2.5 Billion Seconds

This is *awesome*. Thanks for being my one-stop shop for things that depress me. And also make me laugh.

I have a lot of fun with numbers too! I once figured that if the “expected life of the universe were just another 41 billion years, (remember, “The Big Rip” theory?), our “lives” of 100 years would equal 10 centimeters or 0.1 meter, assuming the distance around the world is 41,000 kilometers. Makes you feel small, doesn’t it?

Or, more pragmatically, if BP opted to “splurge” on that $500,000 second backup blowout preventer (as is required in Norway, Britain, Brazil and other countries), it would have cost them 10 minutes and 37 seconds of their income, based on a $6.1 Billion last quarter profit! Gosh, wouldn’t it be nice to earn $1,000,000 for 21 minutes and 14 seconds of work?

From this perspective, it seems awfully selfish to skimp on spending 1/48,000th of your annual profit, to prevent what is now an awful catastrophy!

Anyway, if this world survives corporate greed (and I don’t give up on being a health nut most of the time), I’d like to hit 4 billion seconds…why not? It’s such a nice round number! So is 4 billion and 1 a prime number like 1 million and 1? (Yeah, I know…who cares!)