Personal Stuff

Here are some posts drawing from personal anecdotes. (If nothing else, read the first one--it's worthwhile.)

Heracles' Marathon How do I fly to Europe with an expired passport?

A Sky Spectacle. Flying over an electrical storm.

The Sinful Joy of Wet Shaving Once you try it, you'll never go back...

Escape to Maui

A short documentary about a 10-year-old's dreams.

A Field Trip to 1906

What my son and I learned from dropping off the grid.

Who Will Buy?  My son's barbershop quartet croons about the liquidity crisis.

A Benign Addiction Read about the compulsion that gets me out of the house at 2AM.

Freshman Week My most embarrassing moment.

Hospital Corners A psalm to the Flying Spaghetti Monster.





Separation Anxiety Someone can't handle summer camp...

It's a Wonderful Life George Bailey comes to life in a real world story.

Favorite Gadget Yes, I carry a purse.

Grammar Nerds Correcting hyper-correction.

Peace Rally Triggers Memory The 10 year anniversary of an assassination.

More personal stuff from the archives:

Limits of Rationality My smarty pants college roommate proves I'm irrational.

How I Lost 160 Pounds An adventure in zero-gravity.

Too Many Security Startups? I turn to crime to make a point...

Saving Serendipity Facing information overload, I need my local bookstore.

And a Child Shall Lead Them The mayor loses to a 4-year-old.

Arnold's Angels A good Samaritan rescues me by the side of the road.

Go-Ogle! Do no evil?

I Want a DUMP button! Notes from Washington DC.

Accidental Philanthropy A lucky break of the green for my favorite charities.

Stroll Down Wisteria Lane The real thing!

The Week in Mumbai A bumpy ride through India.

Snoopy Cowan: 1990-2006 Goodbye, my friend.

Clear the Way for those Rabbis! Turns out my Zeyde was an activist!

High Tech Marital Aid Online romance goes too far.

Slow News Day at WSJ This is what happens when you go to ONE party....

Do No Weevil Does Google Earth need a new name?

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Startup Stuff For Entrepreneurs

Here are articles I have written of interest to entrepreneurs.


Sept 7. 2005
Best Startup Advice I Have
Remember Mark Leslie's advice to plan for the Sales Learning Curve.



January 23, 2006
Practicing the Art of Pitchcraft
Crafting an effective elevator pitch for your startup.

Nov. 17, 2005
How to NOT Write a Business Plan
Entrepreneurs often ask me for a sample business plan they can use as a model for their fundraising efforts. They are surprised when I send them a powerpoint file.


August 23, 2008
My Internet Law
The time and money required to develop a secure, scalable e-commerce application drops in half every 18 months.

Escape to Maui

An original, short film documents the hope, critical thinking and determination of a 10-year-old entrepreneur.

July 11, 2005
Thank You, Henry Phipps
My first blog post ever, and how I got here.




November 26, 2006
Bubble Memory
Authentic conversation from 1998, when Silicon Valley service providers were starved for talent.




Aug. 12, 2005
Road Map Investing
A more proactive approach to venture capital that's a little harder to screw up.




Jan. 1, 2006
Control Roulette: A Bet on Red or Black
Crafting the right board of directors has nothing to do with legal structure, and everything to do with getting the right people in the room.







Nov. 12, 2006
Get Big Cheap
"Get Big Fast" didn't work so well, so here's my new motto.




Dec 1, 2005
The Secret of Success
According to one venture capital legend, what is the most common trait of successful investors?



Dec. 11, 2005
Limits of Rationality: Beware the Paralimbic Cortex
Harvard economist proves there is value to you in sharing control of your own board.





Sep 21, 2006
Finding Vimo
Naming internet startups is hard.

July 19, 2007
Three Sealed Envelopes
Serial CEO leaves secret, emergency instructions for his successor.

Feb 6, 2007
Lessons in Online Marketing, from Spago's

Startups gather and share stories from the battlefield.

