Yeah – that was one of my favorite movies of my youth – I’ve always loved Mork.  I guess that’s part of the reason I moved to Boulder.  The title of this post is nonsensical – I just wrote what came to mind because this is going to be another of my "here’s what I found interesting on the web this morning" posts.  I’ve got six for you today instead of five.  Going forward, these will be categorized as "Daily Reading" although of course you can search for magic words that you remember via my Lijit Search Wijit on the sidebar.

– Starting a High-Technology Startup: While it’s not a terribly exciting title, it’s a great article by Ben Casnocha for eJournal USA about starting a company.  I adore Ben and think he’s an extraordinary young man.  It’s an article.

– Angel Financing: Todd Vernon, the CEO of Lijit, nails how an angel financing works.  I get asked questions about angel financings all the time.  Todd’s post is going to now be one of my standard "go read this" things.  If you are raising an angel financing, thinking about it, or just want one entrepreneurs very thorough view about it, here it is.

– Doing Business with the Semi-Permeable Corporation: Greg Cohn of Yahoo has a comprehensive post on his view of the challenges "of doing external relationship development in the current tech environment from inside the walls of a public company."  I’ve known Greg for a while, have great respect for him, and think he accomplishes this really well.  It’s also a good counter article to all the snark going around the system about Yahoo right now.

– The Art Market’s Stealth Correction: If you collect art like Amy and I do, you know that there has been massive value appreciation (inflation?) in a wide range of art, especially post-impressionism stuff.  Well – what goes up can go down and the Art Market might be more tightly linked to the Housing Market – just more quietly.  Pop?

– Publisher Spotlight: Go2Web2.0: I am a shameless pimp promoter of my portfolio companies.  Lijit is one of my favorites (although I love all my children equally).  Lijit regularly profiles some of its publishers (taking a page from FeedBurner’s playbook).  Orli Yakuel – who writes Go2Web2.0 has a good overview of why she likes (and uses) Lijit.  Yeah – I know – I snuck this one in – but hey – if you have a blog and don’t yet use Lijit you can’t get one of their cool stickers yet.  Try it.

– WallStrip: 5-7-08 Yahoo and Microsoft… the Postmortem: Apparently when you wander around the streets of NY, everyone you run into is an expert on tech M&A.  I like Julie Alexandria, but I sure miss Lindsey and Howard’s walks around NY.

Good morning.

If you are a loyal reader of this blog, you know that Amy and I take a week completely off the grid every quarter.  Well – I missed my Q1 vacation so we took it early in Q2.  We spent five days on the big island in Hawaii, hosted by college friend David Cowan.  When I was at MIT, David was my best "Harvard friend." (ok – I didn’t have too many, but he was the best.)  Amy and I hadn’t spent an extended period of time with David and his wife Nathalie since the early 1990’s – it was awesome to reconnect.  I assumed that David was in a good mood because we were around, but I’m sure the Tuesday $1.25 billion Bessemer Hat Trick didn’t hurt.

In addition to being in a splendid place, completely off the grid, hanging out with old friends, running and playing tennis, eating some great food, and sleeping a lot, I read a few books.

Hold Tight: I love Harlan Coben – he’s one of my top five mental floss writers.  Once again, Coben produced a twisted and complex page turner.  He’s becoming a little formulaic, but that’s ok by me since I dig the formula.

Edward R. Murrow and the Birth of Broadcast Journalism (Turning Points in History: Whenever I read a great biography, I think to myself "I should read more biography."  I’m totally on an Ed Murrow kick after watching Good Night, and Good Luck.  The evolution of broadcast journalism is fascinating, especially against the backdrop of the Internet, user generated content, and the transformation of "old" to "new" media that we are currently in the middle of.

Being Human – Human-Computer Interaction in the Year 2000: A puff piece summary from Microsoft from a conference they hosted on HCI in March 2007.  Books like this encourage me that there are massive opportunities in the HCI arena – no new ideas for me, but plenty of support for existing thought vectors.

The Runner: A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue: The subtitle of this book is "A True Account of the Amazing Lies and Fantastical Adventures of the Ivy League Impostor James Hogue."  Whew.  I once had a running coach who ended up in jail for fraud.  This book could have been about him.  It cut a little too close to home.

The Humane Interface: New Directions for Designing Interactive Systems (ACM Press): Jef Raskin created some fundamental innovations in user interfaces and human computer interaction.  Even though this book was written in 2000, it had some superb sections on HCI and several chapters that had entirely new ideas for me when considering how user interfaces work.  A little dated, but good stuff.

