" Antarctica scientists get big ice cube delivery"

[GreenPartyVoter]

The last thing Australian scientists in Antarctica need is a lifetime supply of ice cubes.

But an iceberg more than twice the size of Malta has ground to a halt near an Australian outpost on the frozen continent, blotting out much of the horizon.

The 50 km-long (31 mile) iceberg is part of a bigger iceberg that broke apart from the Ross Ice Shelf more than five years ago, the Australian Antarctic Division said.

The iceberg, big enough to make 15 thousand million ice cubes, has drifted more than a thousand km (620 miles) in recent months to Australia's remote Casey Station, a 16-building encampment opened in 1959 to conduct research.

http://reuters.iwon.com/article/20050519/2005-05-19T171226Z_01_SYD246002_RTRIDST_0_ODD-ANTARCTICA-ICEBERG-DC.html

[jimshoes]

1. Thats another way of saying

15 billion. Think about that.

[muriel_volestrangler]

2. The old British (and therefore probably Australian) meaning of billion

was a million million (there's a certain logic to it; in this usaGE, 1 billion=million to the power of 2, and 1 trillion=million to the power of 3). So if they want to be clear, they can just say 'thousand million'.

[jimshoes]

3. The thing about the article

that struck me in this instance was simply that a huge 31 mile long iceberg will produce 15 billion ice cubes. Then consider the USA has funneled $250 billion plus into the Iraq war you would need 16 such icebergs to match ice cubes for dollars.