The impending Age Of Abundance was prophecied in the scriptures thousands of years ago.
Showing posts with label Al Pacino. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Al Pacino. Show all posts
Monday, September 07, 2015
Sunday, December 21, 2014
Saturday, June 04, 2011
Friday, May 13, 2011
Lost A Whole Bunch Of Blog Posts
Nope, it was way more than one.
And Blogger Is Back
The Mad Dash To Ubiquity
Two Models Better Than Five
Someone From Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Now Follows Me On Tumblr
Two Deaths: Coincidence
I just did a Google search on "paramendra the mad dash to ubiquity" hoping maybe the lost posts have been saved by Google in cache form. And all my other posts that were also lost showed up in the search results. This reminds me of the "balloon people" rant by Al Pacino in the movie Heat.
And now YouTube is down. What up, Google? Et tu? Google found out I was about to embed that clip from Heat.
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
Subscription Business Models For Mindfood
Image via CrunchBaseMindfood described as books, movies and music. Better than subscription is ad supported, but subscription is also pretty good. You pay a monthly fee and you get to access all books, movies and music ever created, being created. The movie people don't get this. They are like, oh no, we have to punish you by a few weeks if you are not going to show up at the theater. The music people get it a little. They are like, if you are going to get the music for free anyways, we are going to make you pay for live concerts. And the movie people are like, we can't get Brad Pitt show up at every movie theater. That's the whole point, that he can't be everywhere. Al Pacino does some Broadway stuff. But that is one location.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
I Must Really Like Movies
Super Bowl reminded me of the Al Pacino movie Any Given Sunday. Valentine's Day reminded me of the movie The English Patient. I must really like movies.
These two are two of the very best movies out there.
The English Patient stands out. It is one of the very best movies in its genre, if not the best. There are a few scenes - one in particular, the thimble scene - that make me cry. The opening act is a class act. Ugh, that music.
The EnglishPatient
Looking For A Super Bowl Watch Party To Go To
These two are two of the very best movies out there.
The English Patient stands out. It is one of the very best movies in its genre, if not the best. There are a few scenes - one in particular, the thimble scene - that make me cry. The opening act is a class act. Ugh, that music.
The EnglishPatient
Looking For A Super Bowl Watch Party To Go To
Thursday, February 03, 2011
Looking For A Super Bowl Watch Party To Go To
Image via WikipediaI am not all that into football. I am more a World Cup Soccer kind of guy. I don't even know who is playing who on Sunday. But I end up liking the commercials. And I am on a lookout for a Super Bowl Watch Party to go to. Almost every thing I know about football comes from one Al Pacino movie. I get it. Alright, I get it.
Thursday, July 08, 2010
Parenting
I am supposed to be working on a few blog posts (To Iran, With Love (1)) for two of my favorite people in the tech community - Fred Wilson and Brad Feld - but I find my ways to procrastinate. I found myself on my Tumblr dashboard instead. Mostly I reblog, that is what I do on Tumblr. The editor in me comes out. So - hint, hint - I am a very good person to follow on Tumblr. Following me is like following 90 people minus the pain. And these 90 people are mostly active members of the tech community. So. Follow me, like Al Pacino says right before the best scene in my favorite movie Heat.
I came across an interesting post by KirkLove, on parenting. No, I don't know him, although he is a New Yorker. You are not supposed to know people on Tumblr. I personally know very few of the 90 plus people I follow on Tumblr.
But then I have never been a parent myself, although I grew up in a large, extended family environment - at the peak, I think perhaps four couples under one roof in a big house - and saw a l-o-t of parenting happen. That makes me an authority of sorts, I think. And that is not even counting the regular larger extended family get togethers - festivals, three day weddings - when you would have much noise and kids running all over the place.
New York Magazine: Why Parents Hate Parenting?
I once read about an article in some kind of an anthropology journal that suggested some cultures in Africa deal with adolescence way better than the US society does. There is something called emotional infrastructure.
I came across an interesting post by KirkLove, on parenting. No, I don't know him, although he is a New Yorker. You are not supposed to know people on Tumblr. I personally know very few of the 90 plus people I follow on Tumblr.
But then I have never been a parent myself, although I grew up in a large, extended family environment - at the peak, I think perhaps four couples under one roof in a big house - and saw a l-o-t of parenting happen. That makes me an authority of sorts, I think. And that is not even counting the regular larger extended family get togethers - festivals, three day weddings - when you would have much noise and kids running all over the place.
New York Magazine: Why Parents Hate Parenting?
