board77

Jude wrote:

Anyway, the answers to all your questions can be found in "Hogfather" by Terry Pratchett.

I loves Hogfather...

You are a woman of immaculate taste.

I do believe! I do, I do, I do! :claps hands wildly:

Wait; wrong story...

I'm loving this at the moment. I know, I'm probably years behind, but this is just so cool.

Hey, annyone aseen Raymond Briggs' 'Father Christmas;? It was made the year after the snowman, and is the story of what Santa does during the summer holidays one year. It's really nice!"

No, I've not seen that, Crucifer.

I meant to say that it's interesting to me to see the other holidays associated with Christmas that other countries celebrate. I think, on the whole, Americans get gipped.

(And I am just realizing that word, also spelled "gypped," has its derivation from Gypsy. Sorry Gypsies!)


Lali

Lali, I just learned that a few months ago, was really surprised! All I can say is: whoops.

Er, unless that is rooted in slander as well.




*E*

Christmas is lovely! The best time, in my opinion, is the time of advent because from the 24th on everything goes rapidly downhill.



Today has been very Christmassy here, actually. We have had loads of snow all day, I built a snowman in my pyjamas, and I finally found a place to hang my lights in my otherwise too untidy room. The lights look particularly good when I haven't got my glasses on because they looks really nice and fuzzy then.

My sister and parents baked four types of biscuits last week and I know only one of them. Earlier, I got myself a selection of them:

- our usual biscuits with marzipan and jam, topped with either a glacé cherry or pistachio nuts
- "normal" biscuits, nothing fancy, with sprinkles
- some round biscuits containing nust, I think, and rolled in pine nuts; something for both me and my gerbil, I say
- mulled wine biscuits that are very moist and very tasty even though I dislike mulled wine

As far as I know, there will be another type of biscuits which we always have. Those are my favourites, so I hope someone will make them soon. I'm not baking at all this year - I've already sent my cookie cutters to England.

Mmmmm, those look good!




Lali

I may have to revise my thinking about Santa.

From Henry Gee, a senior editor of Nature:

The Quantum Santa
In his book, Unweaving The Rainbow, Richard Dawkins boasts that he tried to tell a six-year-old child that Father Christmas didn't exist. His argument was that Father Christmas would not be able to climb down all those chimneys and tiptoe noiselessly to the bedsides of hundreds of millions of children, all in one night. There simply wouldn't be enough time, even if reindeer were hypersonic.

Well, apart from being a somewhat cruel thing to do to a small child (the distinguished professor for the public understanding of science should pick on someone his own size), the argument is, to be charitable, an incomplete explanation. Dawkins may be no slouch when it comes to evolution, but he knows (by his own admission) rather less about physics.

Of course Father Christmas exists, and he can visit arbitrarily as many children has he pleases in as short a time as is convenient, barring mid-air reindeer pile- ups. The reason is that Father Christmas is a Macroscopic Quantum Object.

Let me explain. It is a feature of the quantum world that particles - such as electrons - can be in more than one place at a time, provided that nobody is watching. In a famous experiment known as the "two-slit" test, physicists have been able to fire a single particle at an opaque plate with two separate slits in it. The diffraction pattern seen on the other side of the slits suggests that the particle passes through both holes at once and interacts with itself. However, if detectors are placed at the slits, to see which slit the particle passes through, the diffraction pattern disappears, and the particle can be seen to pass through either one slit or the other, but not both. The key lies in the fact of observation. Provided that nobody seeks to measure the effect with more than a certain amount of precision, the particle keeps all its options open. But if someone looks too closely, the particle makes its choice. In the language of physics, its quantum wavefunction collapses.

Now, let's think of Father Christmas as a particle, obeying the rules of the quantum world. Following the logic of the two-slit experiment, it is perfectly possible for him to visit all the good children of the world simultaneously, provided that he does so unseen. If he is spotted, his wavefunction will collapse and he will be revealed as your Dad with a comedy beard after all. The quantum nature of Father Christmas explains the taboo against seeing him do his job - which Dawkins does not explain.

