That's a lotta money!

I learned a new word yesterday: "yotta". Strictly speaking, it's not a word; it's the SI prefix indicating 10 rasied to the power of 24 (abbr: "Y"). That's a thousand times bigger than the largest SI prefix I previously knew about (zeta), and is currently the largest official prefix. Really, it's a useful unit to have. For example, the power output of the Sun is 383YW. By comparison, the province of Ontario consumes about 25GW on a hot day when everyone is running their air conditioners. Which means the Sun is equivalent to about 15 peta-Ontarios.

Borderline-Asperger geeks like to know these things. We'd be loads of fun at cocktail parties, except we never go to any because we hate people. (That, and no one ever invites us more than once. I don't care; you're all boring. Yes, all of you.)

The way I found this out is weird: it seems that, in what has to be the record-holder for ridiculous damages claims, someone is suing the Bank of America for 1784 billion trillion dollars. Yes, that's 1.784 yotta-bux.

That's a lotta bux (as in: waaaay more than are in the picture at right).

OK, just to raise the intelligence quotient of this post above of the yocto-level, here's Monty Python's Money Song. Enjoy: