Thursday 12 February 2009

Nine zeros.

.

The governments are are playing loose and fast with billions of dollars of late.

It is easy to loose sight of what a billion really is. True, someone said that a man with a billion dollars is as well off as if he was rich.

But what does a billion mean?

A billion seconds ago:

It was 1959.

A billion minutes ago:

It was 107AD, the Roman Empire was in full flight.

A billion hours ago:

It was the Stone Age

A billion days ago:

In honour of Charles Darwin's 200th birthday, I can report that no animals walked this planet on two legs.

A billion is a seriously large number.
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9 comments:

  1. haha, first of all I love your little note so much I almost forgot what I had to say.
    Hmmm .. oh yes, a billion is alot :-) I agree!

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  2. A billion thanks for this lovely post!

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  3. I have 6 zeroes in my bank account. Unfortunately, the zeros are FOLLOWED by a one and not PRECEEDED by it. Sigh.

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  4. US Federal Debt is something like $380 trillion. What happened this many seconds ago?
    -Bartek

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  5. heh, Billion is SO over-rated.

    Trillion is the number of the day. Now Trillion, that IS serious.

    sigh.

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  6. I do find numbers with lots of noughts very confusing.Just as well I'm not rich really

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  7. does that mean you clicked on my White House picture on the sidebar?

    Actually, everytime I hear "billion...." I think of Carl Sagan.

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  8. I have difficulties reaching even thousands now in my bank account..thanks to the tax ugliness..what billions you're talking about?

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  9. It's even bigger than that, on the 'long scale', generally used in Europe, where it has 12 zeros. So a billion is a million million.

    Enough to make your head hurt!

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