During World War II, Britains finance minister recommended to Winston Churchill that they cut arts funding in order to better support the war effort. Churchills reply was, “Then what are we fighting for?”

via Brendan McMahon: Military Funding vs. Funding for the Arts: What Does the Difference Say About American Values?.

GrowLab has announced it’s newest crop of companies and there are some great additions this year.  The Sun writes:

The companies all focus on the fast growing digital economy, including entertainment Cinecoup, food Food.ee, social gaming BlueBat Games, web advertising Skyscrpr and shopping Wantering.Food.ee, for example, is a service offering office delivery of food — including advance ordering and a rewards program. The company is a spinoff of Invoke Media, the maker of HootSuite, one of Canada’s hottest Internet/mobile service properties.Cinecoup, which is looking to transform the financing and distribution of low-budget feature films, is a project of entertainment media entrepreneur J Joly, founder of social gaming platform dimeRocker.

via GrowLab seeks fast launch with 2012 cohort.

I’m looking forward to seeing what these new startups look like after the process. Go GrowLab!

I Bet Banksy Would Hate The Show Mad Men.

A good piece in The Observer today on the art scene in Vancouver.  Why is nobody else in the city writing about this?  They begin with this ominous opening:

Underneath the vibrant, diverse surface of a thriving arts and culture scene, Vancouver faces a loss of its brightest painters, dancers, designers, makers and performers to greener pastures. VO investigates how rising real estate prices are crunching our citys artists.

Read the rest here:

Vancouvers arts and culture bleeding out in “steady migration”, warn city creatives | The Vancouver Observer.

Startups are hard, but not because entrepreneurs don’t have an appetite for hard work.  Rather, it’s the constant rejection, the inability to convince people of your glorious vision, and the ever present threat of failure that make pushing forward seem like reckless insanity.  The secret to startup success is in embracing that insanity.

I look back to opening the first restaurant, at a time when I had no money, no network, a few close friends, and a cat named Monty, so named for his awkward resemblance to one Mr. Burns.  He wouldn’t win any beauty contests, but he had the kind of human personality to make you think twice about the possibility of reincarnation.  Opening day of the restaurant, after pulling a complete 30 hour work day to get it open, Monty got hit by a bus.

The rest of Sean’s piece is here.  It’s a great read:

The Hunger Games « don’t follow the herd.

Another sad day in music today:

Lloyd Brevett, the upright bass player and founding member of the seminal Jamaican ska group The Skatalites, died this morning at Andrews Memorial Hospital in St. Andrew, Jamaica where he was being treated following a stroke and a series of seizures. He was 80. The Skatalites were the preeminent collective in popularizing ska, an early 60s creation melding R&B, jazz, calypso and Cuban musical influences, and characterized by its distinctive emphasis on the after beat, as opposed to the down beat of R&B.

via Skatalites Bassist Lloyd Brevett Dead at 80 | Billboard.com.