| Vol.
I, No. 3 | Winter
Solstice & Holidays | Dec.
15th, 2000 |
Puzzling
Evidence Puzzling
Evidence: Side-Bars on NORAD, The Court & Santa
This
year's presidential election is still going on. And it's raised both some
of the more fundamental and some of the more curious bits of news in its
continuing wake. ... NORAD Tracking System
Set to Monitor Polar Activities ... For the
44th year, or most of the Cold War and beyond, North America's premier
defense system -- NORAD
-- is once again set to track the goings-on at the North Pole. Having
come on-line after much preparation just this past week, NORAD, this year in
co-operation with both Analytical Graphics, Inc., and AOL, says it's all
systems go to begin monitoring
Santa's activities when they go live on Christmas Eve. {See
additional NORAD info, below.} The joint US-Canadian
effort, which has watched for in-coming missiles and aircraft that might
track over the Pole since 1958, was hailed for years as one of the most
critical & effective strategic defense initiatives of the Cold
War. In addition, their Santa Tracking Program was celebrated as one
of the earliest applications of advanced technology aimed at the interests
of children. Unfortunately, in the midst of our review of
this year's offerings, our browser locked up when we tried to access the
radar site. When we tried a little later, the same thing happened
again. Fortunately, on our third try, we were successful.
...
A
Simple Twist of Trait ... As if to follow suit on
last month's observations here about the then-still-contested Florida
election and the courts, one of the more curious phenomena has been the
voting pattern in this month's U.S. Supreme Court decision on Bush &
Cheney v. Gore, et al. [00-949.] {See this month's The
State of Things in Politics & Government.}.
Constitutional
scholars, and the media reporters who depend on them, will tell you that the
voting pattern of Supreme Court justices, while not absolute, does follow
certain patterns. Conservative justices tend toward a more strict
Constructionist view, while those seen as more liberal are sometimes accused
of 'activism', i.e., using the court instead of the Congress to establish a
legislative agenda. What this also means, at least in the usual course
of things, is that conservative justices tend to lean toward states rights,
while liberal justices tend to see a greater sphere for the federal role. In
this month's pro curiam opinion from The Court on Bush v. Gore,
perhaps the most curious outcome was the near-total reversal of the voting
pattern, with those generally perceived as liberal justices voting for
greater restraint in mandating subsequent proceedings in Florida, while the
justices of more conservative bent took the most activist position toward
the Florida Supreme Court and the recount. Santa
Caught in a Benign Warp in the Space-Time Continuum
For this one,
we turn to NORAD again, which provides us with the following info about
Santa's delivery schedule: "If one were to
assume he works in the realm of standard time as we know it, clearly he
would have perhaps 2-3 ten-thousandths of a second to deliver his toys
to each child in the world who believes in Santa!" ...
And our premiere defense system's explanation for the seeming
improbability? "The fact that Santa
Claus is more than 15 centuries old and does not appear to age is our
biggest clue that he does not work within time as we know it. His
Christmas Eve trip may seem to take around 24 hours, but to Santa it
could be that it lasts days, weeks or months."
We
don't know about you, but we will certainly sleep more soundly in the
knowledge that even those who are critically involved in maintaining our
national defense system know that "time as we know it" does not
have the last word.
.
.
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