Sorry to bring this subject up again but

[cartilage]

Sorry for the unpleasant topic but it lost us a quiz question last night in a Glastonbury Festival special pub quiz!

We were asked "how many hundreds of thousands of millions of gallons of human waste were produced at the festival last year".

We were somewhat incredulous that it could be such an amount and initially wrote "0", but then were told it had to have at least six noughts after it so amended to 6,000,000 on the basis of absolutely nothing.

When the answers were read out we were told that EIGHT HUNDRED THOUSAND MILLION GALLONS had been produced in the one festival. Curious to know where this bizarre figure had come from, I've just done a search online and found it being repeated all over the place! Have a look:

http://www.google.co.uk/search?hl=en&q...mp;aq=f&oq=

To put it in perspective, this would mean each *individual* festival goer was producing on average... wait for it... MORE THAN 4 MILLION GALLONS OF WASTE over the weekend. Per person.

I mean, I know some people have a bad time in the loos, but...

Still won the quiz, though.

Edited July 1, 2009 by cartilage

[Abbathehorse]

[harper11]

why would anyone measure anything in hundreds of thousands of millions gallons?

why not billions

why gallons at all?

[cartilage]

I think what's happened is that someone's made a list of facts, the first one being that 3 million gallons of water are used over the festival (which I can believe) - then they've just typo'd "million gallons" instead of just "gallons" after the 800,000.... and lots of people have copied them, including our quiz writer last night, and so are repeating all over the place this horrific nightmare image of an impossibly large ocean of nastiness!!

[HurrahBrother]

To put it in perspective, this would mean each *individual* festival goer was producing on average... wait for it... MORE THAN 4 MILLION GALLONS OF WASTE over the weekend. Per person.

I mean, I know some people have a bad time in the loos, but...

Still won the quiz, though.

[glastoman417]

To put it in perspective, this would mean each *individual* festival goer was producing on average... wait for it... MORE THAN 4 MILLION GALLONS OF WASTE over the weekend. Per person.