Ignorance at it's best

I don't know which is worse. The blatant ignorance displayed in this question from http://answers.yahoo.com or the fact that I almost understand what the person is asking.

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Who r better rite now out mario williams vs ray lewis,willis mcgahee vs steve slaton,andre johnson vs. r. moss?

i personally think all the texans players are better rite now..call it biased if u want..if u disagree try to prove it

Can someone offer a better definition of being Reamed?

I just took a trip to Lancaster with my wife. On the way through Mojave w spotted a gas station with fuel for $1.85 per gallon and decided to fill up on our way back through. This, of course, is due to the gas here in Ridgecrest costing $2.39 per gallon. When we went in to pay for the gas my wife was telling the cashier about how much our gas was. She told us that theirs was due to drop even more in the next few days and I (half jokingly) said that if it did that it would be cheaper to run our van near empty and just drive to Mojave to fill up.

Well, being the nerd I am and having nothing better to do in the wee hours of my birthday I thought I would test that theory.

According to Google Maps the distance from Ridgecrest to Mojave is 58.6 miles.

We drive a 1999 minivan that runs between 21 and 26 miles per gallon on the freeway so I went with a conservative estimate of 22 MPG.

At 22 MPG it would take 2.66 gallons of gas to reach Mojave from Ridgecrest.

Our van has a 20 gallon tank on it.

If I were to wait until I had only a few gallons left and then drove to Mojave it would cost me $37 to fill a 20 gallon tank paying $1.85 per gallon.

Driving back would use up 2.66 gallons of gas which I would then replace at the cost of $6.36 if paying $2.39 per gallon.

If you add those two figures together it comes to a total cost of $43.36

If I were to simply fill the 20 gallon tank here in Ridgecrest it would cost me $47.80 to do so.

It turns out that I would be saving a total of $4.44 by driving 117 miles out of my way to fill up my tank.

So, Schwarzenegger, are you planning on doing anything about this? Everywhere I go in California I see gas prices lower than they are in Ridgecrest. I even took several random city samplings on http://www.californiagasprices.com and in every one of them the price of gas was lower than in Ridgecrest.

And keep in mind I used some of the less expensive gas in Ridgecrest (many places cost more) and used a low estimate for my MPG. My van gets better mileage than that in reality and many cars on the roads now get 30+ MPG on the freeway even going uphill with the air conditioning on while loaded with half a dozen passengers.

Not much to say at the moment. But I just HAD to share this with all who may come across my blog. I was at a site today and found this in the lower left hand corner of their screen.

It kind of reminds me of the question about why Denny's has locks on their doors if they're open 24/7 and at the same time it kind of answers it. Strange that.

My God, it's full of stars...I think...I can't see them 'cause of this blasted monitor though

I haven't made a post in a while so I just thought I would drop a line so that blogspot didn't think I had died and chose to send out searchers to recover my body.

That and I've been reduced to one of the most vile acts against nature. I am sitting outside on a beautiful night, the stars are above me, the sounds of slumbering nature are in my ears (a blessing compared to the cacophony of sounds usually so impressive upon me at this time of night (for a reference see my post about dreams) and yet I have my laptop with me. I'm surrounded by mother nature's glory (granted I'm just in my back yard) but I have dragged this atrocity we call technology out here with me. I have sullied nature with the electric hum of my hard drive and cooling fan.

Now don't get me wrong. Don't think that I've suddenly given up on nature and embraced technology. It's just that for the last week or so normal temperatures have been unbearable to me. I feel as if I'm sitting in 90 degree heat at 60 percent humidity when I'm in a 70 degree house. I'm sitting in a folding chair, it's 51 degrees out, I am wearing a t-shirt, shorts and sandals and I'm sipping on a cold soda and I'm comfortable. I don't know what has brought on this change and will most probably be seeking medical attention for it if it keeps up but for now I'm forced to drag this infernal machine into the bosom of our mother planed and taunt her with that which she cannot create. Ok...maybe a LITTLE over the edge there but I really do hate it when I see people out and about where they should be admiring God's creations and instead they're staring at a Gameboy or talking on a phone or punching keys on a laptop. And on that note I think I'll sign out and stare at the stars for a bit.

Acquired taste.

Scenario:

1) Smack your hand with a hammer (OUCH!)
2) Smack your hand with a hammer (OUCH!)
3) Smack your hand with a hammer (ouch!)
4) Smack your hand with a hammer (ouch)
5) Smack your hand with a hammer (ow)
6) Smack your hand with a hammer (mmph)
7) Smack your hand with a hammer (ooh)
8) Smack your hand with a hammer (wow!)
9) Smack your hand with a hammer (Yeah Baby!)

Seems kind of silly to think that one would go from a resounding "OUCH!" to an impassioned "Yeah Baby!"

Well, I mentioned to a co worker today that I had gone a while without any caffeine lately. He suggested that I have some coffee when we get back to the office. I informed him that I found coffee to be vile. To this he replied "It's an acquired taste."

