Well then, all of you loyal enough to still be reading after my very uncouth and presumptuous hiatus, a new year approaches and, as is traditional in western society, it is time for resolutions!

I can hear you moaning through my keyboard already.

Recently however I have been giving this cultural quirk some thought and perhaps it is not as pointless and pious as it sounds. There is some sense in embarking out on a journey of some mental, physical or for some spiritual self discipline as we usher in another cycle of the earth around the sun. That way a we have a milestone to measure ourselves by, and a sense of being a part of something greater than ourselves (sounds vaguely religious).

As such I am decided. I will resolve myself this new year.

This left me with a problem however. With new years coming in the next 48 hours I was left bereft of any inspiration as to what to deny myself or what morally acceptable practice to indulge myself in.

I am much too infatuated with my vices and far too busy for any moral achievements, so what was I to do? Fortunately, you my lovelies have come to my aid. I have resolved that this year I will provoke a thought in each of your minds and have you do the same to me.

So you can expect a lot more from me as I will from you. Looking forward to our adventures together through all that is trivial.

Thank you for reading and

Happy New Year!

However I have a solution, it being Christmas (hence why I have been a little too busy to blog) I am going to give it a rest until boxing day.

After which I am going to be the proverbial journalistic Buddha. I promise.

So till then!

I have always had a fondness for vampire films. Interview with a vampire, vampire in Brooklyn, Queen of the damned, all of these and more have kept me entertained on those rainy days when pseudo intellectualism isn’t enough.

So when I saw twilight storming its way into the box office I couldn’t resist. I had even been encouraged by a whole host of good reviews.

How disappointing.

The film starts with the leading lady entering a new school (the college drama style should have forewarned me) and before too long is entranced by the strange mysterious family which also attend, especially their single son with unnaturally thin eyebrows.

Luck for her they are coincidentally lab partners! However he gives her the cold shoulder. After disappearing for a few days he then instantly takes a shine to her and this is where the film does nothing but go down hill.

The male protagonist is nothing more than a broken record for the next forty minutes repeating nothing but variants on “I’m dangerous you don’t want to get involved.” but fails to conceal his secret when he saves her by moving at inhuman speed, denting the car which would have hit her. How ever did she figure it out?

Then comes generous helpings of the stock teen romance culminating in the most disappointing scene of the film. He goes to show her how he transforms in the light. Cue dramatic music. He sparkles. The scary vamp has sparkly skin.

I’d go on but it’s time for bed.

Perhaps I’ll watch it once more to put myself to sleep.

Only yesterday I discovered something wonderful, although intellectually void.

Humans Vs Zombies.

A game which has taken American colleges by storm. It is basically a convoluted game of tag. Oh and did I mention it has nerf guns?

Click here before you continue reading.

Usually I refrain from “team exercises” but this just looks too good. I have decided that I am going to get a game going in my area and can’t wait!

Anyway just thought you’d like to know of my little guilty pleasure.

Never can have enough of those.

I. There are approximately two billion children (persons under 18) in the world. However, since Santa does not visit children of Muslim, Hindu, Jewish or Buddhist religions, this reduces the workload for Christmas night to 15% of the total, or 378 million (according to the Population Reference Bureau).

At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per house hold, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

II. Santa has about 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 967.7 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with a good child, Santa has around 1/1000th of a second to park the sleigh, hop out, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left for him, get back up the chimney, jump into the sleigh and get on to the next house.

Assuming that each of these 108 million stops is evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false, but will accept for the purposes of our calculations), we are now talking about 0.78 miles per household; a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting bathroom stops or breaks. This means 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, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second, and a conventional reindeer can run (at best) 15 miles per hour.

III. The payload of the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium sized Lego set (two pounds), the sleigh is carrying over 500 thousand tons, not counting Santa himself. On land, a conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that the “flying” reindeer could pull ten times the normal amount, the job can’t be done with eight or even nine of them— Santa would need 360,000 of them. This increases the payload, not counting the weight of the sleigh, another 54,000 tons, or roughly seven times the weight of the Queen Elizabeth (the ship, not the monarch).

IV. 600,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance — this would heat up the reindeer in the same fashion as a spacecraft re-entering the earth’s atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer would absorb 14.3 quintillion joules of energy per second each. In short, they would burst into flames almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake.

The entire reindeer team would be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second, or right about the time Santa reached the fifth house on his trip.

Not that it matters, however, since Santa, as a result of accellerating from a dead stop to 650 m.p.s. in .001 seconds, would be subjected to centrifugal forces of 17,500 g’s. A 250 pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of the sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force, instantly crushing his bones and organs and reducing him to a quivering blob of pink goo.

Therefore, if Santa did exist, he’s dead now.

Oh dear he’s back on the physics again.

Whilst doing some background reading I have come across an ingenious little theory. If we accept the Everett many-worlds interpretation of the universe then it can be reasoned that something very strange will happen. We will become immortal.

This sounds preposterous but let me explain.

The many world interpretation states that at any given instant an unimaginably huge number of parallel universes, or time streams, branch off from this one. In each of these universes every possibility from the last instant is realized.

If this were true then imagine a man at the time of his death, being shot for example. There are a few possible outcomes of the instant before he was shot in which he doesn’t die. So some “copies” of our poor friend still survive and the continued consciousness of the copies which were not so lucky cease to exist. So from the perception of the surviving versions they have been miraculously saved and this will continue ad infinitum until there is a 0% probability of his survival.

With my knowledge of life and chance it seems that the likelihood of the probability of a being survival reaching zero is very small. It would seem then that, although perhaps not for eternity, a conscious version of ourselves will be immortal.
Now that’s not something you hear every day.

If you’ll excuse me I’m late for my skydiving lesson.

I made a promise to myself that every article or blesse I put out to you will be of the highest quality, engaging and relevant. Unfortunately I don’t know how I’ll manage that for thirty days straight.

So my aforementioned true loves please comment with some topics! Even better a title for me to flesh out.

Request away.

Take two men. One has lived for fifty years in an upper middle class family, was never very good at school but his parents have passed on the business so there was never an issue. He is married with child to the woman whom it was most socially acceptable and has never questioned his state of affairs.

Now compare this to a younger man, perhaps about 25, who has grown up in wartime soviet Russia. He has learnt survival skills from the age of four having been bombed out of his own home and is now a freedom fighter. His partner is a similar freedom fighter with whom he had a child of passion at the tender age of 17. He has spent the last 10 years trying to overthrow a power unimaginably greater than his own. Despite the fact that he knows the futility of his actions he refuses to give up.

Which man is worthy of greater respect? It would seem that the rules of human society would suggest that the former was the greater man simply in view of his age. However I’d hope you agree with me that this is not the case.

After all, surely experience and character earn respect? Not the number of years one has had the honor of living.

Do you agree? Comments are welcome.