Well said. It is all about RANGE: how many miles one can go on a gallon of gas. That is a measure of range. Whereas liters per 100 km or fluid ounces per mile is about engine efficiency, and has to be converted to be used in range estimations.

Yes, precisely. You have made my point very well.

In daily use, the MPG of YOUR vehicle the way YOU drive is the more useful measure. Only on those rare occasions-- maybe 2 or 3 times per decade-- is a measure of l per 100 km going to be useful to you.

The places I want to go are NEVER on the direct route between A and B. Oregon sunstones are more than 70 miles from the nearest gas station, and the last 30 miles are gravel. That's 140 miles of poor gas milage with no chance for a fill up.

Back roads to trail heads at Paulina Lake, into the Strawberry Mountains, or the fossil beds are even worse.

Once you get out of Mama's basement, there is a wonderful world out there to explore. Using MPG rather than some other fuel consumption measure makes those explorations just a little bit easier.

I'm pretty happy with the XFCE on Ubuntu Studio. There is a lot of Gnome and KDE under the hood, as dependencies of specific apps that I favor, but that doesn't seem to be increasing my render times or anything (rendering CG in Blender is my most demanding work).

That said, I'm toying with the idea of trying the newest Gnome GUI. I liked Gnome. I hope they have it working again.

I've heard from a young but reliable source that it will Windows 10 because "Windows seven ate nine" would just be silly.

You, Sir, are just gargling. And you've dribbled on your shirt.

In what real world situation would I be asking those questions? None that I can think of.

What matters to me is that my gas gauge says 1/4 tank, I'm about 150 miles from home and it is almost midnight and all the gas stations between where I am and where I'm going will be closing soon. Now do I need to get gas at the station up ahead, even though it is way more expensive than in my home town?

I want MPG to figure that one out. The usefulness of gallons per mile or liters per 100 kilometers is no good to me after I buy the car.

For many of us in the USA, you're assumption about what we care about is bullshit wrong.

I live in Portland, Oregon. If I'm going north or south, I'm sometimes interested in mpg, but it isn't a big thing. Never very far from an Interstate highway in those directions.

But if I'm going northeast or southwest, mpg is critical, because there are too many back roads in the Washington and Oregon outback where running out of gas would put one in serious danger, and not be just a bit of an inconvenience. Having to hike 50 miles to the nearest gas station in the summer heat with no water or shade to be found is something to avoid.

This is not unique to Oregon. There are a lot of places throughout the USA where people often drive into what passes these days for wilderness, where if you don't estimate how many miles you've got left in the tank, you could end up in an unhealthy or even deadly experience.

MPG is the sensible measure to use in North America. Perhaps someday that will become kpl, but it will never make sense to use gallons per mile or kilometers per liter.

Now fuel for construction equipment that might travel all of 10 miles in an 8 hour shift needs to be measured in gallons per hour, but that's an entirely different thing.

This has nothing todo with politics. It has everything to do with logic:

If left was right, then right would be wrong, which is obviously not a good thing to base life on. Clearly it has to be that right is right, and left is wrong.

Now in USA politics, it is usually the case (as with AGW, labelling GM "food", etc) that left is mostly right and too far right is clearly wrong. But that is because USA politics is mostly on the other side of Alice's looking glass.

In common usage ".22" nearly always means ".22LR". This is a rimfire cartridge. As is the .22 short and the .22 magnum.

The AR-15 fires a round whose bullet is basically the same diameter as the .22 rimfire cartridges. But the standard AR-15 uses a centerfire cartridge that has a shoulder. The cartridge is usually called a ".223" in the USA. There is a similar NATO cartridge, the "5.56", which is loaded more powerfully than the .223. As mentioned in PP, the .223 (and 5.56) bullet is longer, therefore heavier. The larger brass and use of a separate primer allows more powerful loads than can be done in a rimfire design.

To add to the confusion, there are conversion kits that allow an AR-15 to fire .22LR ammo, which allows for cheaper practice. One can generally buy a hundred rounds of .22LR for the cost of two or three rounds of .223 ammo.

Gee, so sorry that tweaked your tail.

Blessed be.

I like what you are saying.

