Fri 23 Sep 2005
Barnes & Noble, Smithfield Street, Downtown.
An old homeless man has been placidly perusing the just-released 2006 Guiness Book of World Records:
Old Homeless Dude, loudly: I wouldn’t think a drag queen could stay in sobriety for one billion seconds.
[Long Pause]
But I guess she could!
— Overheard by Ben
September 23rd, 2005 at 5:58 pm
Here is the thing: When I was a kid, I had a book called How Much is A Billion? designed to give small children a sense of large numbers. It told me that if I started counting to one billion, I would be counting for 95 years. They had an illustration of a very old man with a long beard counting into the hundred millions. This concept terrified me. I was really disturbed by the idea of a lifetime wasted counting to one billion.
This quotation made me think: does counting to one billion take more or less time than a billion seconds? So I did the math, and one billion seconds is almost 32 years. The writers of that kids book think it takes almost three second to count one number! I just timed myself, and I can say, “seven-hundred-seventy-seven-million, seven-hundred-seventy-seven-thousand, seven-hundred-seventy-seven” in about two seconds. That book lied to me!
September 30th, 2005 at 10:42 am
maybe the book to into account sleeping and eating. which would take at least a fourth of your day.
November 26th, 2007 at 1:02 am
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