I think this Bumble bobblehead (“The Abominable” from Rupolph) qualifies as the best bobblehead ever.

Rudolph is my favorite Christmas special.  Aren’t we all kind of misfits?

Honorable mention goes to the Grinch, Elf, and The Santa Clause.  Never got into A Christmas Story.  What’s your favorite?

-Nick

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As always, great to see all the family and friends.  It was a busy, busy week.

Mochi had a playdate with his new buddy Manju, but he was kind of antisocial.

I got to go skiing with Chris and dad.  Fresh snow at Alpental!

We also exchanged lots of beer.

We hit up the Harry Potter exhibit at the Science Center and stuck around to explore the rest.  There was this whole new section of brainteaser puzzles.  It was fun except there were no hints for when you’d get stuck… and I got stuck a lot.  It ended up making my brain hurt, but it felt successful when you got it.  Bryn and Stace got tied up in a knot for a really long time but refused to give up.

The pup was also gifted some antlers that really must have weighed him down!

We had to cut our trip short to head back to California to see the Huskies in the Holiday Bowl.

-Nick

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A retelling of the nativity for the digital age:

I like the “Avoid Romans” checkbox and the wise men shopping at Amazon!

And the low-tech atheist response: a billboard in New Jersey.  Come on guys, I expect better!

Merry Christmas all.

-Nick

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Thanks Simon for sending this.  The story apparently appeared in a 1990 issue of Spy Magazine, and is originally attributed to Richard Waller.

No known species of reindeer can fly.  There are, however, 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified.  While most of these are insects and germs, this does not completely rule out flying reindeer.

There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world.  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.

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.  For each 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, 35 miles per hour.

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 1000 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 714,200 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.

353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance – this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft reentering 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.

Conclusion: if there was a Santa, he’s dead now.

-Nick

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Hope your holiday is stress-free and filled with family, friends, and love.

Impressive how this Green Chri$tma$ song was recorded over 50 years ago, but still rings true today.

“What’s the percentage in that?”

-Nick

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According to some economists, the annual tradition of holiday gift-giving creates a massive “deadweight loss” in our overall utility.  The reason?  Gift recipients don’t value the gifts as much as they cost.

In Scroogenomics, author and University of Pennsylvania economics professor Joel Waldfogel explains that, on average, people value items they receive as gifts 20% less per dollar spent than items they buy for themselves.  All told, this has the effect of $25 billion worth of “value destruction” each year.

Yet gift-giving is deeply entrenched in our culture, and our consumer-economy depends on it.  We feel obligated to buy gifts, and finding the perfect present is a stressful, time-consuming endeavor.  The most economically efficient gift is cash, but there is a tremendous stigma against gifting greenbacks.  Waldfogel proposes gift cards as one potential solution, although they still have certain drawbacks.  First, gift cards have less utility than cash because they can only be used at specific stores.  And second, millions of dollars in gift cards go unclaimed each year, to the delight of retailers but the disappointment of gift-givers and economists.

On the other hand, there also convincing evidence in favor of gift-giving — but not from the economics department.  Sociology studies have found that money spent on others creates greater happiness in the spender than money they spend on themselves.

In one study, subjects were given an amount of money (either $5 or $20) and asked to either spend it on themselves to cover a bill or buy themselves a gift, or to spend it on someone else or donate it to charity.  The ones that spent it on someone else or made a donation were happier at the end of the day.  The amount of money didn’t matter, only how they spent it.

So gift-giving may be futile or inefficient in economic terms for the recipient, but perhaps the “value destruction” is canceled out by the increased happiness in the giver.  Who’s that gift really for?

It turns out money can buy happiness, just not how we thought.

-Nick

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Imagine yourself in this dilemma: You’ve come to accept the complete commercialization of your savior’s birthday, but want to be sure to spend your hard-earned money at stores that honor the true meaning of Christmas.  How can you tell which major retailers love baby Jesus as much as you do?

You go to StandForChristmas.com!

Brought to you by the religious non-profit group Focus on the Family, Stand For Christmas is a customer-review portal that basically rates the Christmas-spirit — on a scale from “friendly” to “offensive” — of our nation’s largest retailers.

Target earns high marks for displaying “Merry Christmas” signs.  Bass Pro Shops put “Christmas Sale” on the front page of their ad.  And Wal-Mart earned praise for carrying “religious-themed Christmas cards.”  See, it doesn’t take much to rated as “Christmas-friendly.”

How about on the other side of the spectrum?  This is where it really gets good!  The following stores are rated highly “Christmas-offensive” and I swear I’m not making these up.

• Banana Republic – “I’m so sad, because I like their clothes! And I’m sad for their employees who are told not to say “Christmas”. Many of them must be conflicted. They are mostly young people, so I wonder, does it harm their faith?”
• Gap – “First thing I notice is that they are only playing non-Christian Christmas songs (Jingle Bells, etc.). Unacceptable.”
• Gap – “The new TV commercial by the GAP still refuses to mention Christmas and finishes with Happy Holidays. I do not find this acceptable anymore. Only Merry Christmas is an acceptable response this time of year.”
• Best Buy – “I am dismayed to hear…Best Buy’s corporate policy of holiday “inclusiveness”.”
• Best Buy – “Due to your pro “diversity” language, I will always buy from someone else. You are no longer my “Best Buy” even though I live in Minnesota. Add that to your bottom line. Shalom.”
• American Eagle Outfitters – “This store was playing MTV when I was in there last, I was glad my daughter was in the dressing room because the video that was on was porn.”
• Borders – “They sure do have a lot of titles with “Christmas” in them, but they are accompanied by cursing or other inappropriate words.”

From a business perspective, it would seem far less risky to just go ahead and use the word “Christmas” in your ads and in your stores.  Everyone understands that the vast majority of the population celebrates Christmas, and I don’t imagine many Jews, Muslims, Hindus, Atheists, etc. will boycott your store for catering overtly to the Christian holiday.  These “offensive” companies think they’re playing it safe by being PC, when the reality is they could be shooting themselves in the foot.

At the same time, mixing religion, politics, and capitalism is a slippery slope.  Consider the organic-foodie’s predicament when the CEO of hippie-haven Whole Foods announced this fall he was opposed to Obama’s public health care plan.

Also, these easily offended shoppers might consider the mounting historical evidence that Jesus was not born on December 25th, and that Christmas has a long tradition as a pagan holiday.  Maybe Target is the real “offensive” store, since they’re just manipulating your misconceptions to make a buck.

Focus on the Family is a hateful group

In recent years, Focus on the Family has supported boycotts of Disney, Kraft Foots, Wells Fargo, Procter & Gamble, Big Brothers Big Sisters, Gap, and Ford.  These companies came into the cross-hairs for the sins of offering domestic partner benefits or advertising to homosexuals.  Focus on the Family also donated piles of money in 2008 to support California’s Proposition 8 campaign.

-Nick

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Each year, all the guys bring 12 assorted bottles of beer, and we lay them all out on the floor and take turns, draft style, selecting ones we want until they’re all gone.  This year’s selections included:

Delerium Tremens – an 8.5% alcohol Belgian brew

HeBREW Rejewvenator – “the chosen beer”

Caledonia Golden Promise Ale – the world’s first organic beer.

Brass Ass Brown Ale

This beer exchange really is one of the best Christmas traditions ever.

-Nick

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