It's that time of year again, folks, when the world celebrates a guy that certain detractors think was created by a soda company, and when NORAD spends its time monitoring Santa Claus, because, I mean, the North American Aerospace Defense Command has to monitor suspicious objects flying around in the sky for our safety. What's more suspicious than a fat guy in a red suit riding around in a flying sleigh drawn by flying reindeer, who also happens to break into a bunch of houses throughout the night? NORAD tracks his current location and how many gifts he has delivered, so you can see the true workhorse that is Santa Claus.

NORAD's Santa Tracker, which tracks Saint Nick's flight around the world in real time using "warp-speed GPS technology," is back for 2010, and once again, NORAD has teamed up with Google for Santa visualization in Google Maps and Google Earth. There's also a NORAD Santa Facebook page and Twitter page. Why is NORAD [North American Aerospace Defence Command] involved in any of this, by the way? Back in 1955, the Sears catalog ran an advertisement for a Santa hotline which accidentally sent callers-in to the NORAD commander-in-chief's line; NORAD ran with it and it became a yearly tradition.