An elder Navaho woman once said to me that "We are the way that ideas move through time." I don't know whether this came from her experience or was rooted in her culture: I don't talk that language so Navaho culture is mostly opaque to me, and what I can see is probably distorted in more ways than I realize. But my basic point here is that the idea that human cultures evolve appears to be an old one that is present in several and probably all cultures.

To quote (almost) Robert Frost: We all dance in a circle and suppose; / The Secret sits in the middle and knows. It could well be that theism is to human culture as the center is to the circumference of the circle: it may be that human culture cannot exist without a God principle, just as a circle cannot exist without a center, BUT in both cases the God and the center --while absolutely necessary-- may be empty, without any independent existence.

That would not make the God principle any less real, but would mean that its reality is a necessary part of the way we experience the Universe. God might be an integral part of the Observer and have nothing at all to do with whatever is Objective Reality.

Thus spake me, who is a Goddess loving panentheist.

Alternatively, it could be that some form of theism is inherent in the way humans have evolved.

The only true atheist I have met was a total sociopath of a man, completely oriented to narcisism.

I have also met a lot of people who describe themselves as atheists, but in each of these cases it seems that their definition of atheism involves negating the idea of Deity (where "Deity" is an inclusive term for belief in God, Gaia, Goddess, multiple gods, pantheistic spirits, etc). So Deity was, through its negation, very much a part of their world view. In each of these cases there seemed to be some sense of rightness that pretty much functioned as Deity no matter what the person chose to call it. That is, their "atheism" seemed to be of the "I am not a believer in God (but I have pantheistic belief, or believe I am myself sacred, etc).

That one true atheist, the sociopath, never stated a belief or disbelief. That was unimportant to him. The only thing that was important to him was enjoying himself as much as he possibly could without paying for his pleasure if he could possibly arrange for someone else to foot the bill. He was a thief of convenience, a great imposter, and a con artist. But he was rarely a burglar and never an armed robber-- I think those would have required too much work.

Parent post is a good example of quibbling over words.

The stuff is called "high fructose" because sucrose, or normal table sugar, is one fructose molecule bonded to one glucose molecule but HFCS contains 5% of fructose that is not bound to a glucose molecule. This is significant. Hydrogen peroxide used in wound treatments is only 3% H2O2 and 97% H2O, but has very different physiologic effects than plain H2O.

While HFCS could be used in lower quantities for the same level of sweetness as sucrose, it is often used to make the product sweeter than could be done with sucrose alone. As is the case in many soft drinks sold in the USA. But the more significant concern is that HFCS laden foods and drinks cause one to crave more since the HFCS interferes with the "I've had enough" mechanisms that normally govern food/drink intake. And another concern that bears repeating is that HFCS puts an increased burden on the liver and the blood glucose homeostatic mechanisms that are adapted to handling normal table sugars.

Again, my personal concern is that HFCS on the label is a marker I can use to avoid foods and drinks that predispose me to exercise induced asthma problems. And I don't care whether it is the HFCS or some other crap that is often used when HFCS is adulterating the food.

HFCS is more of a "super sugar" than a sugar substitute. Fructose is a natural sugar, and HFCS in its pure laboratory form is only a highly concentrated fructose derived from corn. (high fructose corn syrup).

For me at least, it is a health concern since if I eat or drink some things that contain HFCS I am more prone to asthma attacks. This may not be due to the HFCS itself; it may be some impurity in food quality HFCS, or it may be some other additive that is commonly used with HFCS. I don't care: I know if I avoid HFCS I don't have asthma; otherwise I often have exercise induced asthma which really limits my bicycling.

HFCS is used in foods and drinks for a couple of reasons: it has a sweeter taste than sucrose; it has a documented affect on depressing satiation so people consume more of the product than if sucrose was used; and I think because it is a liquid that is often shipped in railway tanker cars its delivery costs to the food factory are cheaper.

Fructose is a form of sugar that has to be converted in the liver to a different form before it can be used. HFCS puts a strain on the liver, and the blood glucose regulatory mechanisms, that does not occur with any natural foods. Anyone with a history of hepatitis, hypoglycemia, or diabetes maybe would want to avoid HFCS.