April 08, 2004
Inspired by this post:
The Megapenny Project
"Since the first penny was minted in 1787, until present-day, over 300 billion pennies have been minted in the United States."
So what exactly does that mean?
An excellent way to conceptualize the unconceivable.
-
Or inconceivable. You know, whatever.
-
Wow - 1000 dollars in pennies could fit in my suitcase. Not that I would be able to move it, so that might put a damper on my smuggling plans. -- "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means"
-
The value of a penny is a funny thing. It's a very low-value thing in itself, useful today because it gives us a medium of exchange in which to express fractions of value. Can you imagine carrying enough pennies to trade for a week of meals while traveling? Never mind jb's six hundred pound suitcase. True liquid-phase physical money would be entertaining. We almost have that today in the electron clouds within credit.
-
The national debt is $7 trillion or 700 trillion pennies. That's most of this block.
-
WARNING - Possible thread hijack: How many pennies has the Iraq war cost us? How many pennies is Haliburton making off of said war?
-
squidranch: I can't say exactly, but it's interesting to note that kokogiak (the guy behind the original penny site) is a MetaFilter user, as is crunchland, who kind of used the same idea to put together his $87,000,000,000.00 page. And then, of course, mr_crash-davis did it again with Big Macs, which is much better. See how it all fits together, now?