G. Gordon Liddy appeared at our university shortly after he got out of federal prison in the early '80s.

He spoke, among other things, about the Federal budget of the day. To illustrate its size, he asked the very large assembly of students and faculty the following question:

"If I gave you a thousand dollars every day, about how many years would it take for you to collect a million dollars? Roughly."

After about thirty seconds, somebody shouted out "Three years!"

Liddy was pleased. Then he asked, "If I gave you a thousand dollars a day, roughly how many years would it take till you had a *billion* dollars?"

There was a longer pause. Lots of guesses. Most were "Ten years!" "A hundred years!" He had to repeat the question. Finally someone correctly called out "Three thousand years!" in an uncertain tone.

When Liddy raised the ante to a *trillion* dollars, there was complete silence until somebody said "Thirty thousand years!" Then they gave up.

These were university people. (I assume that any math professors in the audience didn't want to hog the spotlight.) Meanwhile, I'm still waiting for my thousand dollars a day.