Rocking in Hakata

This is a story I first heard in math class during middle school. It made me laugh a lot, and I thought I’d share it with you. It’s been around for a while, and I haven’t found any credits for it. Just know that I don’t deserve the props. It’s a cute over-serious, kill-joy type dark joke. Tomorrow I’ll be closing out this year’s regular posts by posting a Japanese translation I did of the whole thing with a Japanese title. (I want it to be accessible to Japanese people via search engine, too.) Thanks so much for checking up on my silly little blog this year. I wish you all a Merry Christmas, a Happy New Year, and a winter break that falls pleasantly in between completely insane and perfectly restful. I’ll be back regularly in January. Anyway, please enjoy the goofiness below.

Santa Claus: An Engineer’s Perspective

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 accelerating 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. Merry Christmas!

Ha ha ha ha ha ha.

UPDATE: The Japanese translation is up. Check it out if you feel like it.

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Some classic, incredibly childish “Yo Mama” jokes in Japanese. Cause…why not? If you need a refresher, here’s a quick blurb explaining the phenomenon. (And no, it’s not as recent as Chuck Norris absurdities.)

A Mother insult is a reference to a person’s mother through the use of phrases such as “your mom” or other regional variants, frequently used to insult the target by way of his or her mother. Used as an insult, “your mom…” preys on widespread sentiments of filial piety, making the insult particularly and globally offensive. “Your mom” can be combined with most types of insults, although suggestions of promiscuity are particularly common. Insults based on obesity, poverty, poor hygiene, unattractiveness, or stupidity may also be used. Additionally, this phrase is frequently used in playful banter between friends. Although this may appear to be a recent phenomenon, one can trace its roots far back in history. Indeed, William Shakespeare utilized such devices on occasion.
- Reworked from Wikipedia’s “Mother Insult” article

Today we’ll just attempt “fat” insults. 今日のテーマは「太っている」冗談だけ。

Yo mama’s so fat, if you poke her in the leg, she leaks gravy.
君のお母さんはすごく太っていて、足を棒で突いたら、グレービーソースが漏り出してくる。

Yo mama’s so fat, one a scale of 1 to 10, she’s a 747.
君のお母さんはすごく太っていて、１から１０までのスケールで、彼女は７４７だ。
＊７４７＝有名な飛行機型

Yo mama’s so fat, when she puts on her “little black dress” she looks like outer space.
君のお母さんはすごく太っていて、体にぴったり合う黒いドレスを着ると宇宙みたいんだ。

Yo mama’s so fat, when she was diagnosed with a flesh-eating disease, the doctor gave her 87 years to live.
君のお母さんはすごく太っていて、肉食性の病気に罹った時に、医者さんが「これから、後８７年しかない」と診断した。

Yo mama’s so fat, she puts mayonnaise on aspirin.
君のお母さんはすごく太っていて、アスピリンにマヨを付けるんだ。

Yo mama’s so fat, she goes to a restaurant, looks at the menu and says, “Ok.”
君のお母さんはすごく太っていて、レストランに入って、メニューを見ると、ただ「Ｏｋ」と言うんだ。
＊メニューの全てを注文したという意味

I know, lame. I had nothing today. So yeah. Ha ha. These things happen. By the way, feel free to correct my grammar / diction. I never get it right with this kind of stuff. I’m not even sure that I lined up the “Yo mama’s so fat” part properly. I bet you could do it with ほど and achieve a different nuance. I dunno. Anyhoo - silliness over.

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I saw a really neat segment from Technology, Entertainment, Design (TED) 2007 today featuring Dr. Vilayanur Ramachandran. I think I first saw him in a marvelous documentary about Daniel Tammet called The Boy with the Incredible Brain (full documentary). Anyway, in his absolutely fascinating 23 minute 46 second long talk, he covered the Capgras delusion (where a patient is convinced that people or pets with which an emotional connection is shared has been replaced by an imposter despite recognizing the person), the phenomenon of phantom limbs, and synesthesia. Synesthesia is a captivating subject for me. Anyway, I’ve isolated a part of the talk where Dr. Ramachandran does a neat little demonstration. It worked for me. See if it works for you.

Now, my question is - linguistically, would this work across the board with speakers of other languages. Is the “buba / kiki” association valid only within social pools that share phonemes or root languages? Or is the association something unrelated to language, and more basic? Specifically, I’m curious about Japanese, because I know that time and time again I’ve bashed my head against onomatopoeic words that either oppose my imagery or are at least incongruous with my brain. This could be purely a personal thing, but it really makes you wonder. The voiced / non-voiced character system implies a hard / soft dichotomy, but would it carry over synesthetically? In a metaphoric sense? I have a feeling that it’s a sociolinguistic cultural thing. I dunno. Would the “Martian Alphabet” experiment work here? Curious. Most curious. Reminds me of a hilariously fudged term paper I wrote about periodical publications in Japan chose fonts that feminize the masculine kanji writing system via font choices, only more respectable.

By the way, the only other talk that I’ve seen so far and been enthralled by was given by space entrepreneur Burt Rutan. Disclosure: in the story that I’m continuing to write, I have a synesthetic character, and finished describing the period that Mr. Rutan discusses in his talk. Maybe that’s why I’m so interested. Alright - gotta go ride through the ice cold rain for an hour to teach 2 classes and come home the same way. Yaaaay. Not.

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Bryan at A Walk in Hachioji tagged me. So now I’ve got to post this according to the rules, or something bad happens. (You know, like the dying child ends up watching a pet shop burn to the ground instead of meeting his favorite basketball athlete. Or my hair falls out. Or I’ll fall victim to some freak accident. You know the drill.)

