Chris: You are correct. I have heard (but have never verified it) that the British don't say billions but instead might say thousand million. That's what I meant to say. B
Find what makes your heart sing…and do it! ________________________________ From: Chris Austin-Lane <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Mon, September 24, 2012 1:16:48 PM Subject: Re: [Zen] the green dragon Slight nit pick: The universe has only lasted about 14,700 million years; not million million years yet. Thanks, --Chris [email protected] +1-301-270-6524 On Mon, Sep 24, 2012 at 11:07 AM, William Rintala <[email protected]> wrote: sics. In geology we speak of hundreds of millions of years, just as Joe might speak in terms of billions or million millions of years and even those chunks of time are but an instant in eternity. Life on earth began 600 million years ago, the reign of the dinosaurs lasted less that 150 million years. Humanity's earliest ancestors didn't show up until less that 5 million years ago. The last Ice Age ended 12,000 years ago. The first domesticated animals, 10,000 years ago. The first evidence of writing 4,000 years ago. Each human life lasts but 100 years, that's 0.00000017th the span of all life, 0.000000005th the span of the age of the known universe. We live on a planet which seems significant yet 1,300,000 Earths could fit inside of our Sun and that Sun is only a medium sized star in a universe of uncountable stars (billions and billions according to Carl Sagan). From the furthest known reaches of known space our sun could not be seen. > >This is my perspective regarding Zen. First the concept of Infinite Time and >Space. Huge, beyond imaging. An infinite Infinity of Infinities is still >nothing. It is no time or space at all. Given that infinite space and infinite >time and given the demonstrated size and length of our physical existence and >percieving myself as th
