November 12, 2005

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  I orginally posted this on 5 November 2004 but decided to update the time stamp after reading the news and seeing these numbers being thrown around with reckless abandon.
  

  
  

  Fun With Numbers  or  Snowball is Your Old Man

  the important differences between a million, a billion and a trillion
  

  The national debt, when I wrote this entry last year was 7,455,253,938,060.00 - over seven trillion dollars; today it is 8,082,086,555,349.77. Using the refresh button, I found that in the time it took me to write that number down with a pen, the national debt increased by 4,079,295.

  It's important to understand the actual difference between a million, billion and a trillion since we hear these numbers thrown around every time we listen to the radio or watch the news.

  To help me understand this, I put it into the realm of linear time for example, 3,600 seconds in a hour; 86,400 seconds in a day, etc. and set about doing some calculations to illustrate my point.

  A million seconds goes by in approximately eleven (11) days.

  A billion seconds will take a bit longer, just under 32 YEARS.

  A trillion seconds, are you sitting down? - 31,645 years!!!

  The last calculation looked something like this:

  (10¹² sec)/( 3.16 x 10⁷ sec/yr) = 31,645 yrs!

  It is important that people understand this and I'm afraid that most people out there don't. Of course my readers understand this, I'm talking about everyone else, the not-so-smart people, the ones who don't read my blog.

  
  On November 4, 2004 the national debt was increasing at a rate of roughly 1.67 billion dollars per day; today it increases by 3.48 billion per day.
  

  China owns most of our debt which is a huge national security issue.

  We the People, however, are too busy debating evolution (again) and worrying about some reality TV show to realize that we're being sold out once again by our government.

  
  

  
  

  • 8:06 am
  • 4 Comments