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Is there a Santa Claus? The Rebuttal
  (Jim Mantle, Waterloo Maple Software)

  Come on, ya gotta believe! I mean, if you can handle flying furry animals,
then it's only a small step to the rest! For example:

  1) As admitted, it is possible that a flying reindeer can be found. I would
agree that it would be quite an unusual find, but they might exist.

  2) You've relied on cascading assumptions. For example, you have assumed a
uniform distribution of children across homes. Toronto/Yorkville, or
Toronto/Cabbagetown, or other yuppie nieghborhoods, have probably less than the
average (and don't forget DINK and SINK homes (Double Income No Kids, Single
Income No Kids)), while families with 748 starving children that they keep
showing on Vision TV while trying to pick my pocket would skew that 15% of home
s
down a few percent.

  3) You've also assumed that each home that has kids would have at least one
good kid. What if anti-selection applies, and homes with good kids tend to have
more than their share of good kids, and other homes have nothing but terrorists
in diapers? Let's drop that number of homes down a few more percent.

  4) Santa would have to FedEx a number of packages ahead of time, since he
would not be able to fly into Air Force bases, or into tower-controlled areas
near airports. He'd get shot at over certain sections of the Middle East. and
the no-fly zones in Iraq, so he'd probably use DHL there. Subtract some more
homes.

  5) I just barely passed Physics and only read Stephen Hawking's book once, bu
t
I recall that there is some Einsteinian Theory that says time does strange
things as you move faster. In fact, when you go faster than the speed of light,
time runs backward, if you do a straight line projection, connect the dots and
just ignore any singularity you might find right at the speed of light. And
don't say you can't go faster than the speed of light because I've seen it done
on TV. Jean-Luc doesn't have reindeer but he does have matter-antimatter warp
engines and a holodeck and that's good enough for me. So Santa could go faster
than the speed of light, visit all the good children which are not uniformly
distributed by either concentration in each home or by number of children per
household, and get home before he left so he can digest all those stale cookies
and warm milk. Yech!

  6) Aha, you say. Jean-Luc has matter-antimatter warp engines, Santa only has
reindeer. Where does he get the power to move that fast?
     -You- calculated the answer! The lead pair of reindeer will absorb 14.3
quintillion joules of energy. Per second. Each. This is an ample supply of
energy for the maneuvering, acceleration, etc., that would be required of the
loaded sleigh. The reindeer don't evaporate or incinerate because of this
energy, they accelerate. What do you think they have antlers for, fighting
over females? Think of antlers as furry solar arrays panels.

  7) If that's not enough, wathc the news on the 24th at 11 o'clock. NORAD
(which may be one of the few government agencies with more than 3 initials in
it's name and therefore it must be more trustworthy than the rest) tracks Santa
every year and I've seen radar shots of him approaching my house from the
direction of the North Pole. They haven't bombarded him yet, so they must
believe too, right?