big mistake.
The second error came when thieves broke into Portney's car and
stole what they apparently thought was marketable booty.
And the hero in this ghoulish tale? Cabbie Gheorghe Casas, who
shooed away a bevy of rubbernecking street people and stashed the
stolen heads in his trunk until police showed up.
"This stuff only happens in New York," said Bloch, relaying the
bizarre string of events.
Portney was transporting the partial heads the backs were cut
away but the faces left intact from New York Medical College in
Valhalla to his New York hospital for a class in medical dissection.
They were from bodies donated for research.
The heads, preserved in formaldehyde and sealed in plastic bags,
were packed inside a thigh-high, sealed carton marked "sinus
endoscopy class."
Portney "was supposed to bring them to a refrigerator in the
temporal bone lab," said infirmary spokeswoman Jean Thomas. "But he
thought they wouldn't fit in the refrigerator so he kept them in the
car until the morning."
Hours later, someone broke into the car and took the box.
"They got about a block away," Bloch said, "looked inside and
hopefully went stark raving mad."
The unsuspecting thieves dropped the carton in the gutter at
Second Avenue and St. Mark's Place an unofficial mecca for artists,
musicians, students, drug dealers and bohemian wanna-bees and fled.
Enter Casas, a 48-year-old Manhattan cabbie whose curiosity was
piqued by a cluster of street people crowding around the spilled box
just after 3 a.m.
"I asked someone what it was and when they told me I thought it
was some kind of a joke but this was no joke," said Casas, who knew
right away this was no ordinary box of heads.
"I thought they must be very important to someone," Casas said,
adding that he pushed everyone away and locked the box in his trunk.
He then called police. "I told them I found a box of heads in the
street and they just said, `Oh really.' They didn't believe me until
they saw it for themselves," Casas said.
Casas said he was proud of the part he played in recovering the
stolen parts and added he won't forget the event soon.
"I took a picture of it," he said.
------------------------------
Date: 30 Mar 91 02:35:59 GMT
Subject: news of the weird
Newsgroups: rec.humor
[from the chicago reader 3/29/91]
dee dee jonrowe, leading the beargrease sled dog marathon in january in
northern minnesota, took a wrong turn and went 300 yards before recognizing
her error. the error cost her only a few minutes, but she had to stop to
calculate where she was, and by the time she was ready to turn the sled
around, two of her dogs had begun to copulate. she was forced to wait and
lost 25 minutes and the race.
pepper the parrot, hired last fall for a tv commercial for alascom, the
long distance telephone carrier for alaska, actually only lip-synched his
line because the sponsor thought pepper sounded too human. the company
hired a human actor to imitate a parrot's voice.
after fire fighters in dudley, england, rescued a family from a blazing
home in november, they went back inside and, using a soup ladle, rescued
the only survivor of the family's four pet tarantulas.
according to a september report by university of illinois veterinarians,
wild raccoons are usually healthy, but those that hang around humans can
acquire rotten teeth and high cholesterol because they eat human leftovers.
researchers at three universities reported in december that they had
resolved a 100-year-old medical mystery about the suspected link between
men's eating frog legs and developing priapism (prolonged penile erection):
frogs eat beetles that have high levels of the drug cantharidin (known as
"spanish fly"), which has been associated with priapism.
dorena ann coon, in a last-ditch effort to save her aggressive four-year-old
terrier from execution, convinced sentencing judge walter rogers in concord,
california, to allow her to arrange for the dog to have all of his teeth
pulled.
a gun battle at the notre dame des neiges trappist wine-making monastery
in france in november left one monk wounded. because the monastery had
been burglarized twice before in 1990, the monks had armed themselves
with shotguns. after an alarm sounded, one brother fired a shot into the
air, flushing out the burglars, and another blocked the burglars' exit.
the burglars began shooting, and the monks returned fire before brother
zepherin fell with 200 pellets in the leg.
in october at an international conferenced in helsinki, delegates from
22 countries arranged to petition the united nations to include on its
list of basic human rights the right to smoke.
a woman working as a researcher for the new mexico state office of
archaeological studies, recently arriving at a sit near lamy, new mexico,
was attacked by a man and woman who claimed to be protecting the site from
disturbances. she said she was screamed at, kicked, beaten, tied up with
electric cords, and cut with a knife in 27 places.
in decmeber the canadian cancer society removed darlene betteley, 55, of
kitchener, ontario, from her job of counselling breast-cancer patients
because she refused to wear a prosthesis to disguise the fact that she
had had a mastectomy.
a brookings institution report in october revealed that the national prison
population had risen by 80,000 over the last year to 1.2 million, a pace
that, if continued, would have one of every two americans in jail by the
year 2053.
