In the movie Patton, from 1970, there is a scene where the convoy of the whole 3rd Army is held up by a couple of donkeys stuck on a bridge, not wanting to move. Patton gets out of his jeep, takes out his ivory-plated gun and shoots the animals, pushing them in the river. Problem solved. This animal-cruelty story is based on real events.
Later on Patton said that he didn’t like killing the poor beasts but compared to the alternative of his army getting massacred by an air raid, while crossing the bridge, he preferred to do that. Sensible choice, if you think about it. Tough choice, something he didn’t like to do, but he did it, he had to.
We have to shoot our own donkeys every day, we have to take choices we are not necessarily found of but which can save our army. It takes guts and it takes brains to do it.
This story is so powerful because it’s simple – killing a poor creature to save a great number of people. In real life it’s not that simple, is it? Work a couple of hours on a weekend or spend them with your family. Quit your job or linger on. Buy a new car or invest the money. What is the donkey? In every case you have to decide for yourself, but once you find it, shoot the long-eared thing.
This story is also inspired by the book Tuned In, where they speak of the “Shoot the Donkey” series by Expert Access
Have you noticed how close the words start-up and up-start are? Is there a link between them? If not, it should.
Some of the greatest start-up of the past decades have been up-starts. Think Starbucks, Google, Facebook, Twitter, Apple and so on. What do you think? Is there a link between them?
I got the idea by listening to Tuned In, a good book with some interesting ideas. They were taking about the up-start Starbucks.
Posted on August 23, 2009 by Liviu in Geek Culture
I’m a sucker for rock movies -> I like movies and I like music => I like movies with good music in them.
Here is my top 5 movies that have something to do with rock, more or less, that I really dig.
You can probably tell by the first two that I’m a Jack Black fan. The School of Rock is nr. 1 on my list because of the energy Jack shows thought the whole movie.
So here is one of Jack’s songs
I’ve always marveled how cool are some of the decisions captain Picard makes. He is like a walking leadership course. But that’s not all about Star Trek that’s cool. Leaving aside the cool replicators and holodecks and warp speed space ships and the “Engage” and “Make it so” and Data’s cat, I always find something cool in Star Trek.
A few episodes ago it was a phrase that Diana’s mother told Diana that was the cool thing. Now, Councilor Troy is the one person I would not save when something is about to blow up, if I was Cpt. Picard, she’s annoying, but I didn’t know why she irritated me so much. And then her mother illuminated me. This is what she said
“Diana, I love you, but you make everything sound like an epitaph”
How true is that! That’s one of the reasons she annoys me. And then it downed at me yet again. There are people like that that annoy me in real life. Don’t you hate those people who always rain on your parade? I do.
Please stop people, it isn’t funny. We are not all going to die. Cpt. Picard is going to save us, you know that. Now where is that reset button…
