Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Miscellaneous/2007 February 11

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[edit] February 11

[edit] western movie

i remember watching this western movie that was about this shootout contest and the winner would get a lot of money. The main character was this woman that was really good with a gun. she met billy the kid who was later killed by his father. she is later thought to have been killed but later comes back to kill the mayor( i think he was the mayor). thank you so much to whoever can remember this one.

That sounds like the not-so-good The Quick and the Dead. Clarityfiend 04:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

thanx alot i was just wondering

[edit] Beretta Military Shoulder Weapon WW 1 or WW II

Moved from help desk by [|.K.Z|][|.Z.K|] 04:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)


I have a Beretta Shoulder weapon that I need information about. Mosch-Aut P-Beretta: Cal. 8 Mod 38A This weapon has two triggers and an air cooling jacket around the barrel. It has a Stock No. 7066. I'd sure appreciate knowing about this weapon.64.136.208.166 23:08, 10 February 2007 (UTC) email removed for your protection

Is it this: Beretta Model 38/42? Rmhermen 05:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Single item diets

Basically what the title says- i'm not asking for medical advice, just any single food/drink diets with any real practice. That is, people sustaining themselves for years off a single (arguably healthy) food item- not people fasting on bread to lose weight or such. So far i've only seen someone claim to live for over 5 years on whey drinks, curious as to any other similar things where the person has remained in reasonable health. And yes, I realize this is slightly quackish -- febtalk 07:47, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Without directly answering your question, I must say it'd take one heck of a food item to healthfully sustain a human being for a long period of time; it would have to provide all the necessary vitamins and nutrition in order to keep one from suffering diseases that come from a lack of specific things. V-Man737 08:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
The sort of people who do this are most likely having a daily multivitamin anyway, but yeah febtalk
That must be it, then! Eat multivitamins! *crunch, crunch* V-Man737 09:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Soylent Green? Psssttt... It's PEOPLE. Anchoress 08:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
That's not due out for like 15 years. -- febtalk 08:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Yes, it would have to be meat. I'm sure there are, or were, communities that have little available to subsist on other than just fish, or just seals, or perhaps just yaks. Yuk.--Shantavira 09:52, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I'm talking about in modern times. With documentation, facts, at least a blog or something would be nice -- febtalk 09:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I seem to recall reading somewhere that a person could survive on coconut water and the occasional fish. May be apocryphal, though. GeeJo (t)⁄(c) • 16:02, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I'm sure that their diets are not totally single item - but you could consider nomadic people of asia - who live entirly on their cattle or yaks or whatever - yaks blood, yaks milk, yak meat etc. I'd guess that it's possible to do this, though obviously they will eat other things if offered...87.102.9.15 12:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Single item diets simply aren't healthy. You need to consume a variety of different foodstuffs to stay in good shape. For example, it's perfectly okay for vegeterians to not eat meat as long as they find another source of proteins to replace its deficiency from not eating meat. - Mgm|(talk) 09:58, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

Didn't most of Ireland subsist on a potato diet until the Irish Potato Famine? I remember glancing at a contemporary description of the typical cottier's daily food intake, and it was pretty much nothing but potatoes with a small ration of milk or fish protein. And a number of North American hunting societies live (or have traditionally lived) on meat alone during the winter season, especially in the northern latitudes. Hugh Brody's book Maps and Dreams details how the Dunneza do that, but that may not technically be an answer to your question because they're hunting a variety of animals, not just one. Lowerarchy 17:11, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Power Capacitor

Complete ins and outs of Power Capacitors. how to calculate its KVAR, Voltage and Current. Its connection techniques and its types etcImranjalal 09:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)muhammad imran jalal

Welcome to Wikipedia. You can easily look up this topic yourself. Please see capacitor. For future questions, try using the search box at the top left of the screen. It's much quicker, and you will probably find a clearer answer. If you still don't understand, add a further question below by clicking the "edit" button to the right of your question title. --Shantavira 09:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Real Estate-UK

What does the phrase "onward chain" mean when applied to real estate?

