Why Terrapin? What does the turtle reference mean?
In Steven Hawking’s book A Brief History of Time, there is an interesting story on the first page. A colleague of Hawking’s had just finished a presentation on astronomy at a local university. He had covered such diverse topics as stellar evolution, the mechanics of the solar system, etc. When he was done, he asked for questions. An elderly woman stood and said “Well, I think you have it all wrong! You are up there declaring that the earth is rotating around the sun. That’s not true! In fact, the earth is sitting on top of a giant stack of turtles!” Not yet completely flustered, the astronomer attempted a response: “Ma’am, that is absurd! After all, what are the turtles themselves standing on?” She replied “Young man, you do not understand. It’s turtles all the way down!” We have always thought that was a clever story, and over time it evolved into a metaphor for the difficulties that development organizations are facing. Our focus is always on finding the ‘bottom turtle’, which repres