Most people assume that having children will make them happier. Yet a wide variety of academic research shows that parents are not happier than their childless peers, and in many cases are less so. This finding is surprisingly consistent, showing up across a range of disciplines. ........ five ruthless words: “Economically worthless but emotionally priceless.” ...... . “I don’t mean to idealize the lives of the Namibian women,” she says. “But it was hard not to notice how calm they were. They were beading their children’s ankles and decorating them with sienna, clearly enjoying just sitting and playing with them, and we’re here often thinking of all of this stuff as labor.” ...... especially true in middle- and upper-income families, which are far more apt than their working-class counterparts to see their children as projects to be perfected. (Children of women with bachelor degrees spend almost five hours on “organized activities” per week, as opposed to children of high-school dropouts, who spend two. ...... “Middle-class parents spend much more time talking to children, answering questions with questions, and treating each child’s thought as a special contribution. And this is very tiring work.” ....... According to Changing Rhythms of American Family Life—a compendium of data porn about time use and family statistics .......all parents spend more time today with their children than they did in 1975, including mothers, in spite of the great rush of women into the American workforce. ...... the abundance of choices—whether to have kids, when, how many—may be one of the reasons parents are less happy. ...... parents’ dissatisfaction only grew the more money they had, even though they had the purchasing power to buy more child care ..... “They’re a huge source of joy, but they turn every other source of joy to shit.” ...... When people wait to have children, they’re also bringing different sensibilities to the enterprise. They’ve spent their adult lives as professionals, believing there’s a right way and a wrong way of doing things; now they’re applying the same logic to the family-expansion business, and they’re surrounded by a marketplace that only affirms and reinforces this idea. ....... There was this idea we had about how things were supposed to be: The family should be dot dot dot, the man should be dot dot dot the woman should be dot dot dot.” ....... This is another brutal reality about children: They expose the gulf between our fantasies about family and its spikier realities. ....... One of the reasons I love being with my wife is because I love the family we have.” ....... the war zone of adolescence ..... “Teenagers can be casually brutal.” ...... is the amount of time married parents spend alone together each week: Nine hours today versus twelve in 1975. ...... They were exhausted and staring at the television.” ..... Children may provide unrivaled moments of joy. But they also provide unrivaled moments of frustration, tedium, anxiety, heartbreak. ...... the study sought to understand not just the moment-to-moment moods of its participants, but more existential matters, like how connected they felt, and how motivated, and how much despair they were in (as opposed to how much stress they were under): Do you not feel like eating? Do you feel like you can’t shake the blues? Do you feel lonely? Like you can’t get going? Parents, who live in a clamorous, perpetual-forward-motion machine almost all of the time, seemed to have different answers than their childless cohorts. ......... The least depressed parents are those whose underage children are in the house, and the most are those whose aren’t. ..... Technically, if parenting makes you unhappy, you should feel better if you’re spared the task of doing it. But if happiness is measured by our own sense of agency and meaning, then noncustodial parents lose. They’re robbed of something that gives purpose and reward. ..... Not one told him of regretting having children, but ten told him they regretted not having a family.Thoughts? Parenting is work. Relationship is work. Marriage is work. You might as well skip out on the relationship too and go straight to watching more TV.
I once read about an article in some kind of an anthropology journal that suggested some cultures in Africa deal with adolescence way better than the US society does. There is something called emotional infrastructure.
Saturday, March 06, 2010
Fred Wilson's Insight
At the end of his talk Fred Wilson says, "I think that was about 15 minutes, and now I will take questions." That so impressed me. Because that was exactly 15 minutes. How did he do that? I was watching him, he was not looking at his watch. This guy obviously has a black belt
in pitching. His body
has become a clock. Okay, this clip 10 is huge. "Why would you want to live in an office park and suburbia when you are 21 years old when you could be living in Williamsburg?" I love this city, so does Fred Wilson. He loves it because he has called this city home a long time. (Did he grow up here?) I love it because this is the first hometown
I ever had. I have a refugee's love for the city. I think this city needs to go head to head with Silicon Valley. Fred shares that thought. I dig that. Silicon Valley
is the big, old established company. New York City is the startup. "The same qualities that make you a great entrepreneur
make you a terrible manager." I so buy into that. Visionary startup people need good old school COOs. Keep the trains running on time while I go shake things up. Fred Wilson
is a VC like Al Pacino is an actor. This guy was born to be a VC. You will not see this guy retire for a long, long time because he loves his work so much. I don't see Fred Wilson
invest in my company, not now, not in any of my future rounds. He does what he calls "web services." That is his "domain expertise," his phrase. I make it very clear I am not in the dot com (
Dot.con: How America Lost Its Mind and Money in the Internet Era
) space, at least that is not my step one, or two, and those two steps are a 10 year run easy. There we part. But that at some level makes it even more interesting for me to follow him online. I am not someone waiting in the wings thinking only if he knew me well enough, or he liked me enough, he would put his money down on my venture. The conclusion that he is not going to ride my boat gives me a certain detachment, a certain objectivity to enjoying him. Makes me more carefree. His is my favorite solo blog. The guy is an avid user of many of the products of his portfolio
companies. Like Dennis Crowley said some place when he was asked why he let Fred invest in his company. "Fred's entire family is on FourSquare!"Like I said to the First Round Capital guy Charlie the other day over email, I have heard a lot of good buzz about you and your firm, that you do early stage very good, what I have not figured out yet is if you are stuck in the dot com
space.Fred Wilson: VC
Fred Wilson: A VC
Fred Wilson
Fred says he is in the "web services" domain, but he also bemoans the fact that New York City has not, has not shown any signs of producing a 50 billion dollar company. A company that is worth 500 million is a successful, wonderful company, but it is small. At 10 billion you are mid size. 50 to 200 billion is big. Fred's portfolio is crowded/littered with small to mid size promises. My company is going to be big. (An Immigrant Story For Brad Feld) In my book you can't stick to the dot com space and in the same breath bemoan not seeing any big promise on the horizon. Those two thought trains don't go together. I see a train wreck. So at some level I do feel like maybe I am not totally done with the guy yet. I should not write him off for me completely.
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