Usually a 'chain' in the housing market means that the person you are buying the house from (or selling the house to) is dependent on selling their home to be able to buy yours/buying a new home to be able to sell you theirs. As a result chains can be many houses deep and any breaking of the chain can put the other sales in jeopardy. An onward chain i would assume is the people in the chain ahead of you (so for example whoever you are buying a house from may be reliant on the people who are selling them a house, who in-turn could be dependent on someone else selling their house and so on. If the person at the top of the chain drops out it could cascade down...the family you are buying from have their new-house sale fall-through and so cannot accept your offer which means you may not be able to sell the house you are selling to the family buying from you, and so on...see chain (in selling a house). ny156uk 15:41, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Whilst the above response is true of England and Wales and as far as I know, Northern Ireland, it is not so simple in Scotland where I live. Here, we have a different interpretation of Conveyancing Law in that an Offer Made and Accepted is not subjective (on other properties in the Chain being "closed" first); it is contractually binding on both parties. Hence, we do not suffer the English Curse known as Gazumping, in which an Offer is verbally accepted, and then revoked in favour of a higher offer, without recompense to the original Offeror, notwithstanding his/her monetary outlays on Survey, Legal and Other Fees. We do however have the Scottish Curse known as Blind Bidding, in which properties are advertised at "Offers Over", a given price, with the result that prospective buyers do not know what the competition might offer and therefore tend to bid up. However, Building Societies will not put up ridiculous sums of money just so that the bidder can secure the property; instead, each bidder must instruct and pay for a valuation survey which does not protect the bidder, but instead protects the lender from overloaning. The result is, no Gazumping, but many multiple surveys being carried out on the same property, usually by the same surveyor, especially in smaller towns where a single qualified surveyor may practise. So, in summary, in Scotland, we don't suffer the misery of Gazumping, but we often see many of our "blind bids" rejected in favour of higher ones, sometimes for such spurious reasons as the house being close to say a Doctor's surgery or a Bus Stop - nothing in fact to do with the house in a financially pragmatic sense - and we also see Lawyers' and Estate Agency Fees spiralling in direct proportion to the escalating price Offers that result. However, all of that having been said, there is increasing evidence in Scotland of Offers being made "Subject to Survey" which, whilst not strictly breaching the Scottish system of Conveyancing, smacks heavily of a move towards the English Model.

[edit] Editing List of fictional countries

I've tried to add this reference to a fictional country

/* E */ -Edraa- , a country-classroom, described in Didactief 1991;Gonda Pisters and (now Dr.) Jan Eberg, RUU, NL

this is a first for me and as an American, teaching English in a Dutch highschool, this fact, will be useful

allow me to get back to my gob's of planning I have to do for the rest of the coming school year.

This article can be downloaded at http://homepage.mac.com/.disctivity downloads : Didactief '91

Mr. Ocon, B.A. 16:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Um - could you rephrase this in the form of a question? I can find no Wikipedia or (english-language) Google search results for any of the words Edraa, Didactief, Gonda Pisters or Jan Eberg - and the URL you gave us doesn't work. What are you actually asking us? SteveBaker 16:17, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
If you want to write an article about a fictional country, I'm very doubtful that it will pass the "notability" criterion. 惑乱 分からん 18:21, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

I found this the first time I tried, if you look further, he wrote a book too called Waste Policy and Learning http://www.hu.nl/Lectoraten/Lectoraat+Overheidscommunicatie/Publicaties.htm this 'country' existed in Calfornia, Oregon and as Owland in IJsselstein,NL Mr. Ocon, B.A. 21:01, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Could you explain the details better? We still don't understand what you are talking about... 惑乱 分からん 23:08, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
(Or what the actual question you'd like us to answer is!) SteveBaker 23:39, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I think he wants to add his to List of fictional countries#E. I do not know if the literature it appears in has any claim to notability, especially as it is not in English and this is the English wikipedia. Show that notability or it will be deleted if you put it there, IMO. --Justanother 23:48, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
http://homepage.mac.com/disctivity/.Public/Didactief%2B91.PDF is the link to the d/l. Again, not in English and looks very non-notable. --Justanother 23:53, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] yellowing plastics

What causes the yellowing of some white plastics particularily in microwaves?...LL

Question moved to Wikipedia:Reference_desk/Science#yellowing plastics - you should have a better chance of an answer there.87.102.9.15 16:14, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] travel route from Montgomery, vermont, usa to Brossard, quebec, canada

how do I drive from Montgomery, vermont 05470 to brossard, quebec, canada?

