the national debt...

I read that the national debt is currently 11.4 trillion dollars. That's right, trillion. I didn't have any concept of what a trillion is, so I googled the term. Here are some of the things that I found:

Million: 1,000,000
Billion: 1,000,000,000
Trillion: 1,000,000,000,000

A million seconds is 12 days.
A billion seconds is 31 years.
A trillion seconds is 31,688 years.

A million minutes ago was – 1 year, 329 days, 10 hours and 40 miutes ago.
A billion minutes ago was just after the time of Christ.

A million hours ago was in 1885.
A billion hours ago man had not yet walked on earth.

America has not existed for a trillion seconds.
Western civilization has not been around a trillion seconds.
One trillion seconds ago – 31,688 years – Neanderthals stalked the plains of Europe.

If you piled $1000 bills one on top of the other, a stack of them worth a trillion would be 67 miles high. That's thousand dollar bills every inch of the way, from my house in Dallas to my job in Fort Worth, plus 16 miles.

The mind boggles...

Ah, October!

There are a lot of things to be depressed about right now. The economy and politics are two topics that leap to mind, and there are others as well. But I'm tired of all the gloom and doom, and the moreso because this is my favorite time of year. I went out to lunch with a friend today, and we sat outside in the sunshine (well, actually we sat beneath an umbrella), drinking ice tea and eating our lunch and enjoying the clear blue sky. We talked politics, but instead of moaning and groaning, we talked about Tina Fey's hilarious depictions of Sarah Palin, and of our favorite RedState Update videos (see Jackie & Dunlap's hysterical anticipatory take on the upcoming Palin-Biden debate here).

Comedians have always held a higher place in my world than the masters of the universe could ever hope to achieve.