Well, OK, it's not really my explanation. I saw it on TechTV, but I liked it enough to remember it.
I enjoy applying science to dogma. The results are always amusing. Of course, you cannot argue with ardent religionists about matters of faith which intentionally sidestep all rational logic. It's like apples and horse manure (which are actually much closer than logic and religion). Are you familiar with Carl Sagan's basic approach to hypothesis testing? Here's a sample from that fine scientist:
Consider the Santa Claus hypothesis, which maintains that, in a period of eight hours or so on December 24-25 of each year, an out-sized elf visits one hundred million homes in the United States. This is an interesting and widely discussed hypothesis. Some strong emotions ride on it and it is argued that at least it does no harm. We can do some calculations. Suppose that the elf in question spends one second per house. This isn't quite the usual picture - Ho, Ho, Ho and so on - but imagine that he is terribly efficient and very speedy; that would explain why nobody ever sees him very much - only one second per house, after all. With a hundred million houses he has to spend three years just filling stockings. I have assumed he spends no time at all in going from house to house. Even with relativistic reindeer the time spent in a hundred million houses is three years and not eight hours.
I like it when things are explained in understandable terms. Faith is one thing, but when we apply comprehensible analogies a greater depth of understanding is evoked. I guarantee you hardly anybody understands the concept of a trillion of anything, let alone money. Sure, it's a one followed by a dozen zeroes, but what the hell does that mean? Try this superb explanation of what a trillion dollars means:
Imagine that you opened a business on the first day of the Year One (our calendar didn't have a Year Zero). Imagine that you were such a lousy business person that you lost $1,000,000 (one million) on that first day of business! Now further imagine that you are completely incapable of learning from your mistakes, and so you lost another $1,000,000 (million) on your second day of business! Then imagine that you lost $1,000,000 (million) every single day that year and that you continued to do so right up to the present day! And that would include a leap year every fourth year during which you would have lost $366,000,000 instead of the usual $365,000,000! Wow! Are you ever a lousy business person! But don't worry, you would still have to continue losing $1,000,000 (a million) per day for another 736 years plus a few months before you will have lost a total of one trillion dollars ($1,000,000,000,000)!
I hope this explanation really helps you to think about the next news story which mentions a trillion dollars. Another way to look at a trillion dollars? $3,508.77 for each one of the 285,000,000 individual citizens of the USA.
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