  • Use Google maps! Go to: http://maps.google.com/ - click on the words 'Get Directions'. Then type in 'Montgomery, vermont 05470' into the first grey text entry box and 'brossard, quebec, canada' into the second grey text entry box - then click the blueish "Get Directions" button off to the right. You'll get really detailed directions and a map that you can print out. It says that it'll take you a little over an hour and a half. SteveBaker 16:24, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Finance & Investing: What is meant by Bought Deal Equity Financing and by Flow-Through Common Shares?

Can someone who is well versed in investing in mining, oil, and resource companies, please explain what is meant by "Bought Deal Equity Financing " and also what is meant by "Flow-Through Common Shares"? Sorry, forgot to sign my name: Ken. 64.231.90.176 17:03, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Sites With Highest Number Of Hits

Hi! I just want to know, which site has been registering the highest number of hits/day(excepting Google), for the the last 5 years ? Or, have this feat been shared by different sites in these years? Thanking you, --Pupunwiki 17:16, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Well, for current data, the main authority is 'Alexa' - every day, they update a list of the top 500 websites: http://www.alexa.com/site/ds/top_500 - currently, Yahoo, MSN, Google, and Baidu take the top four slots. Those are all search engines - so I guess if you are excluding Google, you should exclude all four. After that comes: YouTube and MySpace - big time social networking sites. Windows live comes next - but it's kinda cheating because a whole lot of PC's check in there regularly and automatically for software updates - humans aren't going there in large quantities. Next is Orkut and QQ - also social networking sites. Perhaps the first true information site is 'Sina' which is a Chinese entertainment/info site. Then we see Yahoo-Japan and at number 12...drum roll...Wikipedia! Followed by eBay, Microsoft Corp, Blogger.com. The orderings change from day to day - Wikipedia made it up to number 10 for a while.
As for the past 5 years - I have no clue. You could maybe use the Wayback machine [1] site to look at snapshots of Alexia's scores at various times in the past and get some sort of an idea of changes over time. SteveBaker 17:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Steve's right -- although the caveat is that not everyone respects Alexa's numbers; they're not guaranteed to be perfectly correlated with reality. (But they're about the best we've got, and they're probably at least approximately good.)
Yeah - that's true. Alexa can't measure exactly how many accesses a given site gets. What they do is to give away a free 'toolbar' application for all of the leading browsers that collects information about sites visited and ships that off to Alexa's site. So they aren't sampling any people who don't use their toolbar - which probably biasses the data significantly. For starters, nobody who cares about their own privacy would use the Alexa toolbar for precisely this reason. But - as you say - it's the best data we've got and it's probably not too inaccurate for the top 20 sites or so. SteveBaker 20:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Even worse, the only version is for Internet Explorer. I have to think that that skews results more than anything else. --Maxamegalon2000 23:26, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmmm - our Alexa (Internet) article says "Alexa Toolbar for Internet Explorer and from integrated sidebars in Mozilla and Netscape. There are several third-party extensions for Mozilla Firefox; these extensions do affect Alexa rankings."...maybe it's not as bad as you think? SteveBaker 23:38, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
You seem to be correct, though IE is the only officially supported browser, and there is no option for Netscape or Opera users. I would guess there's still some effect, though. --Maxamegalon2000 23:51, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] wearing your heart on your sleeve?

does anyone know what that saying means? i hear it often randomly, but never knew what it meant. thank you.

