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Greed is good!
Put it on your credit card!
Mark me on a curve!
I want it now!
Expand!
Amalgamate!
The $64 question—but now it's the 64,000 dollar, or is it million, or billion—surely it can't be trillion dollar yet!
Everyone seems to be into instant gratification, and even if that nice Mr Greenspan is managing the economy, our minds are into inflation.
Did I just mention Billions and Trillions?
Well if I did THERE is a good example. It used to be much harder to reach a billion. Oh! not because we now have the new electronic, dotty economy, but because billions were supposed to be bigger. The international standards guys (following, I believe, common practice of the past) defined a billion as a million-million, that's one followed by twice as many zeros as a million, which makes sense since "bi-" means two. And a Trillion has three times as many.
It's exponential my dear Watson. And it means that what we now call a billion is only a thousand-million and a trillion is really only a billion. Guess how I could slash the National Debt at a stroke, and doesn't that put Bill Gates in his place—billionaire?
Hah!!
And it's not only size that matters, look at events—look, since we are in to big numbers this morning, at the upcoming millennium, most of us celebrated that a year early. We just couldn't wait, could we? At the end of the last century our great (or whatever) grandparents were of sterner stuff and celebrated at the correct time—midnight on 31st December 1900. Even our whatevers at the beginning of the nineteenth century got it right. But we are inflationary and impatient and weak. AND we blame it all on poor old Dionysius Exiguus1! If you don't know of him (or even if you do) let me explain that Dionysius was a sixth century monk who was working in Rome on Canon Law, and on Calendars. It was Dionysius who introduced dating from the Incarnation, eventually clearing up a confusing mish-mosh of dating systems using such inconvenient schemes as a list of the names of the two Roman consuls, or such (to a Christian monk) unsavoury ones as the Era of Diocletian.
Even someone as intelligent and well-read as Steven Jay Gould has blamed him for our confusion. In one of his otherwise wonderful essays (collected, I think, in 'Dinosaur in a Haystack') he castigates Dennis at length for (in his word) "choosing" to start his count of years with one rather than zero. Now this is pretty hard considering that zero was missing from western maths until, well really until Fibonacci in the twelfth century, six hundred years after our Denny boy. (By the way did you know that Fibonacci was also a successful actor and had his own series back in Pisa? But that's another story). No, not only did Den not have the opportunity to use a year zero (or as my old granddad used to say "the year dot") but he was counting , and when you are counting things you start "one, two…" and end up "ten" you don't start "zero, one…" and end up "nine"!
No, the fault isn't the big D's it's ours for being impatient, and greedy for having it NOW! So I suggest that to make up for your mistake you go out of your way, humbly and full of contrition, to celebrate much more this year than last. If I had the strength of my convictions I wouldn't broadcast this until immediately before the New Year, but, of course, I just couldn't wait…
Cheerio for now from…
Richard Howland-Bolton
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Notes:
1 Dionysius
"... poor old Dionysius Exiguus" Here is a Catholic Encyclopaedia Article on Dionysius.
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