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Corporate Millions

As a kid learning math I am trying to remember when I first encountered the concept of a million.  Seems like many moons ago.  I must have been in middle school when a friend of the family knowing my proclivity for math handed me a book written by some Russian professors (translated to English).

It was a book of curious math problems and explained concepts like large numbers in some detail.  I think that may have been my introduction to appreciating a number like a million.  One followed by six zeroes.

As in the distance between earth and our moon is a quarter of that.  In miles.  A million heart beats is a lifetime of 9 days since a human heart beats at around 115,000 of them each day. But this number pales when you start discussing capitalism.

Recently in the news...

1. Elon Musk, the famous entrepreneur was fined $20M for blabbing about taking Tesla private when in fact it was not so.

2.  Facebook was hacked.  50M accounts were compromised.  Oh well that is only 2% of their user base.  Who cares?

3. Apple became the first company to be valued at a trillion USD.  That is a million million.  Not bad for selling a computer in a pocket.  A giant retailer aptly called Amazon is a close second.

Valuations are a mystery.  They are not real.  They are the collective perception of average humans influenced by the cult leader.  You pick your cult.  There are millions of them around.
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