Sure, it means not hiding your feelings; express your emotions freely and openly, for all to see. Google --Justanother 19:25, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
It's often used somewhat pejoratively, to suggest that the emotion-expresser is doing so a bit too freely, or is on the verge of turning into a drama queen or something. —Steve Summit (talk) 19:31, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
True, but I have also often seen the connotation that the person is vulnerable or hurt in addition to the idea that the person is "strong enough" or "secure enough" to not hide feelings. All goes with the context, I guess. --Justanother 19:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I agree on the meaning - "Showing ones feelings easily/openly." According to www.phrases.org, the origins of this phrase is..."Probably related to a English/French old Valentines Eve practice of drawing a girls name from a box. The male agreed to protect the girl for a year. He wore her name in that year on his sleeve." SteveBaker 20:57, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Possibly. But according to the Oxford English Dictionary, its first recorded usage in the English language was by Shakespeare in Othello. Iago says: "For when my outward action doth demonstrate / The native act and figure of my heart / In compliment extern, 'tis not long after / But I will wear my heart upon my sleeve / For daws to peck at. I am not what I am." -- Necrothesp 21:54, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Hmmmm - interesting. But "Valentines Day" has been around since at least 1384 (when Chaucer wrote about it). So we know for sure that the tradition that phrases.org alludes to had been around for at least 200 years before Shakespeare wrote Othello. Furthermore, the tradition of wearing a girl's name on your sleeve would have taken time to turn into the saying Shakespeare is talking about. It's perfectly possible that the www.phrases.org explanation is correct. SteveBaker 23:11, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
It doesn't appear that Chaucer wrote about this supposed tradition mentioned by phrases.org who list no source for their claim. Any idea were this idea is from? Rmhermen 00:33, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Oh - no, I didn't mean that. Chaucer wrote about Valentine's day - I don't think he elaborated on the details of how it was celebrated. All I mean to say is that the concept of Valentine's day is way, way older than Shakespeare - so if this peculiar business of wearing a girl's name on your sleeve dates back to the early Valentine tradition - then the idea of wearing a heart on your sleeve could easily have come from that tradition in time for Shakespeare to have written about it 200 years later. You could easily imagine it changing slowly from picking a girl at random to 'defend' her for a year - to picking the girl you wanted to defend for a year because you felt feelings for her - to actually embroidering her name in a heart-shaped surround on your sleeve to indicate your feelings on Valentine's day - to "wearing a heart on your sleeve" as an overt statement of your love for her - which becomes "wearing your heart on your sleeve" after enough time has elapsed for the common people to have forgotten what the original tradition was all about. Then for Shakespeare to put that into his play makes a lot of sense. That's not a great stretch of the imagination over an interval of 10 generations. Of course we have no proof that this actually happened - but at least we know that it's quite feasible. SteveBaker 00:57, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

This site http://allsaintsbrookline.org/celtic/saints/valentine.html says: "There are several ancient Celtic customs associated with St. Valentine. On Valentine's Day and also the Eve of St. Valentine's Day it was the custom for unmarried young men to draw a female name from a ballot to find out whom they may marry or handfast with. Valentine slips containing a girl’s name to be courted would be worn by a boy on the arm of his shirt—this may be the origin of "wearing your heart on your sleeve" meaning being obvious about your love for someone." SteveBaker 01:06, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

  • Could it be from when knights in tourneys wore a token( often a detachable sleeve) from his lady love on his arm?hotclaws**== 09:06, 13 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] N is for Nuts

NASA Diapers Become Topic No. 1
By Roy Rivenburg
February 9, 2007
... In the early 1980s, female astronauts relied on zipper-fastened "disposable absorption containment trunks." Men wore "urine collection devices," which featured a condom-like sheath connected to a tube and pouch.
... A NASA spokeswoman said the official brand used now is Absorbencies, manufactured by a company that has folded.
Fortunately, NASA owns a huge stockpile. The agency snapped up 3,200 of the diapers about 15 years ago, the spokeswoman said, and "we still have about a third of the supply left."
On space shuttle missions, each crew member receives three diapers -- for launch, reentry and a spare in case reentry has to be waved off and tried later.

