Smiles for a cold Monday...

Here I sit, chomping ice, with my laptop keeping me warm, while so many of my friends are family are freezing their toes off! I wanted to post something that would send warmth and smiles your way.

Millions, Billions and Trillions, Oh My!

Okay, earthlings, fire up your calculators. What's the difference between a million, a billion, and a trillion? A million seconds is 11.57 days. A billion seconds is 31 years. A trillion seconds is 31,688 years. Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds.

A trillion seconds ago: 31,688 years was well before the peak of the last Ice Age. Apparently global warming started shortly thereafter. A millions minutes ago was 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours ago. A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ. A trillion minutes is 1,901,280 years. Did global warming exist then?

Now, let us get back to the dreaded "T" word. One trillion is the word politicians glibly use without understanding the line of zeroes accompanying it. It is Washington's favorite words these days. Millions and billions are just chump change to them.

The debt ceiling was just raised to $12.9 trillion. Oh, hell, make it $13 trillion ---what's a $100 billion among friends? There are 535 members of Congress. One trillion dollars represents $1,869,158,878.50 spent by each and every member of Congress of the taxpayers money. That's almost $2 billion each. Beam me up, Scotty. I'm ready.

Written by George Romagno, The Bakersfield Californian, January 14, 2010

A WORK IN PROGRESS!!!