#systems

Bricks are being used by companies as their internal controls. There is zero assurance that the financial reports are correct but that’s what comforts the accountants. ↗

— Amy Summers

#accounting #brick-and-blanket-iq-test #brick-and-blanket-responses #brick-and-blanket-test #brick-and-blanket-uses

Pick up a pinecone and count the spiral rows of scales. You may find eight spirals winding up to the left and 13 spirals winding up to the right, or 13 left and 21 right spirals, or other pairs of numbers. The striking fact is that these pairs of numbers are adjacent numbers in the famous Fibonacci series: 1, 1, 2, 3, 5, 8, 13, 21... Here, each term is the sum of the previous two terms. The phenomenon is well known and called phyllotaxis. Many are the efforts of biologists to understand why pinecones, sunflowers, and many other plants exhibit this remarkable pattern. Organisms do the strangest things, but all these odd things need not reflect selection or historical accident. Some of the best efforts to understand phyllotaxis appeal to a form of self-organization. Paul Green, at Stanford, has argued persuasively that the Fibonacci series is just what one would expects as the simplest self-repeating pattern that can be generated by the particular growth processes in the growing tips of the tissues that form sunflowers, pinecones, and so forth. Like a snowflake and its sixfold symmetry, the pinecone and its phyllotaxis may be part of order for free ↗

— Stuart A. Kauffman

#emergence #science #systems #science

We preserve the status quo, preserve existing systems. ↗

— Julie Bishop

#preserve #quo #status #status quo #systems

Well what would happen is that if Greece defaulted and couldn't pay its debts, all the Greek bonds that are held in other banking systems across Western Europe would suddenly have no value. You could as a knock-on effect create a banking crisis in Western Europe. ↗

— John Major

#banking #bonds #could #create #crisis

From an early age I didn't buy into the value systems of working hard in a nine-to-five job. I thought creativity, friendship and loyalty and pushing the boundaries of what was acceptable was much more interesting. ↗

— Adam Clayton

#age #boundaries #buy #creativity #early

Unauthorized access to computer systems is already a serious crime in a few states and is currently being addressed in many more state legislatures as well as Congress. ↗

— Ken Thompson

#addressed #already #being #computer #congress

The environmental crisis arises from a fundamental fault: our systems of production - in industry, agriculture, energy and transportation - essential as they are, make people sick and die. ↗

— Barry Commoner

#arises #crisis #die #energy #environmental

What is needed now is a transformation of the major systems of production more profound than even the sweeping post-World War II changes in production technology. ↗

— Barry Commoner

#even #ii #major #more #needed

A cardinal principle of Total Quality escapes too many managers: you cannot continuously improve interdependent systems and processes until you progressively perfect interdependent, interpersonal relationships. ↗

— Stephen Covey

#cannot #cardinal #continuously #escapes #improve

In the financial system we have today, with less risk concentrated in banks, the probability of systemic financial crises may be lower than in traditional bank-centered financial systems. ↗

— Timothy Geithner

#concentrated #crises #financial #financial crises #financial system