What Does 200 Billion Stars Really Mean?

The sheer scale of space is overwhelming. Oh, sure, we have words to make it more palatable, like "light years" -- as if a distance of 10 trillion kilometers is graspable by our puny simian brains. And when I think about our galaxy, the Milky Way, I know that it's 100,000 light years across, but that's just a number, the reality too huge to truly hold in my mind. But what really gets to me is how many stars are in the galaxy. Astronomers, including me, offhandedly say it has something like 200 ...