{"id":1274,"date":"2013-12-16T21:40:09","date_gmt":"2013-12-16T21:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/?p=1274"},"modified":"2013-12-17T04:55:07","modified_gmt":"2013-12-17T04:55:07","slug":"is-this-one-of-santas-elves","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/?p=1274","title":{"rendered":"NORAD wants to know if you&#8217;ve been naughty or nice."},"content":{"rendered":"<p style=\"text-align: center;\"><a href=\"http:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/YHtLm-e1387229464286.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter  wp-image-1275\" alt=\"YHtLm\" src=\"http:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/YHtLm-e1387229464286.jpg\" width=\"511\" height=\"505\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/nuclearphilosophy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/YHtLm-e1387229464286.jpg 639w, https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/nuclearphilosophy\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/12\/YHtLm-e1387229464286-300x296.jpg 300w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 511px) 100vw, 511px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.theatlantic.com\/technology\/archive\/2013\/12\/norad-tracks-santas-path-on-christmas-eve-because-of-a-typo\/282388\/\">This article<\/a> from The Atlantic is too good not to share.<\/p>\n<p>In 1955, Sears ran a &#8216;call Santa on the phone&#8217; newspaper\u00a0promotion. Due to a (frankly wonderful) typo, however, it\u00a0<em>listed NORAD&#8217;s top-secret, &#8220;the-Russians-are-attacking&#8221; telephone number by mistake. <\/em>(Actually NORAD&#8217;s predecessor,\u00a0CONAD, but whatever.)<\/p>\n<p>But wait, it gets better.\u00a0After some initial confusion, the officer on duty, Colonel Stroud (a name that should be immortalized by Hollywood immediately),\u00a0<em>played along.<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Bemused by the first caller &#8212; a lachrymose girl who wanted to know if he was one of Santa&#8217;s elves &#8212; the good Colonel couldn&#8217;t bring himself to deny it. The steely-eyed missile men of CONAD soon found themselves roped into quizzing children on whether they&#8217;d been naughty or nice. And so began an endearingly incongruous holiday tradition; NORAD offers a &#8216;Santa tracking&#8217; service to this day.<\/p>\n<p>The fifties really was a simpler time.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>This article from The Atlantic is too good not to share. In 1955, Sears ran a &#8216;call Santa on the phone&#8217; newspaper\u00a0promotion. Due to a (frankly wonderful) typo, however, it\u00a0listed NORAD&#8217;s top-secret, &#8220;the-Russians-are-attacking&#8221; telephone number by mistake. (Actually NORAD&#8217;s predecessor,\u00a0CONAD, but whatever.) But wait, it gets better.\u00a0After some initial confusion, the officer on duty, Colonel [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[3,88,50,47,41,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1274","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-deterrence-2","category-history","category-john","category-lagniappe","category-stranger-than-fiction","category-tracking-targeting-predicting"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3CaZH-ky","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=1274"}],"version-history":[{"count":10,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1285,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1274\/revisions\/1285"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=1274"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=1274"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.nuclearphilosophy.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=1274"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}