OVER AND OUT – BUT WAIT!

AS WE COMPLETE ANOTHER ORB, we pause to reflect. Now doesn’t it seem to be the zenith of idiocy to ignore the spectacular spectacle of our planet and its mates spiraling up the Void around our blazing star, and instead fill up our kids’ heads with the ridiculous image of an old geezer with a bushy beard wearing a funny red suit and dropping presents down chimneys?

Should we not instead be acquainting our children with the majesty and mystery of our timespace continuum? Oops, time for lunch. Sit down for sausage and beer and German fries and fermented cabbage salad and forget the holiday madness, as retailers are pleading for your vanishing business and the Amazon steamroller crunches them all down. Nope, Ya Udah Bistro ain’t sad and empty – we’ll be bursting with business, all the day long and merrily into the night, all through the end-of-2017 season. If you ain’t there you ain’t nowhere.

The world may be shutting down for the end of the year. All the airports are jammed with grouchy families with screaming children and yes your flight to Tuktoyaktuk has been delayed because of ‘SURPRISE!’ inclement weather.

Welcome to lovely Tuktoyaktuk, just in case you didn’t really believe it existed. Oh Canada. From the Inuit word ‘Kann-ad-dah’, translated as ‘Hell Frozen Over’

Santa frantically searches for somewhere to land…

As 2017 rolls toward its confused climax, we send out greetings to one and all.

To all faithful Ya Udah Bistro customers, suppliers and friends we send our greetings, to those who celebrate Christmas, and Hanukah. Greetings to all our Pagan friends as well, and those who worship the Sun and Mithra.

‘Born of a virgin on December 25th, followed by a core group of twelve with whom he had a final meal sharing bread and wine, performer of miracles, killed and resurrected, known as the “light of the world” – if you guessed that I am describing Jesus the Christ, you would be incorrect. Rather, I write about the ancient Roman god known as Mithras.

‘The cult of Mithras was one of a number of ancient mystery religions, so denoted because their “mysteries” were revealed only to their initiates. What we know about the ancient Mysteries of Mithras comes primarily from the commentary of early Christian detractors, references in ancient historical and philosophical treatises, and archeological remains of carvings, temples, and statues.’

Surprised to read this? We will not surprise you with anything else at Ya Udah Bistro, as we will be open every day through the end of the year, including Christmas Day and New Year’s. Regular hours, regular fare, normal startling-but-not-fatal prices.

And for those who insist on believing in Santa, have a seat. Here’s a contemporary perspective:

Santa Claus: An Engineer’s Perspective

• 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 household, that comes to 108 million homes, presuming that there is at least one good child in each.

• 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.

• 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).
• 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, even if Santa did exist, he’s dead now.

Ya Udah Bistro, a Menteng fixture practically forever, offering service as delightful and faithful as our selection of fine food and drink, all at down-to-earth prices, and in a convivial atmosphere of, well, continuous celebration of life. Open seven days a week, all through the holiday season.

Eat! Drink! and Be Merry! Wake up that waitress and order another round…