Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences

As always, click on image to enlarge.

• One million seconds will pass in the next 12 days.
• One billion seconds will take 32 years.
• One trillion seconds will pass in 31,688 years.

Time is money, right? If you make one dollar every second, you will have a million dollars in twelve days. You will be a billionaire in 32 years, but it will take you more than 31,000 years to make a trillion dollars.

Want to read about Innumeracy: Mathematical Illiteracy and its Consequences?

A Few Quotes Concerning Barley Wine

“You can’t be a real country unless you have a beer and an airline… it helps if you have some kind of a football team or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need a beer.” – Frank Zappa

“Not all chemicals are bad. Without chemicals such as hydrogen and oxygen, for example, there would be no way to make water, a vital ingredient in beer.” – Dave Barry

$100 Bill

It's a slow day in a little East Texas town. The sun is beating down, and the streets are deserted. Times are tough, everybody is in debt, and everybody lives on credit.

On this particular day a tourist drives through town. He stops at a small hotel and says he wants to inspect the rooms and pick one for the night. The manager explains that he does not have the time to accompany him during his inspection and thus requires a deposit before he will give up a key and allow free range. So in agreement, the tourist slaps a $100 bill on the counter.

As soon as the man walks upstairs, the hotelier grabs the bill and runs next door to pay his debt to the butcher.

The butcher takes the $100 and runs down the street to retire his debt to the pig farmer.

The pig farmer takes the $100 and heads off to pay his bill at the supplier of feed and fuel.

The guy at the Farmer's Co-op takes the $100 and runs to reimburse his sales manager who puts up out of town suppliers in the local hotel while they are in town wheeling and dealing.

The sales manager rushes to the hotel and pays off his room bill with the hotel owner.

The hotel proprietor then places the $100 back on the counter.

At that moment the traveler comes down the stairs, picks up the $100 bill, says the rooms are not satisfactory, pockets the money, and leaves town. No one produced anything. No one earned anything. However, the whole town is now out of debt and looks to the future with great optimism.

And that, ladies and gentlemen, is how the United States Government is conducting business today.

Thanks for the enlightenment from my friend Andy