['one question: starlight from stars billions of light-years way reaching us...explain.']
No one can count to a billion, so how is it that we know the stars are billions of light years away?
54 comments
Does this poster think that scientists somehow lay out a light-year-long yardstick and count, "One, two, three ... forty-five thousand and ninety-five, forty-five thousand and ninety-six...."? Counting -- boy, that's the lamest objection to this that I've seen yet.
Is the "05" in the poster's name his/her age?!? He/she should learn some mathematics!
~David D.G.
One, two, skip a few,
ninety nine, one hundred.
Now, my vowel challenged fundie, why don't you do a bit of research and find out how they know that the stars are billions of light years away. I am sure the information is available. Get back to us when you have found out with your refutation.
Yeah, and I bet Bill Gates neither knows nor cares if a billion bucks goes missing from his bank account, 'cause gee, "No one can count to a billion."
This may be a bit sad but:
Given one second per number and an 8 hour working day gives 28,800 numbers per day.
Dividing this into 1 billion (1,000,000,000) gives a little over 34,722 days.
This gives the time taken to count to 1 billion as a little over 95 years.
Of course, this discounts weekends, leap years and holidays but it does show that someone CAN count to a billion.
OK, I'll shut up now.
on a side note, am I the only pathetic purist who likes the term "thousand million" and thinks that "billion" should fuck off to where it used to be? That is 1,000,000,000,000.
TDR: Hey, why even use "million"? Just call it a thousand thousand, why don't you? Then we can call a billion a thousand thousand thousand, and so on.
Seriously, the word "billion" is a BIG improvement on "thousand million." Besides, it just wouldn't sound right to do a Carl Sagan impression and say, "thousand millions and thousand millions."
~David D.G.
"WTF Award" anyone? This is hilarious. Just because he can't count to a billion doesn't mean no one can. Also, any true Christian knows that nowhere in the Bible does it say the earth is only 6,000 years old. According to Genesis and the fact that Adam and Eve repopulated the word, the universe could very well be trillions of years old.
I prefer not to use the "million, billion", etc wherever possible, because it's too easy to mix up the European and American systems. I just like to use "times ten to the whatever", or kilo, mega, giga, tera, peta, etc... Of course, you can still screw up depending on whether you're using them in the context of computers or not!
When I do have to use the other, I favour European - Thousand Million sounds fine to me, but Million Million sounds a bit off. Besides, the way the European system works is somewhat analogous to counting in binary, whereas the American system isn't, so it just seems to make more sense that way.
By the way, is there an official name for any of the systems mentioned? I know there are several for "times ten to the whatever" - I like "Scientific Notation" myself, but are there names for the others?
It gives me a migraine headache thinking down to your level.
Brain - I like the idea of using the SI prefixes. You get some funny-sounding units that way (one running joke among my friends is rather than describing something as being X metric tons, we use the unit "megagram", which is exactly the same but sounds much more impressive [especially when said in a monster-truck-rally-announcer voice]). Other favorites among computer-science types include the microcentury (52.6 minutes, or approximately equal to the length of a typical college lecture).
I prefer not to use the "million, billion", etc wherever possible, because it's too easy to mix up the European and American systems.
Billion I can understand, but Million? You do realize that a European million is exactly the same as an American million, right?
Crosis "It gives me a migraine headache thinking down to your level."
Quoting Megadeth? I don't hear them referenced very often.
Indeed, though I think they may have been referencing Douglas Adams (Marvin has a similar line in one of the books - something like the following dialogue:
Arthur: "But what am I supposed to do with a maniacally depressed robot?"
Marvin: "You think you've got it bad, what are you supposed to do if you are a maniacally depressed robot? No, don't bother answering, I'm ten thousand times smarter than you and even I don't know the answer. It gives me a headache just trying to think down to your level.")
rowsinboston: I think tracer was referring to the fact that in some systems, rather than going thousand , million , billion , trillion , it goes thousand , million , milliard , billion .
Interesting idea, isn't it? Just for the sake of argument, lets take this to the next level:
I think all numbers are part of a Zionist plot to make America's children into future evolutionists.
After all, where else do you see numbers like "billion" anyway? Two places: Money (which the Jewish have a stranglehold on) and with evolutionary nonsense (billions upon billions of years ago, stuff happened and here we are.) Since there is a well-known fact that says "Bigger = Better", who are the kids going to turn to? The wimpy little Christian who thinks the world was here for ten thousand years, or the evolutionist who says it's been here for five thousand thousand thousand years? The logic is so obvious that we couldn't have seen it without this visionary, mthtchr05, showing us the light.
Abstract numbers might be even worse; they hide themselves within letters in the alphabet... My God, there are spies amongst our ranks!
There is no time to waste. We must immediately stop our children from learning math if we are to save them from Satan's evil clutches. Band together, brothers and sisters, and throw off the shackles numbers have put on us!
Just for the record, there is a word for a thousand million - milliard. A billion is a million squared (well, it will be until the European terminology is pushed out of existence).
Let's just wait until the stubborn Americans stop acting oh-so individual and start using the logical mathematical terms.
The highest he can count to is probably 20, due to there being no more fingers and toes. Unless he has six fingers on one hand or something. But this reminds me of when we were kids, how someone would say "yeah, well you're a poop-head times 10. Oh yeah, well you're a poop-head times 100, etc.". "Oh yeah, well, you're a poop-headed fundy times ONE BILLION!. Nuh uh, you can't count to a billion." Yeah, this sounds pretty childish to me.
Just because you have difficulty getting past six doesn't mean everyone else has that problem. Many of us can count much higher. My personal record, one time when I was bored in twelfth-grade math class, was in the neighbourhood of 10,000, before I got even more bored and just did the work.
No one can count to a billion
Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Ben Bernanke would like to have a word with you ;-)
@Anon2
'No one can count to a billion '
"Bill Gates, Warren Buffett, and Ben Bernanke would like to have a word with you ;-)"
mthrfckr05's brain would bleed through his eyes & ears at this notion:
The Finance Minister of the Peoples Republic of China can count to a trillion . Dollars in cold, hard ca$h, that is. >:D
I bet you wouldn't dare argue over what constitutes a billion eh, little Yank fundie: A thousand million or a million million, eh?
Now will you start spelling words the English way:
ColoU r
FlavoU r
HonoU r
FavoU r
ArmoU r
AluminI um
Eh mthrfckr05 and your ilk? Considering China's financial status over you, you've forfeited the right to use your previous form of spelling in perpetuity. US spelling? No U .
Confused?
So were we! You can find all of this, and more, on Fundies Say the Darndest Things!
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