Rant: An Oral Biography of Buster Casey.  By far the best of the bunch.  Micah Baldwin dropped this off for me the day before I left for vacation.  He warned me that my brain would explode.  It took about 50 pages to get into the rhythm of the book – once I got into it I could not put it down.  Chuck Palahniuk brought us Fight Club; with Rant he’s brought us Party Crashing (and a rabies epidemic).  Great great stuff.

Ahhhh.  What a nice break.  I’m back in Boulder for a few weeks before my Q2 vacation.

I haven’t been reading much lately – I just haven’t felt like it.  I’m usually a two to three book a week person so my dry spell has been a little odd, but I’ve rolled with it. 

Today I snuggled into the couch with my dogs, my Kindle, and Stuart Woods latest book – Beverly Hills Dead.  Woods is one of my top five "mental floss" writers.  I was finished it a couple of hours later and am pleased that my reading drought is over.

In Beverly Hills Dead Woods winds the clock back to the 1940’s and post-World War II Hollywood.  The book works through the story of the early days of Woods’ characters Rick Barron and Vance Calder.  The story and intrigue is good, but I especially liked the Hollywood anti-communist theme that the book was built around as it nicely complimented Good Night, and Good Luck.

While there is nothing special here if you aren’t a Stuart Woods fan, if you are looking for mental floss, give Woods a shot.

In my book review of Tim Weiner’s Legacy of Ashes, I said "This is a chewy and long but if you are looking for an exhaustive, comprehensively researched, and completely negative view of the history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes is the one for you."

Nicholas Dujmovic does not agree with me.  In his book review on the CIA web site he systematically tears it apart after asserting that "Legacy of Ashes in not the definitive history of the CIA that it purports to be."

I enjoyed Dujmovic’s review as much as I enjoyed the book. I took Weiner’s credibility at face value based on his history as a Pulitzer Prize winning journalist for the NY Times.  Dujmovic makes me question it.

After all, that’s part of the CIA’s job, isn’t it?

My last book of 2007 was Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, one of the CIA books recommended in the comments of my post History of the CIA.  I read it on my Kindle, which I love.

I’ve read a lot of books in my life.  I don’t think I’ve ever read a book that was as profoundly negative and damning on any organization.  The author – Tim Weiner – is a well regarded Pulitzer Prize-winner New York Times correspondent so this book is the real deal.

Weiner approaches this as a pure history book.  He starts at the beginning and marches all the way through to the end without slowing his pace at any point.  In addition to the endless stream of people involved, he covers in depth a number of the major CIA initiatives over the years, the vast majority of them ranging from "botched" to "debacle."  Along the way he lists the ever escalating number of people, dollars, and deaths that result.

I don’t think I really know how to lie or be deceitful.  I like to think my parents did a great job with me on that front.  I value honesty, directness, and forthrightness.  I even feel compelled to correct myself when I’m wrong (which happens often.)  I’m cynical about plenty of things, including government and religion, and often feel that many political leaders are fundamentally not trustworthy.  Legacy of Ashes beats you over the head with this message – over and over again.

This is a chewy and long but if you are looking for an exhaustive, comprehensively researched, and completely negative view of the history of the CIA, Legacy of Ashes is the one for you.

Now for some mental floss via David Balducci to clean the mind as we start the 2008 reading list.

I’m looking for a great book on the history of the CIA.  Any recommendations from out there in the blogosphere?

If you’ve noticed that I haven’t been blogging, it’s because I went off the grid for my Q4 vacation with Amy.  As is our habit, we checked out completely, spent a week at the beautiful Palmilla One & Only in Cabo, and did our normal quarterly vacation thing, which includes reading a bunch of books.

I started off with William Gibson’s latest – Spook Country.  It started off slow – possibly because I kept comparing it to his last book, Pattern Recognition, which  was amazing.  I almost gave up but Amy encouraged me to stick with it.  After 100 pages Gibson clearly established three parallel stories that clearly were going to converge at some point and I got sucked in.  Around this point, the amazingness of Gibson also kicked in.  The end result – great book, highly recommended, but be patient with the set up.

As is my way, I switched to non-fiction next. King of the Club – the story of Dick Grasso’s rise and fall at the NYSE – was recommended to me by someone so I picked it up.  It’s a well written and detailed account of the whole Grasso thing, albeit from the perspective of the author playing investigative reporter.  I don’t really care much about the public markets, investment banking, and the omnipresent backroom politics, but I learned a lot from this book and developed a different impression than I previous had.  If Grasso’s story and/or the history of the NYSE interests you, this is well worth the time.  If you prefer simple gossip, stick with BusinessWeek or People Magazine.

