3 March 2005

After two different courses of antibiotics, I have the mental acuity of a three-toed sloth on Prozac.

As a result, I don�t feel awfully insightful today. So, I�m digging into one of my old favourites, A Short History of Nearly Everything by Bill Bryson and letting his words stretch you out of your comfort zone. At the most you'll be moved to action and at the least, you�ll have some interesting dinner conversation at your next get-together.  Enjoy.

On Extinction (pg 302 - 303)

The earth has seen five major extinction episodes in its time � the Ordovician, Devonian, Permian, Tiassic and Cretaceous. The Ordovician (440 million years ago) and the Devonian (365 million) each wiped out about 80 � 85 percent of species. The Triassic (210 million years ago) and the Cretaceous (65 million years) each wiped out 70-75 percent of species. But the real whopper was the Permian extinction of about 245 million years ago, which raised the curtain on the long age of the dinosaurs. In the Permian, at least 95 percent of animals known from the fossil record checked out, never to return.

Extinction is always bad news for the victims, of course, but it appears to be a good thing for a dynamic planet. Crises in the Earth�s history are invariably associated with dramatic leaps afterwards.

So what? According to Ian Tattersal of the American Museum of Natural History, "The alternative to extinction is stagnation � and stagnation is seldom a good thing in any realm."

So perhaps we need to do a mental health check and �make extinct� those behaviours and habits that are holding us back from true success.

And we have to do it at the speed of light (300 000 km per second) because everything is changing rapidly.

Remember that change is not a choice.

Or as W Edwards Deming put it � Change is not mandatory; neither is survival. (Thanks for this quote Erich).

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