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Nobody knows the words to Eleanor Rigby. Ever hear a regular person sing Eleanor Rigby? The only words that anybody knows are, "Eleanor Rigby...", and then it becomes mumble mumble mumble mumble right up till, "All the lonely people/where do they all come from (and "belong")...". If you're lucky, you might get a few who'll remember when the "Father Mackenzie" line comes in, but then it always goes back to mumble mumble mumble.
LOL, dh is a big Beatles fan and now I need to ask him if he knows the words to that song. I would fall into the mumble mumble category.
Have you used Skype to make calls back to England? The other party has to also be signed up w/ Skype but it works pretty well . . . just a thought . . .
I have a large box of stuff to shred. Stopped and did part of it. Can't believe how much more to shred.
Hang in there. I am sick of going thru/ this mess.
Yes, have been doing it for years. That is the "wonder" of Vista. everything works great, no problem...suddenly, for no apparent reason...brokey-no-workey. Took me over a year to get my CD drive back, then, I had to get one of DS's friends (a computer programmer) to actually fix it. I did everything, trouble shooting....this is beginning to be the same deal, I can see it now. Tried to download the "updated drivers" for the webcam, now, the company says this webcam is not supported by Vista. WHAT??? Been working just fine for the last 2 years!! SIGH. so, I bought a headset. The other folks aren't on the computer that much anymore anyway....now, it simply won't recognize the headset. Yes, for the techhies out there, it is plugged in correctly, checked that more than once. And, meanwhile, the speakers have decided that they don't want to work...well, it is probably Vista deciding for them...so, I can't even listen to iTunes while I am trying to clean out this room and fix the Vista issue. SIGH.
oh, and yes, I have checked the soundcard, it IS enabled, the speakers are not muted nor is the headset (which does not show up anyway) and I have re-downloaded the latest drivers for the speakers. Nada. SIGH
Location: Some got six month some got one solid. But me and my buddies all got lifetime here
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Lemme add a perennial favorite for Christmas time....
The Physics of Santa Claus (http://brucetimberlake.com/santa.html - broken link)
Quote:
The Physics of Santa Claus
1) Flying Reindeer
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) Children
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 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 that there is at least one good child in each.
3) Timing
Santa has 31 hours of Christmas to work with, thanks to the different time zones and the rotation of the earth, assuming he logically travels east to west. This works out to 822.6 visits per second, so 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, we know to be false, but for our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about .78 miles per household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting assorted pit stops for relief, feeding, etc. This means Santa's sleigh is moving at 650 miles per second, 3,000 times the speed of sound. In comparison, the fastest man-made vehicle on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.
4) Weight
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 could pull ten 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).
5) Speed
600,000 tons traveling 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 vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time 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 .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 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.
Conclusion...
If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.
Foundations...
This inquiry is based on the premise that there is only one Santa Claus. The calculations work out more realistically if you assume some form of parallel processing. A thousand Santas (1 kilosanta) or a million Santas (a megasanta) or more, working in parallel, could perform the same number of visits in the same allotted time with less advanced technology (and fewer vaporized reindeer).
One Other Point...
Who does the air traffic control for a megasanta? A million sleighs and 12 million reindeer occupy a significant amount of airspace. If we assume that each reindeer team, sleigh and Santa needs no more than 5 feet vertical airspace (which, given that known species of reindeer with antlers are quite nearly five feet tall, leaves very little room for error), then a megasanta requires almost 947 miles of vertical airspace. This also disregards the fact that each Santa must make frequent landings. The airspace at chimney level will be in high demand and disproportionately crowded, particularly as Christmas-celebrating households tend to be densely clustered in the same geographic areas. It seems likely that a megasanta, while perhaps avoiding vaporized reindeer, would suffer huge casualties from in-air collisions.
Let's see . . . Eleanor Rigby. I will have to look up the lyrics and see if I do or do not remember them. My friends and I spent hours writing them down and memorizing them, LOL. I was VP of our Beatles Club. Yes, we had one and we got together every Sunday afternoon for years, to write down lyrics, play songs, share articles about the Beatles. Gosh, that was a long time ago . . .
I baked another turkey breast earlier in the week and tonite am using the rest of it to make a gumbo. You should smell it - simmering now. Yum Yum. The recipe calls for chicken and this is the first time I have substituted turkey. Family is hovering around . . .
Location: Some got six month some got one solid. But me and my buddies all got lifetime here
4,555 posts, read 10,409,746 times
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Quote:
Originally Posted by anifani821
Brian, that was so cute.
Let's see . . . Eleanor Rigby. I will have to look up the lyrics and see if I do or do not remember them. My friends and I spent hours writing them down and memorizing them, LOL. I was VP of our Beatles Club. Yes, we had one and we got together every Sunday afternoon for years, to write down lyrics, play songs, share articles about the Beatles. Gosh, that was a long time ago . . .
Ever go to Beatles conventions? Those were great! We used to go to one every year at the Meadowlands in Secaucus, probably the biggest Beatles convention in the NY/Metro area. They'd have guests that would include Astrid Kirschnerr, John Lennon's half sister Julia Baird, George Harrison's sister Louise (whom I accidentally bumped into...I mean literally accidentally bumped into on a buffet line), Mark Hudson of Hudson Brothers fame. We saw Billy Preston perform there one year, Donovan on another year, Peter and Gordon on another year... And the weekend would include video rooms, all those guest speakers in the grand ballroom, an international flea market, two Beatles auctions, Beatles movies, performances by Liverpool, by any of the musical guests, a soundalike contest, you name it. Those were pure escapist weekends and they were like our rites of spring. We'd get a room either at the hotel itself or at one nearby and stay from Friday to Sunday. I really, really, really miss those Beatlefests.
We talk about going back to either the Secaucus 'fest or the Chicago one. That one was always a blast too, held at the Hyatt Regency O'hare. We'd catch the fest and then spend the following week in the city. Those were fun, fun times.
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of Vista. everything works great, no problem...suddenly, for no apparent reason...brokey-no-workey. Took me over a year to get my CD drive back, then, I had to get one of DS's friends (a computer programmer) to actually fix it. I did everything, trouble shooting....this is beginning to be the same deal, I can see it now. Tried to download the "updated drivers" for the webcam, now, the company says this webcam is not supported by Vista. WHAT??? Been working just fine for the last 2 years!! SIGH. so, I bought a headset. The other folks aren't on the computer that much anymore anyway....now, it simply won't recognize the headset. Yes, for the techhies out there, it is plugged in correctly, checked that more than once. And, meanwhile, the speakers have decided that they don't want to work...well, it is probably Vista deciding for them...so, I can't even listen to iTunes while I am trying to clean out this room and fix the Vista issue. SIGH.
... better watch it kid, I will be THERE in January!
