Good grief--I am officially the smartest man in the world!

I was just doing my daily jog by The Straight Dope, and was perusing the latest from the Second Smartest Man in the World Now That I'm Number One, Cecil Adams, a very nice discussion of fire. I was reading along, "blah blah blah flame blah blah blah gas blah blah" and then came to this little commentary related to Uncle Cecil's New Definition of Fire:

(2) Typically characterized by flame. The pup qualifier "typically" allows me to sidestep the issue of apparently nonflaming fires, like you get with burning charcoal. I suspect charcoal fires do create flame; you just can't see it due to the lack of impurities or incompletely burned fuel in the plume. (You can't see a fuel fire at a NASCAR race either, because the cars run on clean-burning methanol.) But that's a matter we can leave for another day.

Tsk, tsk, tsk. Ed Zotti will have to be drawn and quartered for letting this howler out the door. Since the founding of NASCAR in 1948, stockers have burned God's own 100 octane Union 76 Racing Fuel, which produces a lovely warm flame halo around everything when it gets lit off. Maybe Cece was thinking of ethanol, which is what the fellows used to carry around in the trunk late at night. Or maybe he was thinking of the NHRA alky classes. Or I guess he could even have been thinking of the CART or IRL guys. But NASCAR? Sheesh.

In any event, all bow before the great Possumblogger! Defeater of Cecil Adams!
posted by Terry at 3:01:00 PM