What If We Saw THIS the Day after Elections …
newsflash:
JS Apex, NC)
From Harrisburg, the new capital of what was formerly known as the United States, the newly-elected president of the now-named PRSS (Progressive Republic of Socialist States ) has declared that time units will be maximized (up to seconds), distance units (up to millimeters), and weight will be in tonnage (because in weight, smaller numbers make you feel better.
So, for example, suppose Aunt Ruth is 100 years old. Well, the formula for conversion from years to seconds would be:
100 years
X 52 weeks / year
X 7 days / week
X 24 hours / day
X 60 minutes / hour
X 60 seconds / minute
= 3,144,960,000 seconds
That is approximately 3.14 billion seconds.
The advantages of using seconds are plethora:
- People feel better about themselves.
Example: I’m only 3.14 billion seconds old. Heck, a second is almost nothing, and 3.14 billion seconds of almost nothing is almost nothing (in calculus terms, the limit of n over infinity as n approaches zero is, of course, zero). And zero times 3.1 billion is zero. Add in 25 or 30, guestimating for statistical variance, and there you have it. Someone at 3.1 billion seconds could possibly be only 25 or 30 years old, mathematically. - This involves higher math and will be educational. You’ve already seen higher math at work, for free.
- This involves both metric and English measurememts, thus being diverse and therefore an inherently Good Thing.
- These large numbers will make us more comfortable with the high numbers in the national debt: “Three billion seconds, ten trillion dollars, what’s the big deal?” The current national debt (at this moment) is:
$35,282,174,659,741
That’s 35+ trillion dollars. Wow. If we calculate that, in cents, we have 3,529,217,465,974,100 cents of national debt.
That ‘s 3.5 QUADRILLION cents, folks! I used to think that quadrillion was some muscle that you work out on a fitness machine. Quadrillion is a unit that we now need to reckon with (sorry for the grammar slip there).
Maybe the Treasury department should resume minting pennies. We’re going to need a lot of them.
My numbers
I’ve always liked big numbers. I’ve always had a thirst for statistics: How many hours of sleep am I getting (2.9 hours/night in the second semester of my sophomore year—big mistake. And I wasn’t even dating anyone that semester). I memorized pi to 90 places past the decimal point in college and remembered it to 40 places until just a couple of years ago.
I tried it just now and got:
3.14159265358979623846 (19 places past decimal)
I used to know baseball stats out the wazoo (whatever that means), especially Hank Aaron-related stats. Hank hit 44 home runs in 1957, leadng the Milwaukee Braves to a World Series championship over the Yankees. Pitcher Lew Burdette won 3 games in that series, which went 7 games. Hank hit 3 home runs, too, in that ‘57 series. He was MVP that season, which in fact was his only MVP in his career.
His teams won the world series only in that ‘57 year. They went back to the series in ‘58 but lost to the Yankees in 7 games. After the 1969 split when the National League split into East and West divisions (conferences) and Atlanta was placed in the West along with LA, SF, SD, Houston, and Cincy, the Braves never finished higher than third while Hank played with them.
They had a good shot at it in ‘73, when 3 of the Braves hit for 40 or more ….. if I remember right, Davey Johnson hit 43, Darrell Evans hit 41, and Hank hit 40. But they finished fifth. I was used to that … in the years I followed them, they were usually fourth or fifth. In their years after moving to Atlanta, they finished first in their division just once, in 1969 when they lost in the playoffs to the “Miracle Mets.” They finished third in 1971.
Hank went to Milwaukee in ‘75 and retired after the ‘76 season.
1974 was special, though. That’s the year Hank broke Babe’s 714 record. On April 8th, against Dodger pitcher Al Downing (who also wore #44), Hank hit is 715th home run. The Braves had an inspired summer and ended up in third place with a winning record.
In his career, Aaron became a member of the 30-30 club (30 home runs, 30 stolen bases) in 1963, and he was only the fourth person to have done that.
But you want more numbers? Numbers are fun. Let’s talk Nebraska football …. okay, I’ll save that for another day.
It’s fun watching Shohei Ohtani as he approaches an amazing 50-50 record. As of last night, he’s at 44 home runs and 43 stolen bases. He’s got most of September to play. I hope he can get there.
See ya.
(and Go Ohtani!)