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Friday, August 19, 2011

Quote of the day

Dear Cecil:

Does the average American use more energy than a blue whale? The New York Times says it’s true. Is it?

— petew83, via the Straight Dope Message Board

Cecil replies:

We need to clear up a couple levels of confusion here. First, the New York Times didn’t say the average American uses more energy than a blue whale. The paper quoted someone as saying this. The Times doesn’t have a policy of only quoting people who say true things. If it did, all coverage of politics would come to a screeching halt.

As to the whale question, I refer you to the article, too interesting to summarize here.

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