a recent study noted in the new england journal of medicine revealed that
men who live to be 40 years old in bangladesh have a better chance of
reaching age 65 than 40-year-old men in harlem (new york city). (women
have a better chance in harlem.)
among miami crime news in 1990: two nicaraguans wre arrested in a routine
traffic stop with TOW missiles and an antitank rocket in their pickup
truck, and a drug enforcement agent was knocked unconscious by a 200-pound
bale of $20 bills that had been tossed out a window during a raid. (the
bale contained almost $2 million.)
recent regulations in michigan's medicaid program cut the number of free
condoms available per client from a maximum of 24 per day to a maximum of
12 per day (and 36 per month) because many were being resold. one health
official criticized the change, pointing out that crack addicts often
discover their libidos stimulated and may have sex 100 times a month.
------------------------------
Date: 31 Mar 91 18:44:18 GMT
From: hadjiyi@rt6.cs.wisc.edu (Simos Hadjiyiannis)
Subject: No nudes isn't good news
Newsgroups: rec.humor
CARTERVILLE, Ill. (AP) - John Yack is having trouble getting people
to take off their clothes and model for his art students.
''Basically, it's a position not many people want to get into,''
says Yack, an assistant professor at the Southern Illinois University
school of technical careers near Carterville. ''I wouldn't do it.''
The campus newspaper, the Daily Egyptian, has been running ads for
nearly a month looking for one or two people for nude modeling,but
Yack says he's not getting any takers.
Yack says it isn't like people must think. ''People think they're
going to have a lot of people around looking in windows. It's a closed
class.''
The instructor says this is the first year he has had a problem
getting nude models.
''Today, with all the double-x and triple-x rated films, I'm having
more trouble getting people and I just don't understand it.''
[Meanwhile, Playboy magazine is in town solciting Purdue women to
interview for a "Girls of the Big 10" feature they will run later this
year. On the first day of setting interviews they have had the
phone "ringing off the hook" according to the newspaper, and over 200
women are expected to set appointments, with only 3 or 4 expected to be
chosen.]
Maybe it's just Illinois..... --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: 31 Mar 91 18:44:18 GMT
From: hadjiyi@rt6.cs.wisc.edu (Simos Hadjiyiannis)
Subject: Not on the 9 o'clock news.
Newsgroups: rec.humor
NEW YORK - Both of the classified advertisements in the
October 16 issue of the Saturday Review were at the very
least intriguing.
The first one read:
OWING TO UNFORTUNATE computer error, our company has
manufactured 30,000 road maps of New Jersey with wrong U.S.
Highway numbers and with all cities of more than 30,000 population
mistakenly identified by name from Armenian map. We are recalling
1500 maps already distributed, with apologies to users, and
are offering remaining 28,500 maps in single lot to highest
bidder. SR Box W.H.
And just a bit below it there was this:
WE SINCERELY REGRET error in placing decimal point in our
instruction book contained in our home kit: Build Your Own
Zeppelin. On page 27, please cross out line: ''It is imperative
to keep helium level at 6.42 at all times in order to maintain
altitude.'' Correct sentences should read: ''It is imperative
to keep helium level at 64.2 at all times in order to maintain
altitude.'' We will be glad to replace parts damaged through
unplanned landings owing to unfortunate printer's error.
Zeppelin Home-Kit Building Co., Lakehurst, N.J.
So a curious correspondent wrote to SR Box W.H. and to Lakehurst,
New Jersey.
The envelope to Lakehurst came back stamped ''unknown,''
which was somewhat disappointing to the sender who had envisioned
receiving reports of forced zeppelin landings in South Jersey.
More surprising was the reply from SR Box W.H. The response
was from Norman Cousins, editor of Saturday Review, who wrote
the classifieds as gentle hoaxes. ''I'm the guilty party,''
his letter read. ''Each issue contains one or two computer-error
items that are pure concoctions. This is my way of getting
even with the damned machines.''
The ''damned machines'' were, he said in a subsequent chat,
computers that ''digested the names of subscribers without
leaving a trace when we were starting up Saturday Review
again a few years ago.'' And so Cousins was, he said, ''waging
a bloody war, a very bloody war, with computers.''
Virtually every issue of the magazine has at least one ''computer
error'' ad, or ''funnies'' as Cousins's secretary, Emily
Susskind, calls them.
Computer errors have been responsible for ads asking to
dispose of:
16,000 dozen Chinese fortune cookies with air-raid instructions
printed inside.
2,000 left-turn signs with the arrows pointing right.
285,624 Idaho license plates with the letters printed backwards.
Dress patterns with 24-inch waists and 44-inch hips.
Triangular bedspreads.
A parrot that imitates George Burns, but only between 3
and 4 a.m.
329 marine compasses polarized west.
