Money for Nothing

Hello, I've been away far too long. Most of you have never seen me in person, or only through a small photograph. Be thankful you missed these last few weeks. I removed my beard after 12 years... it was scary. When I looked into the mirror I was horrified. The face staring back at me was not my father, or even my grandfather, but my maternal grand-MOTHER! Yet another shock I credit to middle-age. Oh, and the beard is coming back ASAP. Maybe I'll see my chin again around 2028. Sorry, I digress.

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Attached is an [article] from Salon.com (PDF Format, Used without permission). It's an odd type of book review regarding the new work; The Three Trillion Dollar War. One author is a Nobel winning economist and the other is facility at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government.

Before you hang up on me, let me tell you I'm not bringing this up primarily for the political aspects. You all know I'm a geek, or maybe nerd or wonk is a better description in this case. Everyday the astronomical terms relating to monies spent are tossed around the news carelessly; $Millions, $Billions, $Trillions. What do these terms really mean on the human scale?! It's debatable that a human mind can grasp what a "million" represents. So what hope is there for understanding the vastly greater numbers. This thinking gets my inner geek/nerd/wonk all excited, off the couch and onto the the keyboard.

Part of the book discusses "What could you do with a Trillion Dollars?" I mean real stuff, not how many Blu-ray DVDs you could by at Amazon (~35,778,175,313 of them not including taxes or shipping) or how many XL pepperoni pizzas with extra sauce and mushrooms on half you could buy (ah, with CA Tax you get 41,152,263,374. Would that feed Africa for a year?) Instead how could you affect the lives of people in the U.S., or the world? One example given is $1,000,000,000,000 would solve the Social Security problem for 50 years. Or build/purchase 8 million homes. There are more. Oh, yeah, before we forget, you then triple it.

Another major issue appears because the $Trillions being spent are not coming from our savings accounts or from selling off those stocks and gold bars we used to have laying around somewhere in Kentucky. Instead we're abusing our favorite credit card, the People's Republic of China Unlimited VISA card. Despite the cute panda bear in the holographic logo is this a good idea? I sounds alot like my life done on a grandious scale.

That's all, sorry for the rambling, I'm in a hurry so I can't write anything shorter (that phrase blatantly plagiarized from Edgar Allen Poe).

Enjoy.