Tweet
stretching (read 'JKD' for 'business').
The Titanic Deck Chair Rearrangement Corporation
(NASDAQ:TDCRC)
August 16, 2001
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Current Subscriber Base: 955
Acting funny, and I don't know why
mailto:tdcrc-subscribe@topica.com
Valued Co-conspirators:
"The business of business is business."
--clocke
Tight tautology, that one. Business' house of cards seems precariously perched on the head of a pin. Which, of course, sets me to wondering how many businesses we can get dancing there.
But then Occam steps up with his cutting blade, and I find myself not meddling in such trivialities.
The dissonance of our world resonates between poles of feigned
certainty and known uncertainty. For in the middle of the deep dark night, we all lie awake, coming face to face with that which is
unfaceable -- and the ground beneath us shakes.
The sun rises us to another day, and we enter alters erected to the gods of commerce (phallic guys, ain't they?). Here is a world of
certainty. A world based upon immutable laws -- supply and demand, scalable economics and the processes of running a business. Etchings carved into ancient tablets of business acumen, brought down from on high by...Adam Smith? Well, someone.
One problem -- the Galileos of our day have gone and defied the one true church of our day.
This article appeared in the NYT recently (apologies for the
"registration required to view" -- they're assholes, what can I do
about it?):
It seems that a couple of our physicist friends were hanging out one night, eating pizza and drinking cheap beer, when Billy Bob (no, not Thornton) suggested they run upstairs and peer through the world's most powerful telescope at some metallic atoms in gas clouds sitting a mere 12 billion light years from earth.
That's when the shit got trippy.
Because what do you suppose our Heisenbergian friends should find, but light being absorbed in ways that defied one of the basic scientific constants of the universe.
Now, suddenly, the whole universe as we know it has been
surreptitiously tilted on its perceptual axis. Scientific constants
might not be so constant. Nope, they too may be a-changing. That
little thing called gravity -- changing. The speed of light? Changing. Can anyone say, "time travel and warp speed?" Star Trek just got do- able. Of course, that isn't the really shocking thing.
As is usually the case, business missed this one.
But they shouldn't. Because if the most basic constants are not
constant, why should anyone believe that anything *is* constant. Like, shit I dunno, supply and demand curves. That whole tautology ("Johnny, that's just the way business gets done") just went to hell in a physicist's handbasket.
Heraclitus, it seems, was right. And to think, we wasted 8000 years figuring *that* one out.
To boot, we are left wondering what we are left wondering with.
Perception spins our quarks, gluons and neutrinos into some Hendrixian haze. Indeed, our thoughts seem capable of disturbing the position and velocity of those universal building blocks. And I can hear Locke laughing at these mad scientists: "For Christ's sake, we're gonna ram these particles together in our new super accelerator -- now, SHHH! don't anybody think anything."
In such clouds of unknowing, I'm sure you're now hoping there *is* a point. Oh ye of little faith...
The point:
Saying "the only constant is change" is the Greek-mouthing of a deeper truth -- the constants change, but the story remains. Yes, Led Zeppelin knew of that of which they spoke.
Our human need to explain the changing abyss of our dark night
awakenings -- that is the constant.
To infinity and beyond,
eric
===
Eric Norlin
CEO, TDCRC
The Titanic Deck Chair Rearrangement Corporation
(NASDAQ:TDCRC)
August 16, 2001
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Current Subscriber Base: 955
Acting funny, and I don't know why
mailto:tdcrc-subscribe@topica.com
Valued Co-conspirators:
"The business of business is business."
--clocke
Tight tautology, that one. Business' house of cards seems precariously perched on the head of a pin. Which, of course, sets me to wondering how many businesses we can get dancing there.
But then Occam steps up with his cutting blade, and I find myself not meddling in such trivialities.
The dissonance of our world resonates between poles of feigned
certainty and known uncertainty. For in the middle of the deep dark night, we all lie awake, coming face to face with that which is
unfaceable -- and the ground beneath us shakes.
The sun rises us to another day, and we enter alters erected to the gods of commerce (phallic guys, ain't they?). Here is a world of
certainty. A world based upon immutable laws -- supply and demand, scalable economics and the processes of running a business. Etchings carved into ancient tablets of business acumen, brought down from on high by...Adam Smith? Well, someone.
One problem -- the Galileos of our day have gone and defied the one true church of our day.
This article appeared in the NYT recently (apologies for the
"registration required to view" -- they're assholes, what can I do
about it?):
It seems that a couple of our physicist friends were hanging out one night, eating pizza and drinking cheap beer, when Billy Bob (no, not Thornton) suggested they run upstairs and peer through the world's most powerful telescope at some metallic atoms in gas clouds sitting a mere 12 billion light years from earth.
That's when the shit got trippy.
Because what do you suppose our Heisenbergian friends should find, but light being absorbed in ways that defied one of the basic scientific constants of the universe.
Now, suddenly, the whole universe as we know it has been
surreptitiously tilted on its perceptual axis. Scientific constants
might not be so constant. Nope, they too may be a-changing. That
little thing called gravity -- changing. The speed of light? Changing. Can anyone say, "time travel and warp speed?" Star Trek just got do- able. Of course, that isn't the really shocking thing.
As is usually the case, business missed this one.
But they shouldn't. Because if the most basic constants are not
constant, why should anyone believe that anything *is* constant. Like, shit I dunno, supply and demand curves. That whole tautology ("Johnny, that's just the way business gets done") just went to hell in a physicist's handbasket.
Heraclitus, it seems, was right. And to think, we wasted 8000 years figuring *that* one out.
To boot, we are left wondering what we are left wondering with.
Perception spins our quarks, gluons and neutrinos into some Hendrixian haze. Indeed, our thoughts seem capable of disturbing the position and velocity of those universal building blocks. And I can hear Locke laughing at these mad scientists: "For Christ's sake, we're gonna ram these particles together in our new super accelerator -- now, SHHH! don't anybody think anything."
In such clouds of unknowing, I'm sure you're now hoping there *is* a point. Oh ye of little faith...
The point:
Saying "the only constant is change" is the Greek-mouthing of a deeper truth -- the constants change, but the story remains. Yes, Led Zeppelin knew of that of which they spoke.
Our human need to explain the changing abyss of our dark night
awakenings -- that is the constant.
To infinity and beyond,
eric
===
Eric Norlin
CEO, TDCRC
Comment