What were they thinking about? Someone in NASA purchased 3200 adult diapers in the early 1990s? Each launch uses up maybe about 20 diapers. These diapers may supply more than 150 flights. Did they still expect to launch a Space Shuttle each and every week at that time? ... Right after the Challenger disaster of 1986? -- Toytoy 21:56, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Hold on - think about this for a moment. Astronauts do a lot of training in space suits in big 'zero-g' water tanks - they spend realistic amounts of time in simulators of all kinds. I imagine they take to heart the mantra of good flight training "Train as you plan to fly" - which would mean that they wear these things all the time for the sake of realism in training. It's not at all unlikely that they'd get through several of them per astronaut per week. Since they train a lot more astronauts than actually fly missions, I could easily see them getting through several thousand of these per year. Assuring they have a good supply of them is a smart move - and buying in large bulk is guaranteed to keep the costs down. SteveBaker 23:00, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Then, they used only about 2000 diapers in 15 years. Isn't it strange? -- Toytoy 23:15, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah - that is a little on the low side. I believe there are about 50 US astronauts in service or in training. That's only about 3 diapers per astronaut per year! Nowhere near enough if they are using them for EVA training. On the other hand, there have been about 80 missions with about 500 crew launches over the last 15 years - so if they if they only used them for real launches then they'd have to be providing four per person every launch and tossing out the unused ones after each mission. It's possible that they keeps that number on board in case their toilet breaks down in orbit or something - add in the number they'd need to keep onboard the space station for the same reason - now 2,000 over 15 sounds far too few even if they aren't using them in training.
Anyway, I was chatting with a buddy today - he'd heard that NASA bought up every single diaper that the company had when they went bust. That would make a lot of sense - if they could get themselves a 25 year supply at 'going-out-of-business' prices, it would be stupid to do otherwise with no other sources for the diapers being available. SteveBaker 00:45, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I think there are many other affordable and comfortable adult diapers worldwide. What made these "Absorbencies" diapers so suitable for space flights that NASA had to stockpile them when the supplier went out of business?
Why don't they use modern adult diapers. I guess these diaper companies must have improved their products during the last dacade. These baby diapers are getting better and better!
Does NASA provide special space flight sanitary napkins for female astronauts?
Then how about these Russian, European and Chinese astronauts?
Why didn't NASA use adult diapers in their earlier space flights?
I think military pilots also need to wear diapers. What did they wear since the earliest long-distance flights? -- Toytoy 01:41, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Military fighter pilots certainly must wear something of the sort - inflight refuelling in subsonic aircraft like the F117 makes for insanely long flights - and in high-g manouvers it's hard to avoid 'leaks'. I'm not sure what exactly they use - but it's gotta be something similar. For the larger aircraft and some helicopters, they have a tube that vents to the outside of the aircraft that they can pee into (I think it's called a 'relief tube'). (Funny story: I work in Flight Simulation - we had a very accurate simulator of a large helicopter - a Sikorsky or something - and the cockpit interior was required to be very detailed - so we had every switch and fuze accurately modelled - and a 'relief tube' in the side of the cockpit. Well, evidently one of the pilots was very 'taken in' by our simulation and kinda forgot that he was in a simulator on the ground and decided to use the 'relief tube' instead of hitting the 'pause' button and walking over to the bathroom in the corner of the simulator room. Sadly, our relief tube was a non-functional mockup - it dead-ended after about six inches - so he got his flight suit kinda...wet...yup.). SteveBaker 04:26, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
You may clean up the simulator in a matter of hours. That poor pilot may never clean up his ruined reputation for his whole life. Let's hope he would not resign and work as a taxi driver thereafter. -- Toytoy 05:10, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Yeah - being "The Guy Who Peed Himself In The Simulator" is not the best reputation a serious military pilot type could have. He's probably flying the Channel Six traffic 'copter now. SteveBaker 05:51, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Rating system... thing?

What are the red and green numbers that I can see on the recent changes page? 69.54.27.40 22:26, 11 February 2007 (UTC)

Wikipedia:The red and green numbers that you can see on the recent changes page. --cesarb 22:34, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
If that hadn't been a #redir, I'd be voting that for the greatest something-something on the internet this decade. :) 81.93.102.185 22:43, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
I still prefer WP:Oh I say, what are you doing? Come down from there at once! Really, you're making a frightful exhibition of yourself. -- febtalk 00:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Articles for creation

So you submit an article for creation; over 90% of them are rejected, and the other few % are accepted. What about the ones that have been sitting there for months that have not been accepted or rejected?