Dec. 18, 2006
Festival of Light Spending
Santa Claus may have scale, but Judah Macabbee was one hell of an entrepreneur.

bessemer davidcowan entrepreneur luck roadmap getbigcheap saleslearningcurve elevatorpitch businessplan

Science, Scams and Superstition

These articles of mine address the poor state of science education, the persistent intellectual tyranny of religion, and the consequent lack of critical thinking in our country.

Aug. 27, 2006
They Stood at the Foot of the Mount
My family witnesses the ill effect of group-think on hundreds of Disneyland tourists.



Nov. 7, 2006
Silicon Valley Loves Richard Dawkins
Hear the evolutionary scientist's comments to a Who's Who gathering of techno-stars.

Oct 8, 2009
Praying with Richard to the Flying Spaghetti Monster
Richard Dawkins returns to the Valley to raise funds for Reason and Science, and to sign books at Keplers.


Aug. 5, 2006
Blink: The Nonsense of "Thinking Without Thinking"
A less-than-generous book review of the allegedly non-fiction bestseller, why Goerge Bush likely read this book, and suggested alternative reading.





April 19, 2006
CREATED BY A SCHOOL TEACHER!
Read how a scamming couple turns Airborne, a thoroughly untested medical remedy, into a $100m blockbuster product.

Dec 21, 2006
SCIENTIFIC AMERICAN: Airborne Baloney!
Science mag features my blog.

March 6, 2008

Airborne Losing Altitude!

Science prevails! Company loses $23 million verdict in deceptive advertising lawsuit.

March 21, 2008
Lighting Fires at the Dinner Table

A 16 year-old with ADHD busts myths about the mental health epidemic.

October 9, 2008
Militant Avamparists Are So Annoying!
How can you be so sure that vampires and easter bunnies don't exist? Are you really so dogmatic?

January 27, 2008

A Very Bad Book and a Very Good Book

Con man cashes in on bizarre consipracy theories, and another explains how.

March 26, 2006
Bullshit
Profile of magician Penn Jilette--prompted by my encounter with the celebrity atheist in Vegas--and his expose of bottled drinking water.

July 18, 2007
Dinner with Dawkins and Hitchens
Recap of Dawkins' encore visit to Kepler's and our dinner with Christopher Hitchens.




January 20, 2007
7-Year Old Critical Thinker
What happens when we encourage children to think for themselves?





Dec. 11, 2005
Limits of Rationality: Beware the Paralimbic Cortex
My college roommate, a behavioral economist at Harvard, illustrates how brain structure distorts human calculus of short term versus long term tradeoffs.





Aug. 28, 2005
A "Natural Cure" for the Author's Debts
Confidence artist tops the bestseller list by playing on people's mistrust of corporations.



Oct. 7, 2008
Skeptics Sellout to Christians
Leonard Susskind, Mr. Deity, and a Christian walk into a bar... My notes from a Skepctics Society conference at CalTech.



Aug. 16, 2005
The United States of Almighty-God
What does it say about our country when Time Magazine ignores standards of journalism, pandering to Christians with alleged news on mythological characters?





Feb. 10, 2007
Alyssa Milano: Net Neutrality is Like So Cool
A storm of regulation brews, whipped up by vapid sound bites from anti-experts.

Jan. 14, 2007
Cheating Death
Geniuses in Singapore and Sirtris show God who's boss.

March 11, 2007

Reading Resources for Raising Children Without God

Reading lists for skeptical grownups and kids.

Oct 27, 2006
Religion: Even Stevphens
Rabbi sends me Daliy Show video featuring Islam v. Christinaity face-off.



Oct. 27, 2006
Richard Dawkins Coming to Kepler's
Profile of evolutionary scientist Richard Dawkins, prior to his standing-room-only book signing at Kepler's Bookstore.



