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Technology Stocks : Intel Strategy for Achieving Wealth and Off Topic -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: margaret tasset who wrote (22066)	12/23/1998 2:24:00 PM
From: Ann Janssen	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 27012

Hi Margaret and All Just wanted to wish everyone a VERY MERRY Christmas!! A have a couple of comments for the boys who love to disagree. Frank and Sonny, now think about it, isn't it the season for lying??? <ggg> Or should I say skirting the 'truth'. Read on and you will get my drift. Have a safe and happy holiday season everyone!! Take Care Ann (AKA Mrs Claus, phooey on the Furby, I got a bouncing Tigger <gg>) ---------------------------------------------------------------------- Physics explains how Santa manages workload usatoday.com If you celebrate Christmas, you probably remember when you learned "the truth" about Santa Claus. For me, it happened when I was about 7. I was sitting on the curb in front of my house with Ross, a 9-year-old terror. Ross rained derision on me for believing. I staggered inside to my parents and asked them. Like most parents, they knew of no common-sense argument for Santa. Apply a single drop of rational thinking to the Santa legend and the whole thing disintegrates. They sat me down and broke the news. They told me Santa isn't real. The poor, ignorant souls. You see, it's possible that our parents were like ancient Greeks who trusted that gods ruled nature. They simply didn't know and couldn't possibly have grasped the reality and the science. They dismissed Santa as imaginary because they couldn't get their minds around what he really is: the world's most advanced space-time engineer. Of course, his work is backed by a supersecret research lab disguised as an elf hangout and based in the one place where no one could sneak up and see what's going on, i.e. the North Pole. This alternative view of Santa is being investigated by scientists from the University of Wales, North Carolina State University and other schools. And it's documented in The Physics of Christmas, a new book by Roger Highfield. Much of the book is pretty whimsical, describing the science behind plum pudding and the anthropology of Christmas cards. But the chapter called "Santa's Science" could forever change the view of Santa as just a jolly, red-suited cartoon. "I could've attacked the whole Christmas thing from all sorts of angles and said it was impossible," says Highfield, science editor at The Daily Telegraph in London. "It was more fun to do it the other way around." Highfield makes clear the magnificence of Santa's daunting challenge. Begin with the number of stops Santa has to make: probably about 842 million. If you make some assumptions about population density and distances between homes, then run the calculations, you find that Santa has to cover 221 million miles in one night. If Santa makes his best use of time by traveling opposite Earth's rotation, he'd have to move at 2,558 miles per second just to have a fraction of a second to actually drop off gifts. The acceleration he'd have to achieve between rooftops would generate about 2 billion G's of force on his sleigh. That's more than enough, says one physicist in the book, to reduce a person to "chunky salsa." In that case, how could a real Santa do what he does? "Santa clearly is ahead of the curve when it comes to applying advanced scientific theories to his sleigh's design," says Larry Silverberg, aerospace engineer at North Carolina State, as quoted by Highfield. "There is a way, and it's based on plausible science." Santa has obviously figured out how to put himself, his sleigh and his reindeer inside a "relativity cloud," according to Highfield's book. The theory of relativity states that matter can't move through space faster than the speed of light. But there's no limit on how fast space can move. So Santa puts his sleigh inside a bubble of space and moves the space. That happens by using some device to warp space-time so it expands behind the sleigh and contracts in front of it. Basically, Santa, the reindeer and all the presents get propelled along through the cosmos like a surfer riding a mongo wave. Such a means of transportation solves a boatload of problems for Santa. First, he can move plenty fast enough -- at or greater than the speed of light - to get to all the houses. Second, if he travels that fast, another part of relativity predicts that time for Santa would slow. From his perspective, time would slow to the point that the world outside his bubble would be just about frozen. He could take all the time he wants to zoom through his rounds. To us on Earth, it would seem that he had done it in the snap of a finger. That would explain why he can travel the world yet never be seen. Because Santa would be stationary inside a moving space bubble, he would not feel as if he were moving himself. It would be as if he'd put his sleigh in a railroad box car. So he would not experience the acceleration or the G forces. He would not be turned into salsa. He wouldn't create a series of sonic booms, which would make it hard to sneak onto a rooftop. Dasher and the other reindeer would not burn into charcoal by traveling at high speeds through the atmosphere. It's the perfect solution. So no more falling back on the lame explanation that Santa isn't real. Join the modern age. Accept the technological achievements of this great man, apparently preserved for hundreds of years by breakthroughs in genetic engineering. After all, is it any harder to believe that than an explanation of how a Pentium chip works? -------------------------------------------------------------------------------- E-mail Kevin Maney at kmaney@usatoday.com and include name, address and day phone.

To: margaret tasset who wrote (22066)	12/23/1998 5:55:00 PM
From: Frank Ellis Morris	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 27012

Good Evening Margaret, Yes I had been thinking about using the margin for some time as Sonny has always been telling us about his margin. I hope that I feel comfortable with it and not get upset when the market does play its nasty tricks from time to time. It is nice that Merrill's dog finally had something nice to say about Intel. Maybe somebody gave him a Christmas bone. Thanks you for your well wishes with my "DESTINY". I am pleased that you are doing so well at EBAY with your new business. Well tomorrow is Christmas Eve and we are going to be getting snow tonight so it will be a White Christmas here. Have a great evening and send some of that warm Florida air up here. Warm Regards Frank