A guy goes in an adult store and asks for an inflatable doll.

The guy behind the counter says, "Male or female?"

The customer says, "Female"

The counter guy asks, "Black or white?"

The customer says, "White"

The counter guy asks, "christian or Muslim?"

The customer says, "What the hell does religion have to do with it?"

The counter guy says, " [...]

A guy goes in an adult store and asks for an inflatable doll.

The guy behind the counter says, "Male or female?"

The customer says, "Female"

The counter guy asks, "Black or white?"

The customer says, "White"

The counter guy asks, "Christian or Muslim?"

The customer says, "What the hell does religion have to do with it?"

The counter guy says, "The Muslim one blows itself up!"

A plane carrying christian missionaries crashes in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Miraculously, two priests and a nun survive and make it to a remote desert island. Stranded all alone, with no hope of rescue, the three are unable to resist temptation.

However, after a few months, the woman is overcome by guilt at the sins she has committed and so she kills herself.

Several months later, the two priests have a moment of clarity and realise they also cannot cope with th [...]

A plane carrying Christian missionaries crashes in the middle of the Pacific ocean. Miraculously, two priests and a nun survive and make it to a remote desert island. Stranded all alone, with no hope of rescue, the three are unable to resist temptation.

However, after a few months, the woman is overcome by guilt at the sins she has committed and so she kills herself.

Several months later, the two priests have a moment of clarity and realise they also cannot cope with the guilt of what they are doing.

So they bury her.

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

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 [...]

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

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 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding, 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 amount, 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 travelling 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.

Merry Christmas.