2,200 unkickable footballs.
Peppermit candy canes with the hoops in the middle.
------------------------------
Date: Mon, 01 Apr 91 15:23:22 EST
From: dm@think.com
Subject: our correspondents report...
To: silent-tristero@think.com
What happened this week:
A. Hardware issues (any failures, when diagnostics were run):
CM:
No problems.
Need 16 new Acrylic Panels for the CM. Just today they
were dented and scratched pretty badly by a drought crazed
kangaroo which somehow got into the computer room. It
was infuriated by the red lights and went on a rampage.
Fortunately, the electronics were not damaged. The
kangaroo was injured and had to be destroyed. (Interesting
little known fact: In Australia, if you notify Burger King
they will, at no charge, dispose of stray kangaroos.)
[Mmmm ---- can I have it my way? A BK Broiler, hopping? --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: 31 Mar 91 18:55:41 GMT
From: hadjiyi@rt6.cs.wisc.edu (Simos Hadjiyiannis)
Subject: Paracybernology
Newsgroups: rec.humor
It has been observed that the Sigma 3 in Horsetown, Mass. and the
CDC 7600 in Liverless, Cal. tend to have parity errors at the same time.
When records were compared by Miss Minnie Messer, Director of the
Horsetown Chamber of Commerce Computation Facility, and Mr. Snidley
Crunch of the Liverless Hospital's Organ-Transplant Inventory Project,
it was shown that the correlation of parity error occurrences was 0.8,
with a probability of random occurrence of <.00000001.
Miss Messer and Mr. Crunch revealed these discoveries at the
Universal Users Union meeting in Cranchville, Tenn. after they arrived
two hours late for Mr. Crunch's scheduled talk there. They said that in
the excitement of discovery the meeting slipped their minds.
This report motivated this author to undertake a wider survey to
determine if similar phenomena have occurred elsewhere. The author has
solicited Miss Messer's assistance in this survey, but without the
cooperation of the entire computing community, it is unlikely that
sufficient data can be collected. Therefore, we request that interested
parties tabulate the exact times of occurrence of parity errors on their
computer during the 7 day period 1200 April 18 to 1200 April 25 and send
it to:
Paracybernetic Society
c/o Dan Mation
Boise Institute of Technology
Boise, Idaho
Results of the study will be presented at the next UUU meeting in
December.
------------------------------
Date: 2 Apr 91 03:32:45 GMT
From: brehob@author.ecn.purdue.edu (Wayne's World)
Subject: Refrigerator & IBM Software
Newsgroups: purdue.forsale
Fridge: 'Cube' refrigerator. About 1.6 ft. by 1.6 ft. by 1.8 ft deep,
Works like a freezer if you turn it to > 3/4 coldest setting.
I won't sell for less than $30, but best offer by April 20 takes it.
If you offer $90 you've got it now, delivery included (in WL).
Software: I've got 3 fully liscenced and documented copies of WordStar on IBM.
2 of 4.? and 1 of 5.0 (it's got some neat graphics features).
I got them with 'package deals' and I like WordPerfect better.
Best offer above $2 each by April 20 takes them.
For now, $10 for the 4.?s, and $15 for the 5.0. $25 for all 3.
Contact me by mail, or 743-3451 (anytime, but evenings are best bet).
Wayne Brehob
[The software runs really fast when it's cold, see, because of
superconductivity. How many MIPS is *your* fridge capable of? --spaf]
------------------------------
Date: 2 Apr 91 00:56:20 GMT
From: rcd@ico.isc.com (Dick Dunn)
Subject: Soon to be another ANSI standard.....
Newsgroups: comp.bugs.4bsd,comp.misc,alt.folklore.computers
Bourne shell users, accustomed to creating or emptying a file with a
command like:
>splot
or rewinding a tape with:
</dev/mt0
are occasionally annoyed to find that csh rejects this syntax with the
confusing message "Invalid null command". (It is confusing because there
is no such thing as a *valid* null command; attempts to find one will only
end in frustration.)
This can be solved as follows:
touch /bin/IEFBR14
chmod 755 IEFBR14
The name is chosen for historical relevance, since most of us who still
use the Bourne shell are Luddites or recidivists anyway. Of course,
IEFBR14 >splot
seems a bit naked without some slashes and an EXEC PGM=, but that's the
way these modern systems are...