Good question. The thing is that the people who patrol that list are humans just like you and me - and it's a thankless task.
I patrolled that list for a long while. The problem is that way more than 95% of the submissions are complete junk. So many articles about bands and songs and albums that don't meet Wikipedia's criteria for notability. So many efforts of people to start articles about themselves or their family members or (worst of all) recent dead family members who they'd like to memorialise in some way. But Wikipedia has rules about what people are "notable" and we have to reject the ones that are quite simply not relevent to the encyclopedia. You get to dread article proposals that start "Johnnie was a good son, right up to when he died in Iraq last week..." and goes on to list lots of banal trivia about this guy. Sure he was probably brave and gave his life for his country - but Wikipedia's article guidelines specifically rule out articles like this unless the person was NOTABLE. OK - so this is a non-article. Do you want to tell the grieving mother that her son was not notable? I didn't think so. But it's the same for bands - someone is a fan of a really obscure band who made a few CD's to hand out to fans at gigs they played at some minor venue - it's hard to tell those fans that this band is a bunch of total no-hopers who don't rate an article. But rules are rules - so you try your best to be polite and helpful and tactful.
Well, when you go through that list day after day, it starts off being reasonable to do "due diligence" for each and every article, double checking that the person they are talking about truly is notable - or that the rock band has had two or more albums released by a major record label - or that some artist has been exhibited in some major exhibition...or whatever the guidelines are. But after a few weeks of this, it just gets unbearable because it takes four hours out of your life every evening doing nothing but finding reasons to reject crap! You can usually tell within 10 seconds of looking at a proposed article that it doesn't stand a snowballs chance in hell of being a valid article - and frankly, it's not even worth the 10 to 20 minutes it's going to take you to check, prove it and post a coherent response saying "This person/band/company/whatever isn't notable".
In the end, you go through the list (which is dozens and dozens of proposals every day) ignoring the 'no hope' proposals, researching (and replying) to the ones that might just have had a chance - and ultimately being overjoyed when you find a speck of gold that you can pick out and turn into an article. But it's unusual to find even one solid proposal per day - so a few things that perhaps are marginal make it in, lots more that were worth researching get a nice rejection message and lots of completely and obviously junk ones go completely ignored. Other ones that tend to get ignored tend to be the long quasi-religious or pseudo-science diatribes that it's just too much effort to debunk. Some are just so incoherent that it's impossible to understand what the person is ranting on about - much less come up with a reason why it can't be an article. It's just easier to ignore them.
Yeah - it's not a perfect process - lots of people are in favor of just shutting down the entire service. Bottom line - if you are serious about Wikipedia and have a solid article you'd like to submit, just sign up for an account. It takes you 10 minutes - and four days later you have the same privilages as someone who has been here since the very beginning. Meanwhile, skim the notability standards - and PLEASE don't create articles that are junk - the effort to clean them up is sapping the energy of otherwise useful editors. SteveBaker 23:28, 11 February 2007 (UTC)
Well Steve, I hardly know where to begin. That was so damn eloquent that I wish I could borrow your brain now and again. I've not been active at WP for a few weeks and have just returned to find your gem above. Well put! I suspected that on my return I'd find a post such as yours that would provide an example of what many of us mean when we say common sense and which sometimes is deliberately confounded with excuses and word-smithing. Thank you for your frank assessment. hydnjo talk 00:46, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
addendum: For those who don't know what I'm talking about, see this academic discussion. hydnjo talk 01:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Question and response copied to the RD/talk page for any further discussion. hydnjo talk 02:31, 12 February 2007 (UTC)

[edit] Gas or deisel?

Which is consumed more in road vehicles? What about overall (ie including ships, trains, etc)?

This page shows that of total US consumption of 20,544,000 barrels per day (Nov 2005), 9,160,000 was finished gasoline, 4,183,000 was distillates (mostly diesel, I think). Hope this helps - cheers - Geologyguy 00:14, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I wonder how much of those 'distillates' is kerosene for aircraft fuels? SteveBaker 00:28, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
The page cited above shows a separate category for kerosene-type jet fuels, at 1,608,000 barrels per day. Geologyguy 00:32, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Diesel cars are more popular in some countries than they are in the U.S. Are they common enough to substantially alter that ratio? Rmhermen 01:05, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
I could not easily find statistics for numbers of cars per country or % of diesel (except a quote that one-sixth of Japanese vehicles are diesel. But I would be willing to bet that the US has at least a third or more of all the cars on earth, so that differing proportions in smaller absolute numbers would make a blip but no great change in that ratio (say, for example, if 75% of Belgium's x number of cars are diesel - x is so much smaller than whatever the total number of US cars is, it would not make too much difference). It is entirely possible that the total difference in the world could make for a rather different ratio; this is merely my guess. I bet the numbers are out there somewhere. Cheers Geologyguy 03:03, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
This article claims that 49% of cars purchased in Europe in 2005 ran on diesel, for another data point. Natgoo 10:22, 12 February 2007 (UTC)
Even with few cars in the US being diesel, my experience of spending a lot of time traveling has shown me that the number of semis on US highways is staggering. I'm surprised that there's so much more gasoline consumed than diesel. I suppose it's in large part due to city traffic... kmccoy (talk) 01:32, 13 February 2007 (UTC)