Pages

Monday, March 12, 2007

The War of "Tera"

Wired magazine did a little piece in the March issue on what the "tera" measure represents. In addition to bytes, watts, and flops, their graphic tries to put the amount of a "teradollar" in perspective.

Interestingly enough, the Iraq war is listed as costing about one teradollar, so every other cost in the graphic represents the equivalent of the prosecution (persecution?) of W's little adventure in geo-politics.

Below is the list, since the graphic is a little hard to read online. You can also click here to go to the full magazine article.

  • 45,095,828 new Toyota Priuses
  • 31.3 times the endowment of the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation.
  • 1 I-phone for nearly every person in Europe, Africa, Central Asia, Latin America, and the Middle East.
  • 8% of the US GDP.
  • 22.7 times Warren Buffet's estimated net worth.
  • 3,265,220 new American homes.
It makes one consider what else we could have accomplished with some different leadership doesn't it? I like to try to imagine what great things we could do as a society if we focused our tremendous resources and capacities on attacking the problems that afflict the least amoung our brothers and sisters, such as poverty and homelessness. I know it's just a crazy dream, but I'll keep hoping. Wasn't there a guy a while back who advocated just that -- someone named Jesus, who a few people now-a-days claim to do the work of?

No comments: