Meanwhile, back at the ranch

Joseph McCollum prez234 at JUNO.COM
Thu Oct 26 14:15:41 UTC 2000


>--------------------------------------------------------
>TELL IT LIKE IT IS
>
>   The EAST VILLAGE OTHER, October 1-15, 1966, pg. 6, col. 1:
>   He found it necessary as an artist, "to tell it like it is."
>(More from the ranch at another time--ed.)

When was it first said of Howard Cosell?

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I had e-mailed Barry about the centimillionaires and the SI convention
having centi- as 0.01x and hecto- as 100x (but of course we have
centipede and the like).  We also have billionaire, trillionaire,
quadrillionaire, etc., all Latin prefixes; presumably -illionaire means
(x 10^(3*prefix+3)) in America and used to/still does (??) mean (x
10^(6*prefix)) in the UK.  We also have multi-, (not poly-) millionaire.


 I believe the British journal Nature bowed to American convention a few
years ago and called "billion" as 10^9 rather than 10^12.  The British
billiard 10^15 does not appear to be related to the game of billiards,
though.

 Anyway, a sesquicentennial is a 150 year anniversary.  A sesquillionaire
would have a worth of at least 10^7.5 dollars, or half-way between 10^6
and 10^9.  It turns out to be the paltry amount of  $31,622,776.60.

What we want is a word to describe someone with 10^8 dollars, two-thirds
of the way from one million to one billion.   "One and two-thirds."
"Bes" is Latin for "two-thirds," but words with that root don't appear to
have made it into English.  How about besquillionaire?



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