PHOTOGRAMMETRIC ENGINEERING & REMOTE SENSING
December 2015
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fund, now it its 1225
th
generation, has been seeding an en-
tire entrepreneurial community, developed by Santa over the
centuries, which focuses on making sure that presents get
delivered only to the right children, and that they are never
stolen. It is no idle admonition when Santa’s lyricists sing,
“He’s making a list, and checking it twice… He knows when
you’ve been bad or good, so be good for goodness sake!”
Speaking of Santa, I was finally granted an interview. He
was unavailable last year when I went to the North Pole to
visit him because he was at a rehab facility. He was recover-
ing from being underweight due to a fixation on monitoring
his calories burned, thanks to a fitbit that Mrs. Claus gave
him for Christmas the prior year. The elves came to the res-
cue, however, and hacked his fitbit to make it show 10x the
real number of calories burned. Now Santa’s fitbit tricks him
into thinking he can eat as much as he wants, so he is back
to being his jolly old self. Except for one thing… while in re-
hab he became addicted to a set of remote-controlled rein-
deer that the elves gave him to keep up his good cheer. All
summer, while doing loopity-loops with his USS reindeer, he
could be heard laughing over and over again, “Roll, roll, roll!
Yaw, yaw, yaw!”
So what did Santa say in response to this story? Nothing
much. Instead of “ho, ho, ho!” he just said, “ha, ha, ha!”
* Santa and his North Pole Organization (NPO, which is it-
self an NGO) use the term ‘USS” to avoid confusion with UAS
(Unmanned Aircraft Systems), which fall under FAA jurisdic-
tion. North Pole attorneys have adamantly argued that San-
ta’s sleigh is not an “aircraft” under the law. Moreover, they
cite international treaties that date back before the formation
of the Unites States that give Santa free rein to move about
the planet as necessary on Christmas Eve without interference
by adults.
** View the December, 2014
PE&RS
article on Unmanned
Santa Systems controversy,
-
cations/pers/2014journals/PERS_December_2014/HTML/
index.html.
There is no Section “D”
Elves work for the NPO directly;
Santa doesn’t need help from anybody else
tions at the North Pole. Moreover, he even denied knowledge
of Santa having contractors – any at all. He said, “elves work
for the NPO directly; Santa doesn’t need help from anybody
else.” Likewise, the Chief Communications Elf (nicknamed
Comfy) merely repeated the refrain from last year, “North
Pole operations are magic, and we don’t disclose how mag-
ic is done.” Nonetheless, even my neighbor’s six-year-old son
doubts that Santa delivers all those toys without help from
contractors. “It simply isn’t realistic,” he says.
Another aspect of Santa’s UAS strategy involves the pres-
ents themselves. Section “P” is said to be cranking out model
aircraft, RC planes, and personal multi-rotor flying robots in
record numbers. As we all know, these UAS fly under the
so-called “hobby rules”, which strictly apply to non-commer-
cial use by kids only. Parents aren’t allowed to use them. In
other words, they are toys. But, by gosh, by golly, what toys
they are! Some are equipped with HD video cameras, ther-
mal sensors, GPS navigation, sophisticated wireless network
control systems, and even a mobile app for the smartphone.
Nearly all come with varicolored blinking lights, which inci-
dentally confuse reindeer. As in previous years, stores will
be carrying replicas of real presents delivered by Santa, and
some of these will be hobby UAS that cost as much as $4,000
retail. Real Santa toys are free, of course, having been made
by elves.
A third big development is that many of Santa’s elves have
renewed their membership in ASPRS. They were attracted
by the new UAS Division, and now they are trying to start
a Christmas Working Group within the division. One of the
elves is even trying to take over the Young Professionals
Council (YPC), which has been renamed the Early-Career
Professionals Council (EPC). Secretly, the real motivation for
the name change from YPC to EPC was to allow the elves to
think of it as the Elvish People’s Council.
Where is the Grinch in all this? He has been utterly silent,
and that makes Santa’s Head of North Pole Security very
concerned. On the positive side, cybersecurity and drone de-
fense issues have led to start-up businesses like Grinch-De-
ny, SleighSheild, and RudolphEye. Santa’s venture capital
!