So as the rules say, I should also list the rules:
1. Link to the person’s blog who tagged you.
2. Post these rules on your blog.
3. List seven random and/or weird facts about yourself.
4. Tag seven random people at the end of your post and include links to their blogs.
5. Let each person know that they have been tagged by posting a comment on their blog. (Optional, apparently.)

Seven Random Facts

1) I have difficulty sleeping in beds made tightly, and frequently kick out the blankets to create a warmer cocoon for myself. I also rarely sleep with sheets in non-summer months (during which I sleep with little else).

2) There are loads of things I like to learn how to do, and even how to critique, without ever intending to do them for myself. The population at large does this kind of thing when we view reality shows based on talent. But I sometimes actively seek out instruction on things I’ll never do. Building things, cooking things, hacking things together from spare parts. I don’t know why I do that. But I do. It’s a form of entertainment to me.

3) Because of my placement, I rarely see other foreign people. Will lives on my island, and it’s uncommon to see him more than twice in a month. People on the mainland see me so infrequently that I usually have a new haircut each time we meet. (Not that I change styles. Just that it’s been freshly cut. I’ve never been an adventurous style person.) Even though I’m an English teacher, it’s not bizarre to go for weeks without speaking a word of English out loud. (During test times, mostly.)

4) I once spent a spring vacation in a converted prison in Skien, Norway.

5) When I was younger, my siblings and I discovered that peanut butter goes nicely with hot dogs. That was adventurous eating. It was good. Nowadays people still think it was a bit too adventurous when I tell them about it. The most recent non-Asian “fun” food combination I tried was shrimp scampi in a chocolate fondue fountain. Not a winner.

6) I should be dead. At least once. In spring of 1995 I was in a major car accident. The medical folks and investigators told us that everyone in the car (my entire family) should be dead. None of us died due to the accident, though my father passed away shortly thereafter. It was pretty scary stuff. Since then I’ve been in 2 more accidents. None were my fault - I am a pretty good driver, if I do say so myself. And, I do, obviously.

7) When asked what I thought would be a good name for my soon-to-be-born baby brother, I wholeheartedly (and sincerely) suggested that we name him Pinocchio. No joke. Really did. Thank goodness my parents took my lobbying efforts with the appropriate pound of salt. I was a strange child.

Ok, and my victims will be…
Clay (the Hopeless Romantic)
Megan (Constantly Baffled)
Greg (On the Run)
Chuck (Nicole)
Mayumi K (Osaka-ben)
Harvey (Japan Newbie)
Thomas (Nihon Hacks)

And I will continue the trend thus far of not announcing the tag, and hence completely ignoring step five. Victims, feel free to do the same. Ah, Monday.

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Sometimes I take a look at the Japanese newspaper comics to see if I can figure out what they mean. This is a comic called “Gokigen-san” which translates really roughly as “Mr. Mood.” I think it’s put together by Kizaki Noboru. See if you can help me figure it out. Click on it for a larger version, as always. In the cartoon, as far as I can tell, Mr. Mood is listening in on a conversation nearby and relaying it to his friend.

Not much is happening in Frame 1, so let’s move along.

Frame 2. Mr. Mood repeats a series of foreign words that are used a lot when discussing current events and news items. 「サブプライムショック　ヘッジファンド　ハイリスク」 transliterates to “Sub-prime Shock, Hedge-fund, High risk.” The man he’s speaking with replies 「みな横文字だな」, or literally “It’s all horizontal words.” That translates to something like “It’s all Greek to me.” (Japanese can also be written horizontally, the reference just serves to point out the source language’s Western / European origin.)

Frame 3. Mr. Mood excitedly tells his friend 「日本語がでました」, or “Wait, they’re speaking Japanese now.” To which his friend replies 「なんだって」 or “So what are they saying?”

Frame 4. Mr. Mood uses a series of compound kanji words. 「円高　株安　日本売り」 which means “Strong yen, cheap stocks, Japan on sale.”

Comic information. Ehime Newspaper. Wednesday, 5 December 2007. Ed. #44726. Page 11, Region Section. 愛媛新聞２００７年（平成19年）12月5日水曜日第４４７２６ページ11地方.

Here’s where I’m confused. The stuff that I’ve seen in the news about the foreign words weren’t really particularly bad news for Japan. In fact, it seemed like Japan was taking the all-too-common cues from Western media outlets and pointing out doom and gloom stories from the American press in particular. Sub-prime shock refers to the recent problems with the American housing market - whereby people who really couldn’t afford mortgages were allowed to get into debt thanks to (in my opinion) completely absurd government intervention. Now things are cramping because wallets are being opened and everyone’s thinking it wasn’t such a hot idea. Hindsight 20/20. (Though the “victims” the first time around are once again “victims.” I don’t get that. Don’t buy things you can’t pay for, folks.) It’s important to know about, though, since several presidential candidates have plans to bail these people out. I don’t want my taxes going to subsidize financially ignorant peoples’ risky mortgages, but that’s me. I think they should lose their houses and live within their means, as mean as that sounds. Anyway, I digress. The hedge-fund and high risk things are a bit more vague to me, but I haven’t heard anything bad for Japan…so why did that translate to selling Japan in spite of a strong yen and cheap stocks? I don’t get it! Someone help me!

What I originally liked about this was the fact that the foreign loan words caused confusion. I’ve seen a lot of stuff lately about how the use of foreign words is trendy, but counterproductive because it muddles issues rather than clarifies them. Especially in the instances where perfectly good Japanese words exist. I agree to some degree with that idea. Nothing frustrates me more as an English speaker than having to learn reworked Japan-appropriated English words that have different meanings. Ha ha. Maybe that’s what this is parodying? The disconnect? I dunno. Help! What does it mean? What’s the message?

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