Hit by Apple

I recently received this fable in my inbox. If you know its original source, please let me know . If you have difficulty understanding the current world financial situation, the following should help clear matters… Once upon a time in a village in India, a man announced to the villagers that he would buy monkeys for $10. The villagers seeing there were many monkeys around, went out to the forest and started catching them. The man bought thousands at $10, but, as the supply started to diminish, the villagers stopped their efforts. The man further announced that he would now buy at $20. This renewed the efforts of the villagers and they started catching monkeys again.

Watch Robert Thompson talk about changing an organization by setting off a small precedent: http://www.leaderinsideout.com/videos/human-time-clock.html Reminds me of throwing one small pebble down the hill that kicks off another one, and another one, and before you know it - you've got a whole mountain slide, an avalanche going on! [techtags: leadership, avalanche, Robert Thompson]

For years I've been fascinated by the ingenuity of rocket scientists and space navigators who came up with a brilliant idea that made long-distance interplanetary travel possible. For the benefit of the straight shooters, it is virtually impossible to deliver a space craft on chemical fuel alone anywhere further than Jupiter, and even that is a great challenge. That is, if you point your rocket right at the target and shoot - like they do in the military. Burn your fuel, accelerate that baby to the limit, and watch it fall short of the target. Such is physics. But these guys found a way out - swing by one of the planets nearby, and steal some of its energy! That's how they shot Voyagers way out of the Solar System. That's also how they saved the Galileo mission - by getting the spacecraft first to Venus (who would have thought!), then back to Earth, and even that was not enough - a couple of years later it fell right back towards the Mother Earth, swinging by a hair from it