I find this idea to the the epitome of human stupidity. I told him I could not fathom the thought process that leads people to "acquire" a taste for something. It seems to me that if you ingest something and it tastes bad to you that you should stop consuming it. He tried a number of approaches to prove me wrong such as "What about beer?" To which I responded that I don't drink and beer tastes bad anyway so I wouldn't drink it in any case. He asked about spicy foods and I told him the most I use is a dash of Tobasco on my omelet and a slice of pepper jack cheese on my sandwiches. Then he tried lemons which backfired because, though I do eat lemons, I have never in my life found them revolting. I've always enjoyed their taste.

It just boggles my mind that someone can consume something and find that it tastes gross and then make the conscious decision to try more of it and then more and then even more until the mind gives up on trying to repel you from the substance and convinces itself that the stuff tastes good.

Don't think me too closed minded though. If I try something and I don't like it then I'm prone to try it again a year or two later as I am aware that our tastes change naturally over time. I don't assume that because something is unpalatable to me once that it will forever be. I just don't see the logic in forcing yourself to keep consuming something vile in an attempt to "acquire" a liking for it's taste.

This is the kind of stuff I think of while I'm at work

My next bit of randomness centers on the lies our parents tell us. Now we've all heard the lies about going blind (from sitting too close to the TV), growing hair on our palms (from sitting too close to the microwave), and others of course. But the one I am going to focus on is about throwing rocks into things (canyons, mines, ponds, rivers, etc.)

When I was about 10 years old I visited the Grand Canyon with my parents. I did what all kids want to do. I picked up a rock and threw it into the canyon. I was instantly assaulted with the obligatory "If everyone who came here did that then the canyon would be filled with rocks." I'm going to look at this from the standpoint of everyone ON EARTH throwing a rock into the canyon.

The rock I threw wasn't very large but let's pretend it was the equivalent size of a 3" cube. (About as big as a Rubik's cube.) Here are the numbers we're working with.

The Grand Canyon

Length = 227 "river miles"
Average width is 10 miles "rim to rim"
average depth is 1 mile

So what's that in cubic miles?

227 * 10 * 1 But we'll even say the average width is 8 miles since it's bound to be more narrow at the base than at the rim.

227 * 8 * 1 = 1,816 cubic miles

"Everyone" on earth

Population in 1985 was about 4.8 billion

A three inch by three inch by three inch rock = 27 cubic inches

Now since we're dealing with a 27 cubic inch rock we need to know how many cubic inches are in the Grand Canyon (Warning for the numerically challenged...the number is absolutely massive)

There are 12 inches in a foot. There are 5280 feet in a mile. So there are 63,360 inches in a mile. If we're going to make those cubic inches in a cubic mile we have to cube them. That is to say 63,360 * 63,360 * 63,360 which equals...ready for the first big number?

254,358,061,056,000 cubic inches in a cubic mile.

But that Grand Canyon of ours is 1,816 cubic miles so we multiply that big number by 1,816 and we get:

416,914,238,877,696,000 (416 Quadrillion, 914 Trillion, 238 Billion, 877 Million, 696 Thousand)

Wow, that's a lot of inches...

We'll divide that by the size of the rock I threw (27 cubic inches) and we'll get:

17,107,934,773,248,000 rocks it would take to fill the grand canyon

Now divide that by the 4.8 billion people on earth at the time of my parents proclamation and you get:

3,564,153.07776 (basically 3 Million, 564 Thousand, 153)

So Every single person on earth would have to throw over 3.5 million rocks into the Grand Canyon before it could possibly fill up.

There are, of course, the logical amongst you who would say that the rocks are coming from near the canyon so the ground around the canyon is getting deeper as the canyon gets more shallow. In which case there would still be a CANYON. Or at least a big valley.

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Incidentally, if 4.8 billion people each threw 1 rock that was 27 cubic inches then that would be 129,600,000,000 cubic inches or 75,000,000 cubic feet or .0005095 cubic miles

75,000,000 cubic feet is equal to 2.69025 feet deep spread over 1 square mile. The Grand Canyon's floor is 2,270 square miles so that would be equivalent to .001185 feet deep spread over the whole floor. That's .0142 inches which is only a hair's breadth over 1/3 of a millimeter. That is, of course, assuming that the rocks shattered to gravel / dust on impacting the canyon floor a mile below.

So if everyone on earth in 1985 threw the equivalent of 27 square inches of something into the Grand Canyon the floor would rise about the width of this hyphen -

Just a little bit of randomness here. I was checking the weather today on weatherunderground (http://www.wunderground.com) and I noticed that they list the density of the cloud covering at different altitudes. That's pretty useful and all. Then I noticed what was printed below the cloud cover information. The words "Above ground level" note that it's not above sea level. They're informing us that the clouds are above the ground. As opposed to below it I suppose. I know we call clouds that are AT ground level "fog" but what do you call clouds that are below the ground?