I'd like to nominate this for inclusion in the files section on
gerry.vanagon.com, in the friday fun section. I haven't laughed this hard
at an email in years.

Nice job Joel. :)

-Zach

On Fri, Apr 29, 2005 at 10:29:42PM -0500, Joel Walker wrote:
> The nut in Hauntsville, "Jim Felder" <felder@KNOLOGY.NET> said ...
> >I notice that oftentimes, people referring to petroleum products talk
> >about dino-this and dino-that as in "dino oil as opposed to
> >synthetic
> >oil."
> >Did our teachers give us that preposterous notion?
> >Was it Essie the dinosaur in the old Esso (before Exxon) promotions?
> >Was it exposure to oil-company sponsored Disney rides where
> >dinosaurs
> >became associated with oil?
> >Is it a red herring to the fact that plants and sunlight ultimately
> >provide the energy we all use?
> >I remember specifically being taught that coal and oil are related,
> >and
> >that coal is made in immense, submerged peat bogs and similar
> >places. I
> >just don't remember a dinosaur discussion, yet many people use the
> >term.
>
> it's very simple for all of us who weren't asleep in auto shop. ;)
> crude oil comes from the ground
>    (which is why they call it 'crude'. it wouldn't be 'crude' if it
> came from a better location)
> gasoline comes from crude oil
>    (process is called 'refining' ... which means making it 'fine'
> again. so it was ok to begin with,
>    but we're gonna make it 'better' and charge you for that).
> horsepower comes from gasoline
>    (which is really silly, but we're talking about the English
> Language here, folks. where we have
>    cork, york, pork, and work, bough, though, and enough, and so on.
>    i mean, horses do NOT like gasoline. not at all).
> and how do you determine the horsepower of an engine (running
> gasoline, remember)???
>
> simple.
>
> put the engine on a dyno.
>
> :)
> and that's why it's called 'dino oil'.
>
> of course, dino is the american spelling. in the UK, it's spelled
> dyno. ;)
>
> now, synthetic oil does NOT come from the ground.
> it comes from synTHESIS. which is the sweat accumulated by college
> graduate students while working on their theses. now, since graduate
> school costs a lot more money nowadays, it's harder and harder to
> catch those grad students, and so synthetic oil costs more than dino
> oil.
> notice that synTHESIS is somewhat related to hypoTHESIS, which is one
> method of collecting the sweat ... sucking it off their fevered brows
> with a hypo syringe. very difficult work. which again makes the cost
> of synthetic oil higher.
>
> teachers? teachers don't know diddly about preposterous notions ..
> they don't believe in them. so they can't teach them.  can't teach
> most other kinds of notions either ...
> besides, 'preposterous notion' is an oxymoron:
>  any 'small useful item' can't be useful if it's preposterous. see??
> even the word 'pre-post-erous' is flakey ...
>  'pre' means 'comes before',
>  but 'post' means 'comes after'!
>  so we have 'erous' who come before coming after? or who come after
> coming before?
>  which is like coming again after you've already been there before ..
> which is re-fining. see?
>
> red herring? no, it takes a LOT of red herrings (or any of the other
> species of herrings (Culpea harengus), commonly called 'sardines') to
> make even one barrel of oil ... that can't be refined into gasoline.
> but it is preposterous, just not a notion. now, and here's where you
> might be confused, IF a whole bunch of sardines got killed and sunk to
> the bottom of the forest and were covered by a blanket of leaves and
> branches and stuff before the hungry mammals found them, then after
> millions and millions of eons, the weight of all those accumulated
> millions of tons of leaves and branches and stuff would kinda crush
> the poor little sardines into a sort of gooey mush ... and it would
> look like dino oil, but would smell much much worse. and it would be
> more properly called 'dinES oil' (sardines), not 'dinO oil'. see?
>
> plants and sunlight? that's an old wive's tale ... dino oil comes from
> the ground, like i said. it's rock blood.
> when the tectonic plates crash together (as speeds approximating a
> geriatric tortoise with arthritis on a REALLY bad day), it squeezes
> the rocks. and the first product of this squeezing is that the rocks
> 'bleed' ... and sometimes, pockets of this rock blood collect in
> pools. and that's what the oil companies are trying to find: those
> pockets of rock blood. so they can suck it up from the ground and
> 'refine' it and sell it to us as gasoline so we can make horsepower on
> the dynos.
>
> now, it is possible to get all the energy you need from sunlight and
> plants. but the power from beans is really hard to harness, and most
> people won't come near you after a couple of days of eating them. the
> sunlight is necessary to grow the beans ... unlike mushrooms, beans
> won't grow in the dark or caves or basements. more's the pity. :(
>
> now, you are correct in being taught that coal and oil are related.
> remember that 'dino oil' is rock blood.
> well, what happens to your own blood if you cut your arm?
> the blood clots and forms scabs, right?
>
> yup, coal is rock scabs. simple.
>
> and it gives you some idea of the size of the rock bleeding by looking
> at those strip mines and deep mines that are being dug up all over the
> place ... i mean, this poor ol' earth has been bleeding for a loooong
> time!! lots of poor old rocks being squeezed and squeezed by those
> tectonic plates and glaciers and who knows what all ... maybe even by
> them big ol' dinosaurs stomping around.
>
> and just so you know, what happens if a cut on your arm gets infected?
> yup, it swells up and gets red and the blood gets all messy and such.
> well, that's what a volcano is ... and lava (that messy yucky stuff
> that explodes and comes out) is .. well ... the same stuff you get if
> you squeeze that infected cut on your arm. rock pus, if you want to
> call it that.  disgusting stuff.
> so you can really think of a volcano as ... well ... sort of a big
> pimple on the earth.
>
> so there it is ... all you ever wanted to know about 'dino oil' and
> how all the rocks are related and how the earth is a living thing and
> works pretty much like your body does. which makes it VERY important
> that you stay the hell away from the 'bowels of the earth'!!!!!
>
> :)
> unca joel