Re: Why jumbo shrimp is a variable cost
-Original Message- From: Tom Walker [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] To: [EMAIL PROTECTED] mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] Date: Tuesday, January 06, 1998 7:47 PM Subject: Why jumbo shrimp is a variable cost . Variable cost is an oxymoron. Cost: from the Latin *constare*, "to stand together". As one might suspect, constare is also the etymological root for constant. "Fixed cost" is therefore redundant. Constant may be the oxymoron - at least in the etymological sense of the word, "sharp" and "foolish". Alfred Korzybski, a Polish count delivered papers at U of T in the early thirties that he later developed into a thick book called 'Science and Sanity' and into the foundations of the field of General Semantics. One of his many points was that words are variables. Korzybski said that Newton and Einstein had pointed towards time as a dimension and that everything changes in time. Every moment molecules are moving, even if we don't perceive structural changes until shrimp molecules enter our noses. He said that everything is variable. With time changing, nothing is ever equal to even itself. He also pointed out that many statements resemble propositional functions; that x = y is close to Leafs are great or God is love. If we accept time as a dimension, these types of statements are quite meaningless unless we precisely define what God. at love and what time frame we are referring to. Q: What do you get if you cross an oxymoron with a redundancy? A: A profession. Or perhaps a living language. According to Funks book on etymology, glamour and grammar were the same word back when so few people knew grammar that it was glamorous to read and write. The old English letters apparently played a roll in splitting the word into two. Invert, convert and pervert were once close cousins with innocuous meanings. Today, convert is a word no one wants to hear. And dont forget that fizz was an archaic word for fart before sipping that Coke. But the irony is that _all_ costs are variable to a greater or lesser extent. Everything is provisional. "All that is solid melts into air." Korzybskiian Accountancy? David Woodill Orillia, Ontario P.S. Korzybski might be spelt Korzybsky. I'm not sure.
Re: Why jumbo shrimp is a variable cost
At 04:41 PM 1/6/98 -0800, Tom Walker wrote: As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd stay away. - Hughes Mearns(?) Great poem, Tom! But for 50 years I have heard it attributed to the mythic Scottish rhymer of nonsense verse, McGonigle: As I was walkin' doon the road, I saw a coo, a bull begoad! As I was walkin'up the stair I saw a man that wiznae there. He wiznae there again the-day. I wish tae hell he'd go away. Colin Stark
Why jumbo shrimp is a variable cost
As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd stay away. - Hughes Mearns(?) The question mark is not as to authorship but refers to my uncertainty about the authenticated wording of the poem. I found four slightly different versions in a quick web search. One of the versions contained the line "a little man who wasn't there", which conforms with several pop-culture references to "the little man who wasn't there" (Glen Miller, The Shadow, The Honeymooners). What does all this have to do with the price of rice in China, or for that matter, the variable cost of jumbo shrimp? Lots. Variable cost is an oxymoron. Cost: from the Latin *constare*, "to stand together". As one might suspect, constare is also the etymological root for constant. "Fixed cost" is therefore redundant. Q: What do you get if you cross an oxymoron with a redundancy? A: A profession. The marriage of variable costs and fixed costs gives us accounting. Accounting could be called the practice of viewing variable costs *from the perspective* of fixed costs. The trick is to identify regular behavior patterns (trends) of the variables and to project these regularities as "fixed". The "man who wasn't there" is the eccentric accountant (oeccountant?) who views the fixed costs (capital) from the perspective of the variables (labour). In one sense, this latter practice could be dismissed as impossible, since the variables have to be (at least provisionally) fixed before they can be taken as the vantage point from which to view anything. But the irony is that _all_ costs are variable to a greater or lesser extent. Everything is provisional. "All that is solid melts into air." The great difficulty to turning accountancy on its head is the establishment of an adequate, non-derivative unit of measure. Non-derivative means the Ugly American question, "how much is that in dollars?", is meaningless. That single difficulty has been sufficiently great to squelch the emergence of oeccountancy. As I was going up the stair I met a man who wasn't there. He wasn't there again today. I wish, I wish he'd stay away. Regards, Tom Walker ^^^ Know Ware Communications Vancouver, B.C., CANADA [EMAIL PROTECTED] (604) 688-8296 ^^^ The TimeWork Web: http://www.vcn.bc.ca/timework/