Some folks may note a more-than-coincidental resemblance between this
version of IEFBR14 and older versions of /bin/true. So it is, but our
example lacks the sophistication of the modern System V "true" command,
which is now 9 lines long and includes
- an entirely superfluous :
- five lines of copyright notice (so don't y'all go trying to use
empty files any more; AT&T owns the copyright)
- a #ident--which, of course, is meaningless to the shell, but
reveals the interesting fact that we're now up to version 2.3
of a formerly-empty file
However, the preceding was only for illustration anyway. Nobody wants a
dirty old shell script for the null command; it should of course be a C
program for efficiency. So here we have the first cut at IEFBR14.c:
main()
{
}
This also serves only for illustration; it is historically accurate in that
it contains the same bug as IBM's original IEFBR14. (It may be of some
interest that IEFBR14 proved the old CS aphorism "Every program contains
at least one bug and can be shortened by one instruction" at the inductive
limit: It was a single instruction which didn't work...but I digress...)
Here's the first correction:
main()
{
exit(0);
}
But to make this proper in today's brave new world, we need <stdlib.h>.
Also, for formality's sake and international propriety, we should add the
normally-obligatory setlocale() call (actually not necessary--this may be
the *only* program for which that's true--but it's hard to pass up poking
fun at a requirement to set a default explicitly), and this in turn
requires <locale.h>. OK, so here's the penultimate version of IEFBR14.c,
our properly ANSI and internationalized (unless I screwed up) program-to-
do-nothing:
#include <stdlib.h>
#include <locale.h>
#ifndef lint
static char *sccsid = "%W% - %E%";
#endif
/*ARGSUSED*/
main(argc,argv)
int argc;
char **argv;
{
setlocale(LC_ALL, "");
exit(0);
}
To create the final version, all you need is your local draconian
corporate screenful of copyright notice and disclaimer.
------------------------------
Date: 3 Apr 91 22:07:18 GMT
From: hadjiyi@cat53.cs.wisc.edu (Simos Hadjiyiannis)
Subject: The imperceptibility of Santa Claus
Newsgroups: rec.humor
Sender: John R. Kender <KENDER@COLUMBIA-20.ARPA>
"OK, Daddy, why has nobody SEEN Santa Claus on Christmas Eve?" Tough
question. But, a few back-of-the-envelop calculations were enough to
convince my doubting offspring that it was physically IMPOSSIBLE. To
wit:
Suppose that Santa starts at the International Date Line and travels
westward, in order to maximize his time for delivering presents on or
about midnight. Let's guess that there are 4 billion people, and so
about 1 billion households worldwide. Just as we assume Santa has
solved the travelling salesman problem (1 billion nodes!), so too we
will assume that he can handle the unequal distribution of households
over the land masses, too (Fiji Islanders, etc., probably don't have
reason to doubt his presence). Roughly 1 billion / 24 hours gives 40
million households / hour; and as there are 3600 seconds / hour, that
gives us about 10000 households / second. Thus, Santa drops down the
chimney and is gone, on average in .0001 second: FAR LESS time than
the human eye (even dark-adapted!) needs to see--.01 second being
about the lower limit established by tachistoscope studies.
"OK, Daddy, then why has nobody HEARD Santa Claus on Christmas Eve?"
Tougher question, and one that demands serious analysis. If Santa
moves that quickly, of course, he is going to push a lot of air out of
his way, and silent night would be more accurately be called the Night
of the Sonic Booms. The envelop (last year's, once containing a
Christmas card as yet unanswered) quickly fills up:
Let's see: 1 billion households distributed on average equally over 4
pi radius squared. That's about 12 times 4000 * 4000, but
three-quarters of that is water (poor Fiji!): so about 3 times 16
million, or about 50 million square miles. So, 1 billion / 50 million
is 20 households / square mile, and if they were distributed in
gridlike regularity, Santa has to travel (at LEAST, depending on the
sophisication of his TSP solution) about 1/5 mile: 1000 feet in .0001
second. Sound itself would take about 1.3 second; clearly, even if
Santa were made of Kevlar and could withstand the accelerations
necessary (poor toys!), Santa is not only booming about the Baby
Boomers' babies, he is beginning to suffer from Fitzgerald
contraction. (Let's see, here on the envelop flap: 1/5 mile in
1/10000 of a second is 2000 miles / second, or about .01c, if c is
rounded to 200000 miles / second.) Thus giving new meaning to
"relative clause", he is approaching the danger of being misperceived
as anorexic.
Perhaps, then, the answer is as follows: you can't see Santa because
he moves too fast; and, because he would look skinnier than you think,
you wouldn't recognize him anyway. Further, any atmosphere
overpressure generated by his rapid descent is canceled by the
underpressure of his nearly instantaneous return: in contrast to most
phenomena, the sonic boom cannot form!
What remains to be explained, of course, in addition to the usual
arrival of undamaged gifts (even on Fiji), is why the evening of his
rapid transit is not marked by the spectacle of a multitide of gifts
being sucked, nearly simultaneously, up through millions of chimneys
throughout world, to trail happily in his wake.
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End of Yucks Digest
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