When you see the story
about how the world
now has its first trillionaire,
and when you see the story
about how laboratories
in Congo have run out
of supplies to test for Ebola,
it is important to understand
that in many ways
these are the same story.
If you were to count out a million seconds, it would take you 11 and a half days.
A billion seconds would take you 31.7 years.
But a trillion seconds would take 31,700 years — to reach that point today, you would have needed to start counting around the time that neanderthals went extinct.