Sept 5, 2006
Shermer Coming to Kepler's
Profile of Skeptic/Professor/Author/Editor/Producer Michael Shermer, prior to his book signing of Why Darwin Matters.



June 20, 2006
China Pulls Ahead
While US Rep. Westmoreland campaigns on the Colbert Report to post the Ten Commandments in Congress, China invites Stephen Hawking to its Great Hall to lead a debate on physics.



Nov. 22, 2005
Kansas School Board More Religious Than Vatican
Vatican Astronomer rips intelligent design theory.


Nov. 2, 2005
Maybe Harriet Wasn't So Bad
Bush nominates devout Catholic Samuel Alito. Children, learn your prayers.

atheism science scams superstition prayer alternativemedicine airborne dawkins shermergoddelusion pennjilette bullshit groupthink blink rationality disneyland timemagazine colbert

I Told You So, Alyssa Milano!

According to the Wall Street Journal, now Google Wants Its Own Fast Track to the internet. So much for Eric Schmidt's public call for network neutrality.

While everyone's who anyone was jumping on the bandwagon (sorry, Alyssa Milano), remember the one maverick blog that called it egregious hypocrisy from the start.... WhoHasTimeForThis?

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Mardi Bas

Mazal Tov to my niece Valerie, who is celebrating her Bas Mitzva in New Orleans. We arrived last night in time to watch Kobe score 26 points as the Lakers trounced the Hornets. 

I'm obviously not a big fan of religious ceremonies, but Val's family has a funny way of celebrating that bucks the trend of over-the-top parties. Instead of congregating all week in synagogue to worship you-know-Who, we're spending the week repairing Katrina-damaged neighborhoods. Today we built and stocked a library for a local public school (I built the shelves in the photo below and my 6-year-old sanded them down). Tomorrow we're installing floors in a condemned home in the lower 9th Ward -- apparently we don't get the day off for either Christmas or Hanukah. Oy.

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Tilera: "The Startup To Watch"

This month the Global Semiconductor Alliance recognized Tilera as the Startup To Watch for 2009. Congratulations to founder Vijay Agarwal and his co-founders Devesh Garg (now a partner in Bessemer's Mumbai office) and MIT Professor Anant Agarwal! And kudos to my partner Rob Chandra, who funded and incubated the company in our Massachusetts office.

Tilera has transformed multicore computing by designing a truly distributed chip architecture where each processing core (or "tile") has its own resources such as caches and network nodes. This architecture solves major problems around performance (centralized resources are a bottleneck) and scalability (we're already running 64 tiles on a chip and we'll soon double that). We use industry standard programming tools, running C and C++ code on SMP Linux so it's easy to migrate an existing application to our fully parallel platform. Simply put, Tilera has extended the benefits of distributed computing from PCs down to the chip level.

I'm personally most excited about the impact Tilera will have on security appliances, which increasingly need to process large streams of packets in real time in order to prevent malware, identify predatory behavior, and combat terrorism. Replacing all the FPGAs, DSPs and ASICs in such an appliance, a single Tilera chip is perfect for high volume computational tasks like packet filtering that can be processed in parallel. (Devesh had first recognized this need when he was GM of Broadcom's Security Business Unit.) Tilera fits many other applications as well in processing communications and video (e.g. H.264 codecs) --in fact, we have nearly 50 customers in various stages of design.

The distributed architecture also leads to a greener power profile. By replicating and distributing the circuits, the electron pathways are much shorter, which consumes less power and generates less heat.

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Ocarina: World's Bestselling Mobile App

Congrats to the Smule team, whose Ocarina has topped the charts for two weeks now (and especially to CTO Ge Wang who is currently profiled on apple.com/pro).

Anyone can quickly learn to play the Ocarina -- hundreds of song sheets for the Ocarina are now available on Smule.com, thanks to users who have composed and uploaded their scores.

Click on the image to hear my son jamming at the Sonic Mule headquarters...

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