As many of you know, I’ve been involved in advocating for the Startup Visa since the idea was first conceived in the fall of 2009. While it’s frustrating to me that some leaders in Congress are much more interested in trying to jam through bills, such as SOPA and PIPA, that fundamentally censor and undermine the structure of the Internet, rather than support entrepreneurs and the corresponding jobs that get created by creating a Startup Visa, I’m optimistic and hopeful that logic ultimately prevails. Other than that, my mentors who know how DC works much better than I do encourage me to stay patient and unemotional and to keep trying.

Jason Silva is a total stud. Every time he does another amazing video ecstatic metapattern rant” on Vimeo, he tweets me about it. Here’s his lastest. TO UNDERSTAND IS TO PERCEIVE PATTERNS from jason silva on Vimeo. Here’s what’s so amazing about this to me. I don’t think I know Jason. Maybe we’ve met once – I don’t know. I do know that he’s jason_silva on Twitter, is a Host / Producer for Current TV (so I might know him via the TechStars segment CurrentTV did a few years ago on TechStars), but I don’t recognize his picture. We might have met a few times – that’s my issue, not his, since I’m out of namespace in my brain (I have to forget someone to learn someone new.)

I don’t celebrate Christmas. So my Christmas eve’s are chinese food and a movie (also known as “Jewish Christmas”) and Christmas day is usually spent in front of my computer writing after sleeping late, followed by a run, a nap, and another movie. This morning I slept until around 10am. Amy and I watched Hanna last night and I had a bunch of bizarre dreams as a result. The combination of being tired from an intense year, six marathons including four in the fall, a steady training schedule the last few weeks, and being 46 has resulted in a bunch of 10 to 12 hour nights. Yawn.

Our friends Dick and Jane have decided to disband their company. The last two months had been tough for Dick and Jane – each of them felt the other wasn’t living up to their commitments. Praveena was working hard on the product, but as she observed the tension mounting between Dick and Jane, she started answering calls and emails from the recruiters who had been hounding her since she left her previous job.

I hate Christmas music. Hate, hate, hate. Call me Grinch Feld. I don’t care. It just makes me want to poke knitting needles in my ears to stop it. Amy and I were in City Market grocery shopping the other day and at some point I had to go outside and scream. It felt good enough that I was able to go back in the store and finish buying greek yogurt and vegetables.

Marc Andreessen recently wrote a long article in the WSJ which he asserted that “Software Is Eating The World.” I enjoyed reading it, but I don’t think it goes far enough. I believe the machines have already taken over and resistance is futile. Regardless of your view of the idea of the singularity, we are now in a new phase of what has been referred to in different ways, but most commonly as the “information revolution.” I’ve never liked that phrase, but I presume it’s widely used because of the parallels to the shift from an agriculture-based society to the industrial-based society commonly called the “industrial revolution.”

My little buddy, the robotic ball controlled by your smartphone named Sphero, has shipped and you can order a Sphero now! Having watched Sphero come to life over the past 17 months, starting as a seed of an idea in the heads of two mad geniuses (Ian Bernstein and Adam Wilson) has been awesome. I remember seeing Ian and Adam’s video application to TechStars for the Boulder 2010 program (at the time the company was called Gearbox). There were a lot of questions on the selection committee because it wasn’t a typical software thing. “These guys are hardware hackers – will we have good mentors for them?” was one of the questions asked. “Fuck yeah” I said. “I’ll be one of their lead mentors. I love robots.”

I’m a big fan of the CLEAR card and the CLEAR service. When it first launched, I got it immediately and used it wherever it was available. Fortunately this included Denver, New York, and San Francisco. If you don’t know of CLEAR, it’s a biometric card that you use in the exclusive CLEARlane at airports to bypass the security line. It’s saved me from missing plenty of flights over the past few years.

Tonight’s book was Everything Is Obvious* which was cleverly subtitled *Once You Know The Answer with a special bonus subtitle How Common Sense Fails Us by Duncan Watts. And yes – for those of you keeping track at home, I didn’t read a book last night; I was working on mine instead. I enjoyed this book. As I was reading it, I kept coming up with alternate titles like Everything is Bullshit, The Macro is Irrelevant, Humans Don’t Reason Well, Common Sense Fucks Us Up, Predictions are Useless, and Attributing Things To Abstract Collections of Stuff Like Crowds, Markets, Companies, etc. is Stupid.