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So, without getting too political… I’d just like to point out that if our politicians are serious about solving the budget crisis, they need to stop talking about million dollar programs, and start taking about 100 billion dollar ones. The problem is that it’s hard to either slash funding for large programs like defense, or social security, and it’s even harder raise taxes (really at all). But if we never consider those options, we’re never going to get out of the rut.

In my undergraduate physics lab, the instructor had a mantra: "A number without context is meaningless". Now, he originally meant the statement to be a lesson on how important it is to quote errors on your measurements, but I think I can adapt it to apply to giving out numbers like 7 billion without a sense of scale.

.:thevirtuosi.blogspot.com->