This Is Too True To...

[Jemisa]

This is too true to be funny...........

The next time you hear a politician use the
Word 'billion' in a casual manner, think about
whether you want the 'politicians' spending
YOUR tax money.

A billion is a difficult number to comprehend,
But one advertising agency did a good job of
Putting that figure into some perspective in
One of its releases.

A.
A billion seconds ago it was 1959.

B.
A billion minutes ago Jesus was alive.

C.
A billion hours ago our ancestors were
living in the Stone Age.

D.
A billion days ago no-one walked on the earth on two feet.

[DangerUXD]

I'm just grateful that they aren't talking about a proper billion!

[emmie]

no one knows for sure that Jesus existed, so don't see how they can put that one in.

[rojash]

I reckon that's a pretty old list - a billion seconds ago it was 1981

[baza]

a billion hours ago politicians were not on the fiddle because neither had been invented.

[Svejk]

Rojash.Did you take the leap years into account,?

[Fitzer]

re. Rojash's answer I did the calculation too and was posting a lengthy breakdown when my PC threw a wobbler! I got the same answer and used 365.25 days per year to make a rough average to account for leap years.

[bibblebub]

let the internet do the work http://www.wolframalpha.com/input/?i=a+billion+seconds+ago

[Fitzer]

But since it was presumably the internet which gave the incorrect information in the first place....... :-)

[Jemisa]

I can't believe any one would take the trouble to work all this out to prove that it could be wrong.
Take it with a pinch of salt and move on for Gawds sake. Tchk, Tchk. (sigh)

[plowter]

What does a trillion dollars look like?

http://www.pagetutor.com/trillion/index.html

[Old_Geezer]

Yeah but they can quantitatively ease as many billions as they want anyway. It's just your savings they rob.

[jake-the-peg]

//I can't believe any one would take the trouble to work all this out to prove that it could be wrong.

Take it with a pinch of salt and move on for Gawds sake. Tchk, Tchk. //

Someone's got a future in politics!

[beso]

On the balance of evidence, Jesus is about as plausible as Harry Potter.

[ummmm]

Why title it 'This Is Too True To...'?

[Jemisa]

ummmm, Tongue in cheek darlin' tongue in cheek...

[ichkeria]

I don't have a billion pounds to give away in tax so it doesn't bother me :-)

[chakka35]

DangerUXD is right. A BIllion, by definition, is the second power of a million i.e. a million million. A thousand million is a milliard.

You my argue that words often change their meanings and you'd be quite right - but not when the meaning is built into the word. Will we ever call a human being a quadruped, a horse a biped or a four-sided figure a hexagon?

[rojash]

^^ Presumably, you believe that a telescopic umbrella allows you to see at a distance.

[Old_Geezer]

If you check with Wikipedia you find there are 2 systems (scales) in operation and as I recall some chancellor decided we would swop from the sensible one we use to the one the US used.

Personally I don't see the need for a system that introduces a new value term before it is really needed. For example, since five thousand million is perfectly understandable (it doesn't duplicate the highest value so far) then it is senseless to refer to it as five billion. The new term is simply not required at that point. So here we see the incompetence of authority. If you have the best system and someone does something inferior, use the fact that they do it to mess up your own. How do these people float to the top every time ?