But there's more. It is possible to object that Father Christmas is far too large, rubicund and jolly to be a particle. In the real-life, macroscopic world of people, elves and flying reindeer, the quantum behavior of each of the squillions of particles from which we are made averages out, so what we see is the everyday phenomenon of causes preceding effects, and people who can never be in two places at once.

Cynics might attribute this last consequence to the deficiencies of Railtrack, but it is a fact that real people, even bearded men with red hats and big boots, tend to be found in discrete locations, irrespective of whether they are being watched or not.

This objection doesn't wash, however, because it is possible to have macroscopic quantum objects that are larger than single particles. Scientists have managed to choreograph large clusters of atoms to behave as if they were just one particle, in a kind of nanoscopic Busby Berkeley routine. Admittedly, these clusters are too small to see with the naked eye, let alone qualify as cheerful red- faced men with sacks full of gifts, but the point is made. Importantly, these macroscopic quantum objects observe the rules of the quantum world when cooled to within a whisker of absolute zero - minus 273 C. Any warmer than this, and the choreography breaks down and the clusters behave like any old bunch of atoms.

Nevertheless, in this frigidity might lie an explanation for another feature of Father Christmas that Dawkins neglects to explain - the undeniable fact that Father Christmas traditionally inhabits cold places, such as Lapland or the North Pole. OK, so neither of these places gets as chilly as absolute zero, but it must count for something that no deserving child would address their wish list to hot places such as, say, Borneo or Brazil. The very idea is quite ridiculous. QED (which stands for Quantum Electrodynamics, as any fule kno.)

Tolkien never wrote about this!

*checks the Letters from Father Christmas *

I love it!


Lali

I'm not the only person who finds their choices of "guests" very ironic, am I?

I was starting to get excited about heading to Mother's house after exams, but then last night she called and said her parents want to come down over that first weekend. Weekend meaning, they'll get down here as soon as she goes to work. Her leaving, meaning I'll get to entertain them and for them that means taking me shopping and asking ridiculous questions of me. So I'm not looking forward to going to Mother's anymore.

A curmudgeon's guide to the worst Christmas singles

Thoughts?

I like this bit:

Quote:

Kenny G.’s saxophone has done incalculable damage to jazz, to pop, to makeout music. This suffocating version of a holiday fave is his attempt to bring down Christmas. He very nearly succeeds.

That guy is right on my page musically. I can't stand any of the songs he listed...and he agrees with me!

I have just come back from the Christmas market in the town where I studied. It seemed as if there were fewer booths this time, but it was still crowded for the most part. Pics are here.

That is so neat! That just looks like so much fun.


Lali

I like some of those songs, but by the "original" artists. And, oddly enough, I like Boney M's "Mary's Boy Child". I don't like it a huge amount, but I like it. Still, it can't compare to their masterpiece, Rasputin, which is one of the greatest recordings ever made.

So today our local school had its Christmas concert. There are exactly 100 children in this school, from kindergarten to grade 7. They did Handel's Messiah, a special version for young voices. Imagine!!! Much shortened, of course, and made "easier", but this is NOT easy music. The choir from the United Church also joined in, a group of 10 people. (A very small church.)

It was wonderful. Absolutely wonderful. The teacher who undertakes to organize these concerts every year does the most amazing job. Two years ago they did a musical version of A Christmas Carol. Everyone takes part, even the kindergarten kids. Sometimes the wee ones from the playschool at the church also take part.

One of the nicest bits was when the kindergarten kids danced around the baby Jesus in the stable: there were sheep and cows and pigs and lambs and a bumblebee and a ladybug and an alligator and a big black spider. All God's creatures, after all. I tell you, I sat there with my eyes full of tears, watching those precious children. I am such a sentimental fool.

We all stood up, as is traditional for the Hallelujah chorus, and then we stayed standing up and clapped like crazy.

That sounds wonderful!

It reminds me that we had a pterodactyl at our homeschool Christmas musical. The preschoolers had their pick of what animal they wanted to dress up as. Most picked sheep. I think there were a few cows, too. (No pigs, for obvious reasons.) But one little boy really wanted to be a pterodactyl. When told that we don't think any dinosaurs were there were Jesus was born, he said, "But God made the pterodactyls, too."

Well, how can you argue with that?

(Well, I know you all could, but you know what I mean! )


Lali