After Spook Country and King of the Club, I needed a small, short book.  During the commercials on Monday night football I read The Tao of Warren Buffett.  I’m a huge Buffett fan and this was a juicy little morsel of his aphorisms with a brief explanation by his ex-daughter-in-law Mary Buffett.  Yum.

It was 80 degrees in Cabo and sunny. It’s 15 degrees in Boulder today with a foot of snow on the ground.  I’m procrastinating going on my 10m+ run.  Shocking.

I’ve been in a reading slump lately – I just haven’t felt like reading.  This happens sometimes and whenever I break my "at least two books a week" rhythm, I just roll with it until it changes.

Yesterday was a three book day.  I absorbed the books into my brain as though it was meant to be.  All three were non-fiction, although only one was "challenging non-fiction" (in a good way.)

Math You Can’t Use: Patents, Copyright, and Software by Ben Klemens was superb.  This is a detailed, thoughtful, comprehensive, and (other great adjective goes here) book about why patents are completely fubared for software.  Ben has created the End Software Patents Coalition and this book could easily be its manifesto.  While I put it in the "challenging" (e.g. you have to actually read it vs. skim it) category, it’s extremely well written and a pleasure to read.  If you are in the software industry in any role and have ever encountered software patents, this is a must read.

Next up was The 4-Hour Workweek by Tim Ferriss.  I met Tim at the predinner for the New New Internet conference in DC last month.  It appeared I was the only person at dinner that hadn’t heard about Tim and his revolutionary idea to have a 4-Hour Workweek which is apparently the rage in Silicon Valley right now.  Tim’s a fun character and his story is very entertaining.  I thought the first half of the book was a blast and the second half (where he gets deeper into the "how to" mechanics) became tedious and overwrought.  Tim – you need a better editor (yeah – I know, so do I.)

I usually don’t call out crummy books on this blog, but since the third one – Make The Right Choice – was part of my Saturday reading trifecta, I thought I’d mention it.  I can’t remember who recommended it to me (I would have never bought it without a recommendation) but I thought it was silly and dull.  After about 30 pages I skimmed it looking for some meat, but never found it.

Every now and then I read a book that is so delicious that I savor it.  Michael Chabon’s The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was one of those books.  I finished it over the weekend on a run through the mountains.  A number of folks have recommended The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay.  It’s up next. 

At least two of the people who recommended The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier & Clay told me they couldn’t get through The Yiddish Policemen’s Union.  This perplexed me. As I read through the Amazon and Shelfari reviews of The Yiddish Policemen’s Union, I realized the disconnect.  While I read 99.9% of the books, I listened to The Yiddish Policemen’s Union on my iPod over the course of a month while running.  I’ve been trying to find the right books to listed to while I go for my long runs (I often run naked – with no headphones) and I’ve only found a few that I really enjoyed.  The Yiddish Policemen’s Union was one of them.

Amy told me she loved reading the book.  I loved listening to the book.  I tried to craft a good summary, but I couldn’t top Elizabeth McCracken’s description from the Washington Post so I’ve copied it here (I’m sure this is illegal in some countries, but my guess is that Meyer Landsman would give me a pass on it.)

“Reading The Yiddish Policemen’s Union is like watching a gifted athlete invent a sport using elements of every other sport there is — balls, bats, poles, wickets, javelins and saxophones. The book begins with the introduction of a hung-over detective to a gun-shot corpse in a fleabag hotel. Classic noir, except that the detective drinks slivovitz instead of bourbon: He’s Jewish, a kind of Philip Marlovsky named Meyer Landsman, though Landsman is a cop — a “noz” in the yiddisher slang of the book — not a PI. The whole local police force is Jewish: The book is set in a present-day alternate reality in Sitka, Alaska, a safe haven set up for Jewish refugees after World War II and the collapse of Israel. Now, after nearly 60 years, the Federal District of Sitka is about to revert to American rule. There are elements of an international terrorist thriller, complicated by religious conspiracy and a band of end-of-the-world hopefuls, and yet the book has a dimly lit 1940s vibe. Maybe that’s just because of what Jews and movie dicks have always had in common: felt hats and an affinity for bad weather.”

Like all good detective stories, there are multiple stories within the story.  We get chess, Alaska, Jewish food (shocking, I know), yiddish, love, self-loathing, murder, power, relationships, Alaskans, mysterious deaths, messianic shit, end of the world crazies, and occasional complicated sex written in a way that shows up the craft (writing and sex) magnificently.  I thought Chabon’s storytelling was brilliant.  On top of it, the reader of the book on tape (Peter Riegert) was ridiculously good.

You don’t have to be Jewish to love this book.  It helps, but it’s not necessary.