escape velocity

Q. I admit it: I’m scared. I can’t afford to quit my current job. Is this a sign that I don’t have what it takes to succeed? Am I not truly committed?
A. You should be scared. If you aren’t scared, something is wrong with you. Your fears are not a sign that you don’t have the right stuff. In the beginning, every entrepreneur is scared. It’s just that some deceive themselves about it, and others don’t. You can reduce these fears by diving into the business and making a little progress every day. One day you’ll wake up and you won’t be afraid anymore—or at least you’ll have a whole new set of fears. No matter what, never admit that you’re scared to other employees. A CEO can never have a bad day. But don’t go overboard, either, and act as if you have no concerns, because then they will know you’re scared stiff.

The European Commission is supporting European cinema with a Euro 755 million fund (around INR 4000 Crores) that would be allocated towards pre-production and post-production activities over the next seven years.

I guess we can expect to see a lot more quality cinema over the next few years.

The EC also maintains a profile on Youtube with a lot more videos at http://www.youtube.com/user/eutube

The following video is dedicated to
1. Those of you who got rich enough in the last 5 years to afford yourselves a decent car, wishing you really live long enough to see your loved ones live happily ever after.

2. Those of you brats, who zip around town in cars bought with you dad’s black money, do bother, before divine intervention takes charge.

3. Insecure teenage boys who zip around in cheap red and yellow B-grade Asian sports cars, with utter disregard to others on the road.

Thank you Evelin/Uku for the link. The chances are never worth it.

While going through the site I mentioned about in my earlier post, I found a link to the blog of Nina Paley, an artist. What caught my eye was a project she is currently working upon. I thought I’d post about it as well.

For starters, she calls it Sitayana. I never thought about it, but I guess, it’s because the way we are all conditioned to accept a few paradigms. If the story of Rama and Sita is as much about him as it is about her, why is it Ramayana! Why not Sitayana?

It’s cool to see someone take the subject and present it with a fresh view point. As a matter of fact, Nina explains how she found ‘Sita’ potrayed as weak and pathetic throughout the epic. Eventually she explains how she came about creating “The Sitayana” (Story of Sita), where Sita does not jump into the Earth in the end, but leaves Rama to join a progressive agricultural collective. I would suggest reading more about her project, her inspirations and viewpoints at www.ninapaley.com . I couldn’t resist lifting the below image. There’s plenty more where this came from.

On a lighter note, here’s yet another (crazy?) ‘movement’ that seems to have a solution to protect our planet. It’s called the ‘Voluntary Human Extinction Movement‘.

Picture Credit: Nina Paley

I am not kidding! And, no marks for guessing what their ideology is. In their own words…

We’re not just a bunch of misanthropes and anti-social, Malthusian misfits, taking morbid delight whenever disaster strikes humans. Nothing could be farther from the truth. Voluntary human extinction is the humanitarian alternative to human disasters.

…..the hopeful alternative to the extinction of millions of species of plants and animals is the voluntary extinction of one species: Homosapiens… us. Each time another one of us decides to not add another one of us to the burgeoning billions already squatting on this ravaged planet, another ray of hope shines through the gloom….

Now, these guys seem to have figured it all out eh! I’ve got a better idea. Let’s fuel the imagination of some rich Republican industrialists in the US, and sell them ‘Options’ to Mars. I guess building residential colonies on Mars would be far more rewarding to them than scheming to securing construction projects and energy access in the Middle East. Bring in a few French, British and Russians, and viola, you’d have killed two birds at one shot. You’d immediately have fewer conflicts, less global domination politics, and lesser exploitation of this planet. No more would white men feel the burden that Kipling so passionately wrote about.

Imagine what else this would do. Oil prices would come down, so would oil cartels, Middle-Eastern kingdoms will start to think about building their nations and people, or return to days they lived in the deserts as Bedouins, instead of living on an overdraft of life from this planet.

You do not need to end human breeding. The answer is ‘Mars’.

Riddiculous eh! Well, no more than us believing that ‘all’ is ‘well’ around us today.