go ahead and destroy this

Found while searching for a shrimp scampi recipe:

Where is the best place to get your Seafood?
The Web is the ideal place to order your favourite Seafood online.

From the "It Must Have Been a Slow News Day" Department:

Organized Labor Pushes Pro-Worker Agenda

About seven years ago, George Carlin did a show at the University of Rochester Palestra. I was so excited to see him; Carlin had been one of my idols since I was old enough to understand swear words. I particularly enjoyed his observational mind and admired his mastery of language; he is the ancestral precursor to Jerry Seinfeld and Steven Wright. His Baseball vs. Football and A Place for My Stuff (NSFW video) are still among the best stand-up bits ever written.

But he was not really on his game that night in the Palestra. Maybe the material was raw, maybe the energy was off, maybe my expectations were too high. He was not only sortof unfunny, but he took time out of his set to (A) chastise the audience for not laughing loud or often enough at his jokes and (B) shamelessly hawk his book.

Ever since then, even in his popular HBO specials, I've found his work disappointing. His trademark counterculture irony seems to have been replaced with virulent anarchic rage and his monologues have become more political than societal. He's like Dennis Miller on PCP.

That said, I will be watching tonight when he appears on Jay Leno -- and I never watch Jay Leno unless I want to hear the latest Monica Lewinsky joke -- because he'll be appearing on the same stage as noted conservative political pundit Ann Coulter. And if he doesn't use the opportunity to savage conservative politics and tear Ann a new Coulter, then we'll know that Carlin isn't Carlin anymore -- he's just some guy selling the newer, louder version of the Carlin Product.

And that would be some sad sh!t.

As a general rule, the Jason Hammersla Files does not condone e-mail forwards. I belong to that distinct demographic pie wedge that has been friends with the Internet for too long to be sufficiently surprised by its peculiar passions and jokes and not long enough to accept them as just another quirky aspect of its personality.

However, I do still receive them, and every once in a while I'll read them, and once in a great while I'll read one that actually makes me glad that I did. This is one of those, sent to me a long time ago. Maybe some of you haven't seen it, and this seems like the perfect time to share it. Enjoy.

IS THERE A SANTA CLAUS?

As a result of an overwhelming lack of requests, and with research help from that renowned scientific journal SPY magazine (January, 1990) - I am pleased to present the annual scientific inquiry into Santa Claus.

1) No known species of reindeer can fly. BUT there are 300,000 species of living organisms yet to be classified, and while most of these are insects and germs, this does not COMPLETELY rule out flying reindeer which only Santa has ever seen.

2) There are 2 billion children (persons under 18) in the world. BUT since Santa doesn't (appear to) handle the Muslim, Hindu, Jewish and Buddhist children, that reduces the workload to 15% of the total - 378 million according to Population Reference Bureau. At an average (census) rate of 3.5 children per household, that's 91.8 million homes. One presumes there's at least one good child in each.

3) Santa has 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 822.6 visits per second. This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has 1/1000th of a second to park, hop out of the sleigh, jump down the chimney, fill the stockings, distribute the remaining presents under the tree, eat whatever snacks have been left, get back up the chimney, get back into the sleigh and move on to the next house. Assuming that each of these 91.8 million stops are evenly distributed around the earth (which, of course, we know to be false but for the purposes of our calculations we will accept), we are now talking about 78 miles per household, a total trip of 75.5 million miles, not counting stops to do what most of us must do at least once every 31 hours, plus feeding and etc.

This means that 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 on earth, the Ulysses space probe, moves at a poky 27.4 miles per second - a conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles per hour.

4) The payload on the sleigh adds another interesting element. Assuming that each child gets nothing more than a medium-sized lego set (2 pounds), the sleigh is carrying 321,300 tons, not counting Santa, who is invariably described as overweight. On land, conventional reindeer can pull no more than 300 pounds. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see point #1) could pull TEN TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with eight, or even nine. We need 214,200 reindeer. This increases the payload - not even counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons.

5) 353,000 tons traveling at 650 miles per second creates enormous air resistance - this will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as spacecrafts re-entering the earth's atmosphere. The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3 QUINTILLION joules of energy. Per second. Each. In short, they will burst into flame almost instantaneously, exposing the reindeer behind them, and creating deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporized within 4.26 thousandths of a second. Santa, meanwhile, will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-pound Santa (which seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 pounds of force.

IN CONCLUSION - If Santa ever DID deliver presents on Christmas Eve, he's dead now.