Wolfram Alpha is endlessly facinating. For example, I learned a little trivia factorid today that my wife and I were both born on a Thursday [by putting our birth dates into Wolfram Alpha and comparing them.] It also instantly computed that someone with the equivalent of my current salary would have been making about $23,000 / year in 1946 when I was born. There is a great list of examples here.
I got tired of the hype about "excess" oil company profits and decided to get the facts. It turns out that the oil and gas industry generally is near the middle of the pack of American industries earning about 8% on sales in the 3rd quarter of 2005 as compared to the average of about 6.5%, but far lower than, for example, the semiconductor industry which earned about 14% on sales in the same period, or pharma & banks which both earned more than 18% on sales.
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