Roger Strukhoff

The word "now" defines something that both exists perpetually and doesn't exist at all. We live in the eternal present, with "now" as the cleaving point between past and present.

So if someone tells you to do something "now," well, you won't be able to get it done until a bit later (at the earliest), although when you are done you will be able to say it is finished "now."

Mathematicians invented the concept of a limit to get around a paradox: you can measure our approach to something in terms of a percentage (I'm halfway there), but in doing so you will never reach the goal (you can always measure halfway there, down to infinitesimal numbers). Thus, the limit was create (Eureka, I am there now!), so that Newton and Leibniz could get on with the business of creating the calculus.

A similar paradox exists with the concept of "now." You can always measure where you are at, or were at a few seconds, nanoseconds, or years ago, but you can't observe it anymore, because it's no longer now. This is more in line with Heisenberg's uncertainty principle, which observes that can measure or observe a particle if you want, but you can't do both accurately.

Most people, of course, don't waste their time thinking about "the paradox of now," but instead employ what I like to call "the power of now" to describe what's going on, whether in entertainment, business, sports, etc. ad infinitum.

So it's amusing to see, for example, that Fox News has been using NOW as part of its ongoing news coverage, and now (so to speak) as a blog:
http://www.foxnews.com/happeningnow/

Fox's Salt Lake City station has incorporated it into its URL:
http://www.fox13now.com/

As has Fox's station in Cape Coral, Florida
http://www.fox4now.com/

And ABC has been smitten by the power of NOW:
http://abcnews.go.com/abcnewsnow/

I'm sure there are, by now, many others.

If you want to be more salacious, visit some of the versions of NOW Magazine scattered throughout the world:
http://www.nowtoronto.com/ (NSFW!)

http://www.nowmagazine.co.uk/ (marginally SFW!)

Or how about this one? (I'm sure the Chinese government is thrilled with all the coverage of the Dalai Lama!)
http://www.chinanowmag.com/chinanow.htm

Here's a NOW Magazine with a healthy-size URL from an oddly-named school in Texas.

Then there's the NOW Magazine I helped create when I worked for TIBCO. But it seems to have stopped printing this magazine, and its website hasn't been updated in two years hehe. And wow, I notice I'm still listed there with that two-year-old copy, even though I haven't worked for TIBCO in months.

I'd fire off a cease-and-desist letter if I thought it hurt my image or was somehow competing with what I'm doing now :-)

But what I'm doing now is something far different. I'm not with TIBCO and generally don't write about the company. I do like to write about people throughout the world who are trying to create a better standard of living through job development and creation of a global services chain. You can scroll through my blog to find some of my more recent, interesting interviews.

Enjoy! That's all for NOW!

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