Is Santa good for your kids?

UPDATE: See the picture of the indoctrination in action. Note the shock on their faces, and the haircut on Charlotte. She looks up to her Uncle so much.

Warning: satire ahead.

As we get together with family and friends this Christmas, I think it is worthwhile to take a moment to think about what Santa Clause represents. Who is this guy anyway? Let me explain...

This Christmas Eve, I had my nieces sitting on my knees, and I decided to read them a book. I was handed "The Night Before Christmas," by Clement Clarke Moore (a fascist, Nazi, and terrorist I think, but I digress). Let's see what our children learn, courtesy of Santa. He is a role model, after all. He is portrayed as a "jolly old elf," and our kids are supposed to welcome his arrival.

The poem clearly states everyone is asleep, when Santa feels the need to be a little noisy.

And mamma in her 'kerchief, and I in my cap,
Had just settled down for a long winter's nap,
When out on the lawn there arose such a clatter,
I sprang from the bed to see what was the matter.

Disturbing the peace, eh Santa? Let's add breaking and entering:

Down the chimney St. Nicholas came with a bound.

I guess he has no respect for man's law either. That isn't even the worst of it. The poem clearly states:

He was dressed all in fur, from his head to his foot.

Fur is murder, Santa. He has horribly hygiene, is this how we want our kids running around? I site the line:

And his clothes were all tarnished with ashes and soot

Come on Santa, take a bath! And we learn that Santa smokes! Yes, that's right, SMOKES! The line goes:

The stump of a pipe he held tight in his teeth,
And the smoke it encircled his head like a wreath;

Santa is also fat.

He had a broad face and a little round belly,
That shook, when he laughed like a bowlful of jelly.
He was chubby and plump, a right jolly old elf,
And I laughed when I saw him, in spite of myself;

Not only is he fat, but apparently, it's OK to laugh at fat people.

Last strike, as he drives away he proclaims:

Happy Christmas to all, and to all a good-night.

Wouldn't "Happy Holidays." be more inclusive (and non offensive)?

To summarize, Santa is a law-breaking, fur-wearing, pipe-smoking, filthy, insensitive, fat man. Is this who we want our children looking up to?

I also tried to calculate his "Carbon Footprint." I was unable to, but I think it's something like 10^39. He lives at the north pole, meaning his food supply has to go a long way (and he eats a lot, being a fatty). His heating bills have to be huge, too. He travels around the world, visiting billions of homes in one night. That cannot be carbon friendly (super-sonic travel), especially because he uses reindeer as his main mode of transportation. They have to produce a lot of greenhouse gasses (methane). And the consumerism? Don't get me started...

NASA at work.

You have to read this.

US and Russian astronauts have had sex in space for separate research programmes on how human beings might survive years in orbit, according to a book published yesterday.

Pierre Kohler, a respected French scientific writer, says in The Final Mission: Mir, The Human Adventure that the subject is taboo both at Nasa and at mission control in Moscow, but that cosmic couplings have taken place.

"The issue of sex in space is a serious one," he says. "The experiments carried out so far relate to missions planned for married couples on the future International Space Station, the successor to Mir. Scientists need to know how far sexual relations are possible without gravity."

He cites a confidential Nasa report on a space shuttle mission in 1996. A project codenamed STS-XX was to explore sexual positions possible in a weightless atmosphere.

Twenty positions were tested by computer simulation to obtain the best 10, he says.
"Two guinea pigs then tested them in real zero-gravity conditions. The results were videotaped but are considered so sensitive that even Nasa was only given a censored version."

Only four positions were found possible without "mechanical assistance". The other six needed a special elastic belt and inflatable tunnel, like an open-ended sleeping bag.

Mr Kohler says: "One of the principal findings was that the classic so-called missionary position, which is so easy on earth when gravity pushes one downwards, is simply not possible.

It seems they could have made a profit on the exploits, and lowered the cost for launching the shuttle. They filmed it for goodness sakes! Is this where my tax dollars go? And James Bond pioneered the research in Moonraker.