If you believe the reports of cultured travelers, the Parthenon in Athens or, perhaps, a vantage point overlooking the Grand Canyon are the prime real estate for having deep revelations about Nature and Humanity.

I myself, however, discovered a hidden human truth at the College of the Atlantic, in Bar Harbor, Maine. But it was not in the college brochure, tantalizing as it was with its smorgasbord of classes such as "Colonialism and Gender in the Yucatan." It was at the children's touch tank in the Museum of Natural History, located on the college grounds.

My revelation centered around the wily sea-peach... a close relative of the equally wily sea-potato and sea-grape. As the enthusiastic grad student and tankmaster explained to my kids, out of all the assorted maritime animals in the tank (mostly crabs, snails and starfish), this somewhat fuzzy little creature is actually the closest relative to humans and other vertebrates: after all, it boasted a rudimentary central nervous system, an eye, and a sense of smell.

But wait. There's more. This creature degenerates into a fuzzy blob after a brief and carefree fling in adolescence. As it matures, it latches on to a rock or pebble. Its eye dims and vanishes. Its sense of smell evaporates. Its notochord and central nervous system wither and disappear. And to add insult to injury, its mouth migrates into rather uncomfortable proximity to its rear end.

I don't know about you, but that same process seems to have occurred in more than half the people of my high school class. And half of the college friends I've stayed in touch with have experienced similar symptoms. And if I look at the gaggle of CNN market analysts and fund managers — even some former colleagues who worked for and with me over the years — I sometimes think I can sense a sea-peach-like fuzziness overtaking their features.

In fact, I've come to realize that this process of degeneration appears most frequently in the realm of ideas. At a certain point in life, the human mind has a propensity to gradually shut itself off from outside stimuli. It creates a world of its own, happily content and seemingly coherent in itself.

Some of these smaller, more individualistic "virtual realities" break down after a few years... usually when the underlying causal strings collapse under their own weight and intricacy. This was the case with the Y2K doomsday scenarios, and the hoarse croaking of the gurus and prophets who've been clamoring for the last decade that a new Depression is just around the corner.

Others are wedded to just the opposite view, with a firm belief that the Internet and New Economy will provide an unchallenged economic boom for years to come.

At Taipan, we're trying to fight the Sea-Peach Syndrome wherever we encounter it. That means keeping in touch with what is really going on in the markets and on the streets. And it means supplementing all our formal research with very unorthodox sources and indicators that frequently don't even cause a blip on the screens of mainstream analysts.

And the indicators are becoming more obvious. Here's a couple that have set off alerts in my brain:

• After a 30%+ increase in real estate prices in the Baltimore-Washington metropolitan area, a lot of "For Sale" signs are now looking quite weathered. "Just Reduced" flags are decorating 20% of real estate ads...

• At peak tourist season, there were "Vacancy" signs up in 50% of the B&Bs, motels, and hotels, not only along the routes leading to the East Coast's most popular vacation destinations... but in the very heart of places such as Freeport and Bar Harbor, Maine. Overstaffed restaurants were more than half empty even at 7:30 PM on a Friday night...

• In the Internet economy, web businesses based on advertising revenues are sitting on huge, engorged inventories of advertising space: Where customers were bidding up prices as recently as April, some companies now are trying to peddle dead inventory at yard sale rates, just to have any sales to show on their spreadsheets. The reason: responses to online advertising have dropped by over 90% in many cases. This spells trouble for 1Q 2001 earnings, as most contracts run out by the end of the calendar year...

In short, I believe we may be in for a few rough spots in the months ahead. But I also believe that Taipan's opportunistic approach to seeking out vehicles to prosperity will help us weather whatever is ahead. When fads fade and hype dies down, there's just no substitute for skill.

Cordially yours,

J. Christoph Amberger
Publisher, Taipan

P.S. We have now completed our lifestyle and health web resource at www.247you.com. And just in time, 247you.com's editorial director, Mark Wiley, is able to report a few impressive breakthroughs: The collaborator on his Qigong book, Master Hou, has become the subject of U.S. and Japanese television documentaries, as well as receiving the personal endorsement of Hollywood heavyweight Steven Seagal. As a Taipan member, you have unrestricted access to all the hundreds of articles on this site!