My piggy bank did not last long enough. I fervently believed in its goodness, as proclaimed by various relatives who would sarcastically drop a couple of pennies into it, reminding me that soon enough I would be wealthy beyond imagination, or at least able to buy that face-sized lollipop I had been craving.
Why is that important? Well, if they would have explained compound interest to me back then I would have had a happier chance at happiness through accumulation of base Mammon (also known as cash). As it stands it took me the view of a few adult years to understand compound interest.
However, my money is not the only thing that supposedly doubles every 7 years (I now have $ 2 to my name). My chance of contracting a deadly disease apparently increases at the same rate. By the time I reach 70 I will have a 210 chance to grab some more or less tedious increase in entropy in the enclosed system that is me.
So if you play your cards right, your cash will double just enough every 7 years for you to afford the cure to the latest POS disease your vessel decided to run with when your telomerase shortened yet again. This will not be the case with me, because the doubling of the money has barely started while the doubling of the diseases is on its 5 iteration. I am banking on good genes and long telomerase.
Be that as it may, it fascinating that compound interest is on the same schedule as aging is programmed into our DNA. There must be some magical property attached to these coincidences. We need to bring back Alchemy, I hear Newton was quite taken by it. If I could just get some sage to explain to me that all of this has something to do with people dreading the seventh year of marriage I will start having children right away (So that I may have seven. And so that the seventh son of the seventh son will spawn some sort of godhuman, or at least turn water into wine and, in that order, gold into lead).
PS: In order to find out how this turns out, please get in touch with me in 77 years. Call Bill Bryson if you need a translation of that number.
That very book by Bill Bryson has been sitting in my shelf for years. Maybe I should read eh. What it do foo
ReplyDeleteit really dont do much. u learned all that in high school. it gives some nice anecdotes about where the science comes from. i didnt like it.
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