Nobrainer’s Think Tank

I still think the Daily Questions (and answers) series is good. I just haven’t been keeping up. It seems every time I have a good idea for the blog, real life gets in the way. Anyway, on with the show.

How much to Americans spend on beer? Beertown.org offers up some numbers from 2006 about craft beers in the US. In ‘06, the craft beer brewers made more than 6.7 million barrels of beer and sold them for 4.7 billion dollars. It seems craft beers account for 3.2% of US beer sales by volume and 4.99% by sales. After a little math, that indicates totals for the US of about 210 million barrels of beer produced per year with sales of about 95 billion dollars.

What does that look like on a per-person basis? After dividing by the US population of approximately 300 million people in America of all ages, annual beer spending per capita is over $300 and buys 230 12-ounce servings.

I realized, that in any given day I can easily search the web for 3 to 6 (sometimes more) random bits of information. Some are more useful than others. Nonetheless, I hope to start posting these queries on a regular schedule.

For today:

• How tall is Fred Thompson really? (I recently saw him described as 6′7″) Celebheights.com says he’s 6′6″ and speculates he may be slightly shorter as he has probably shrunk with age.
• Was Danny Masterson (AKA Hyde on “That 70’s Show”) in the movie “My Best Friend’s Wedding”? No. But Christopher Masterson was. They are brothers. Christopher also appeared on “That 70’s Show” as that guy that worked at the cheese store in the mall. You may also recognize him as Francis from “Malcolm in the Middle.”
• What does “ho” really mean? Per dictionary.com, it is “used as a call to attract attention, sometimes specially used after a word denoting a destination.”
• Why does gas in Oregon cost the same was Washington? (Oregon, like New Jersey, outlaws self-service gas pumps). I’m not exactly sure, but according to gaspricewatch.com Washington’s gas tax is 28 cents per gallon while Oregon’s is 24 cents per gallon. I suppose that 4 cents a gallon could cover the extra labor required at Oregon’s pumps.

Hopefully I will keep all these thing organized by remembering to tag them with del.icio.us. You can keep yourself updated by regularly visiting.