Ok,
    A friend of mine at Tektronix sent me this one :)  Think about it... but
don't show it to anyone under age 8 :) hehehe

Art "I still say there is a Santa...hehehe" Bahrs

>      1) 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) 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 total -
>      378 million according to 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 .78 miles per
>      household, a total trip of 75-1/2 million miles, not counting stops to do
>      what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and
>      etc. 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 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) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element.  Assuming
>      that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego 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 granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1)
could
>      pull TEN TIMES the normal anoint, we cannot do the job with eight, or
even
>      nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even
>      counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. Again, for
comparison
>      - this is four times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth.
>
>      5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air
>      resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as
>      spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer
>      will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In
>      short, they will burst into flame 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
>      17,500.06 times greater than 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 conclusion - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's
>      dead now.