Yippee – the criticism of the software patent stupidity is starting to heat up and some really smart people are making both useful arguments about the issues and interesting proposals about the solution. In addition, there are some general articles starting to appear that explain that while patents (and property rights) have an important role in our society and in encouraging and supporting innovation and entrepreneurship, there are some well understood problems that emerge from patenting small components of complex systems – especially when the vector of innovation is steep (like – for example – with software or the Internet.)

Allen Stern has a great interview up with Jon Fox, the co-founder of Intense Debate. Jon and Intense Debate were part of the first year’s crop of companies from TechStars and are going great guns right now. They create the comment replacement system that I use on my blog – if you are a blogger and haven’t tried it yet, wander on over to Intense Debate and take a look.

I have seen my lifetime supply of slides like the following: My good friend Bruce Wyman – the Director of Technology at the Denver Art Museum – has a thoughtful post up this morning titled Simplification of Things, Part 1 of Some*.* In it, he shows us a better way to communicate what this slide doesn’t.

Alex Muse has a long, detailed post up about How [He] lost $20,000,000+ in 18 months. It’s the story of his experience with LayerOne – the first version and the second version. It’s a useful story on failure that harkens back to 2001 with a nice redemption twist at the end.

Tim O’Reilly tweeted a link to an article titled How To Concentrate which was originally published in 1930. It is excellent and worth reading slowly (presumably while you are concentrating.) Amy often tells me that I have “Amazing Powers of Concentration.” If you are a Pink Floyd fan, you will get the subtle reference to a line from Nobody Home. The line is actually “And Amazing Powers of Observation”, but Amy is generously applying it to my actual skill. Entertainingly (as in circus trick) I have a second amazing power – that of “total recall of the last thing someone said to me while I was concentrating on something else.” I use this very effectively in my marriage.

And post #2 is up (I guess post #1 went up yesterday and I missed it since I only read feeds in the morning.) Post #2 is titled Gross and Net Returns and – while it describes them – it has an excellent spreadsheet that go through the assumptions Fred and his partner Brad Burnham made on how they would invest their first Union Square Ventures fund. Fred uses this model as the basis for describing the math of Gross and Net Returns.

Fred Wilson has an excellent post up today titled Venture Fund Economics. It appears to be the first of several posts he’s planning to write on this topic. “When I write about venture fund returns, there are always comments and questions that lead me to believe that the economics of a venture fund are not well understood. And since most of the readers and commenters on this blog are people who work in the startup ecosystem, I think its important that the economics are better understood. So I am planning on some posts on this topic in the coming weeks.”

People tell me when I get bored of marathons maybe I’ll start doing ultras – as in 100 mile races. Great inspiration. (Thanks Dave / Jeff).

As Amy and run around like silly people packing up to head back to Boulder tonight, I stumbled upon two fantastic posts on the web. Consider this your daily reading if you read nothing else. The first is titled Five Life-Changing Mistakes and How I Moved On by Julie Wainwright. Julie is now the co-founder of SmartNow.com but is infamous for being the CEO of Pets.com. Her post is personal and phenomenal. She identifies five mistakes she made leading up to and during the simultaneous failure of Pets.com and her marriage. She then describes – point by point – how she moved on. The mistakes follow; you’ll need to click through to her article to see how she moved on. (Thanks Heidi).