Record demand drives up residential rents

The level of tenants seeking to rent property privately has hit a five year high in the UK, the Association of Residential Letting Agents (Arla) says.

"Failure is only postponed success as long as courage coaches ambition. The habit of persistence is the habit of victory." - Herbert Kaufman

"Fearlessness is not the absence of fear. It's the mastery of fear. It's about getting up one more time than we fall down." - Arianna Huffington, Author

Staying the course

Remember Veruca Salt, a.k.a. the girl who said: "I want an Oompa Loompa ... now!" in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory? Well, if we're really honest, a lot of us have some Veruca in us - we crave instant gratification.

"The difference between getting somewhere and nowhere is the courage to make an early start. The fellow who sits still and does just what he is told will never be told to do big things." - Charles M. Schwab 1862-1939, Industrialist


"People of mediocre ability sometimes achieve outstanding success because they don't know when to quit. Most men succeed because they are determined to." - George E. Allen 1832-1907, Publisher and Author

How to Invest Your Money like a Millionaire by Loral Langemeier

Do you think you can't invest wisely until you've got a good stash of money?

If you said yes, than that's the wrong answer; and it's not what you should be doing if you ever want to become wealthy. Whatever your answer, if you want to learn how to invest wisely I can offer some good advice.

Does Santa exist? Science investigates

With Christmas almost upon us and anxious children awaiting Santa's delivery of presents on Christmas eve, we re-visit this gem of an explanation as to whether Santa could actually exist or not.

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 & 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. This is due 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/second.

This is to say that for each Christian household with good children, Santa has .001 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/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 & etc.

So Santa's sleigh must be moving at 650 miles/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/second. A conventional reindeer can run, tops, 15 miles/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 lb.), 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 lb. Even granting that "flying reindeer" (see #1) could pull10 TIMES the normal amount, we cannot do the job with 8, or even 9 reindeer.; We need 214,200. This increases the payload - not counting the weight of the sleigh - to 353,430 tons. This is four times the weight of the ocean-liner Queen Elizabeth.

5) 353,000 tons travelling at 650 miles/second creates enormous air resistance. This will heat the reindeer up in the same fashion as a spacecraft 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 create deafening sonic booms in their wake. The entire reindeer team will be vaporised within .00426 of a second. Meanwhile, Santa will be subjected to centrifugal forces 17,500.06 times greater than gravity. A 250-LB Santa (seems ludicrously slim) would be pinned to the back of his sleigh by 4,315,015 lb. of force.

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

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