Economical Numbers

"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

No real deep thoughts here though, this one is just for fun--a great quote from one of the most brilliant physicists of our time. Considering the recent spending this is even more true now than it was when Feynman penned these words about 30 years ago. The most recent bailout bill is 7.9 million times greater than the diameter of our galaxy (in light-years) or 315,000 times greater than the distance to the our neighbor galaxy Andromeda (in light-years). I think we should create a bailout scale. We could then say the known universe is only 0.2 bailout-light-years in diameter. Does not sound too big then...

By His Grace,
Taylor