On 23 Nov 2001, at 13:01, Lucas Franzen wrote:

>
>
> "Robert F. Tulloch" schrieb:
> >
> > > It does. That's the italian for billiard (irish men, balls, holes
> > > and all the rest). :-) BTW there's no equivalent of billion,
> > > trillion and such in my language (even if we admit that they are
> > > regular english words, which I doubt). Ciao
> >
> > Checked a dictionary. English enlglish same as rest of Europe. Only
> > USA english different.
>
> As Mark Twain stated:
>
> It's just the language that's parting americans from englishmen.
>

Here in Canada we strike a happy medium, if talking to an
Englishman then Billion is a million million, and the term thousands
of millions comes into play, if talking to an American, then a
thousand million is called a Billion.

I think the reason that the Americans use the term Billion as
(10^9) is that it makes it harder for the common tax payer to figure
out what the government is talking about when they refer to the
cost of sticking their well armed nose into the rest of the worlds
private business.

After all most people could relate to a thousand, and most people
can relate to a million, they might even be able to put the two
together, but Billion is something most people can't comprehend,
and they definitely can't comprehend Trillion (10^12 in American).
So the fact the US owes it's bankers well over $100 Trillion (10^12)
might beg the question, how come we have to pay our own
medical, when Canada only owes C$250 Billion(*10^9) (C$1 =
U$.65 I might add) and most medical procedures are covered by
government paid insurance.

That's one of the situations where I am happy to be Canadian, Eh;

Paul


Paul Schmidt
Tricat Technologies
paul@...
www.tricattechnologies.com