Richard P. Feynman related to US Debt in Today’s News

Yet again, I’m reminded about the late, great Feynman.  Not only did he give incredibly accessible and incisive open lectures, he also left the world a legacy of humorous and yet accurate quotes for us to ruminate on…

In the latest development from “The Credit Crunch“, in New York, there is an electronic wall display that monitors the US Debt…

Well, it’s ran out of numbers! (US debt clock runs out of digits) – You can’t make it up, can you?

And so to Feynman’s quote, from a time when the debt was considerably less than now, but he still pointedly observed as he turned a common figure of speech on it’s head:

There are 10^¹¹ stars in the galaxy.   That used to be a huge number.   But it’s only a hundred billion.   It’s less than the national deficit!   We used to call them astronomical numbers.   Now we should call them economical numbers.   -  Richard Feynman,  US educator & physicist (1918 – 1988)

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