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Date:         Fri, 29 Apr 2005 22:29:42 -0500
Reply-To:     Joel Walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
Sender:       Vanagon Mailing List <vanagon@gerry.vanagon.com>
From:         Joel Walker <jwalker17@EARTHLINK.NET>
Subject:      Re: PDLVC Fryedaye Question: why do we use the term "dino"?
Content-Type: text/plain; format=flowed; charset="iso-8859-1";
              reply-type=response

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


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