ToDaZeD Quote from the Past
WASoF
There are 10^11 stars in the galaxy. That used to be a huge number. But it’s only a hundred billion. It’s less than the national deficit! We used to call them astronomical numbers. Now we should call them economical numbers.”
--Richard Feynman*
Posted by Claire on 05/14 at 07:06 AM
He said that sometime in the 1980s (that’s the closest I can find). Nowadays we’re in the trillions - that’s 10^12. You don’t even want to try to conceive of such a number.
Washington economists nowadays just count “one, two, three, heap”. It’s all just a heap of wampum.
Posted by ZZMike on 05/15/10 at 01:40 PM
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