"When they start talking about the credit crunch and start throwing about those huge numbers, remember that A million seconds is 11 days A billion seconds is 32 years. A trillion seconds is 32,000 years. " I found the graphic (flash based) thing on this BBC page really helpful in making sense of the recent scare story on women, breast cancer, and booze. As someone who looks forward to her drink or three at the end of a long day 2 or 3 times a week, it helped me put a scare story that was all over the news into perspective (okay, I'd have carried on anyway, my Great Aunt knocked back most of a quarter of whisky a night and lived to be 103 - plus I'm not that keen on living to be 150 yrs old, etc). Anyway - statistics - valuable, but only with the right analytical tools, and with the breakdown of what they ACTUALLY mean made public at the same time, perhaps?