I love America. I ran the Zeitgeist half marathon yesterday in Boise, Idaho with my friends Pam Solon and Mark Solon (Pam kicked our asses). It was a cold and icy morning with a beautiful blue sky. The course is hilly – a long two mile hile at mile 2 and then a one mile hile at mile 8. But following each hill was a corresponding downhill so that evened things out.

My twitter stream this morning had a conversation between Kara Swisher and Chris Sacca about a TED video from Jill Bolte Taylor. Kara recently had a TIA (minor stroke) and wrote about it. The conversation between them prompted me to watch the TED Talk by Jill Bolte Taylor about a massive stroke that she’d had. Taylor is a brain scientist, which makes the whole discussion even more incredible as she had a chance to study and think about her own experience of having a stroke.

Next week at Defrag I’ll be giving a talk titled “Resistance is Futile”. I’ll be talking about my premise that the machines have already taken over. A few days ago a friend of mine emailed me a perfect image to summarize where we are today. Ponder and enjoy.

On a daily basis I get an email from someone, either in Boulder, or considering a move to Boulder, who asks how they can best get involved in the Boulder entrepreneurial community. My response is simple – get involved, show up, and participate. I then list a set of regular activities that exist, with my favorites being: Boulder Open Coffee Club Boulder New Tech Meetup Silicon Flatirons Events Boulder Beta Ignite Boulder There are also a handful of sites that help you figure out how to plug in and list other events. The two I recommend are Boulder.me and Boulder Startup Digest.

If you want to go to TechStars for a Day in Boston, today is the last day to apply for the Boston program early application deadline. If you haven’t heard of TechStars for a Day, it’s a one day event that immerses you in the TechStars program, exposes you to the mentors, and increases your visibility with the selection committee. Why wouldn’t you do this? I have no clue. If you are contemplating applying to Techstars Boston, stop procrastinating and apply now. If you are curious about how some of the TechStars Boston class of 2011 have done, take a look at the post titled 2011 Funding: Boston. And yes, I plan to be in Boston for the second half of January so I’ll be at the first few days of the program for everyone who gets in.

There was a huge kerfluffle over the weekend about racism in Silicon Valley which tried to end when Michael Arrington wrote a post titled Oh Shit, I’m A Racist. But it didn’t end – on Monday there were stories by CNN reporter Soledad O’Brien defending herself with an article titled Michael Arrington is right (about one thing) and then a well reasoned post by Mitch Kapor titled Beyond Arrington and CNN, Let’s Look at the Real Issues. And I’m sure there will be more posts, including this one.

My friends at Orbotix have made a spooky Halloween video for you starring Sphero. The costumes were made by Adam (one of Orbotix co-founders) using his MakerBot. Happy Halloween from Sphero from GoSphero on Vimeo.

Recently, two bills have been introduced into Congress that – if passed – will do irreparable damage to the Internet, entrepreneurship, free speech, and job creation as a result of the continued entrepreneurial activity around the Internet. Fred Wilson has a strong post up titled Protecting The Safe Harbors Of The DMCA And Protecting Jobs that explains the situation. Go read the post now – it’s an outstanding summary in plain English of what is going on.

While Jane was building SayAhh’s revenue projections, Dick focused his attention on building the expense side of the projections. He procrastinated for a few weeks because he was deep in product development, but surfaced a few days ago when he realized they had an investor meeting coming up and really should have at least a basic financial model ready in case the investor asked about it. Before building his projections, Dick needs to make three main decisions: