It looks like Chaos Reigns a Second day at Heathrow. The spiffy new Terminal Five has some “glitches.” Who said modernization was easy?

Amy and I went to see 21: The Movie today. It’s based on the phenomenal book Bringing Down the House: The Inside Story of Six M.I.T. Students Who Took Vegas for Millions by Ben Mezrich. I met Ben and had sushi with him a few months ago – he was really psyched about the upcoming movie and the relaunch of the book as 21. Ben – congrats! Amy and I had a blast. One of Amy’s ex-boyfriends had been part of the MIT Blackjack Team (1989-1990) so I’ve heard plenty of stories about it over the years (and vaguely remember it when it was going down.) MIT is a remarkable place and a fantastic backdrop for a “smart people” morality tale (similar to another one of my favorite movies – Good Will Hunting.)

You’ve got three more days – the application deadline closes on 3/31 at midnight! If you don’t know what I’m talking about, take a look at www.techstars.org or some of the past posts I’ve written about TechStars. TechStars 2007 produced some cool companies, including several that have been making plenty of noise lately such as SocialThing, Intense Debate, and Filtrbox. Apply now to be a part of TechStars 2008.

From Adam Smith at Square 1 Bank on how NOT to pitch your company to a VC. The full segment is below. There is a philosophy that “all you need to do is get tons of underpants traffic and good things will happen. When that works, it’s a beautiful thing. The key word – of course – is “when.” Phase 2 is a dangerous place.

I haven’t written much in the Failure series lately, but I’ve got a doozy or two coming soon. In the mean time, Chip Griffin has a good post up titled Don’t Fear Failure, Learn from It*.* Definitely worth a click through to hear about his three different kinds of failure (Spectacular Collapse, Death of a Thousand Cuts, and The Land of Lost Opportunity) as well as some lessons from his failures.

Marc Andreesen has a scathing but brilliant post up today titled Congratulations, you’re paying Jimmy Cayne’s marijuana bills! I love Marc’s analysis of what Bear Stearns would have been worth if the Federal Government hadn’t backstopped the deal with a $29 billion loan. The US taxpayer is loaning Bear Stearns and JP Morgan Chase, Bear Stearns’ acquirer, $29 billion — just revised from $30 billion, simultaneous with JP Morgan Chase raising its acquisition price for Bear Stearns to $10/share from $2. Without that $29 billion of taxpayer money, Jimmy Cayne’s stock would be worth $0/share, and if you multiply that by 5.66 million shares, the total would be $0. The $29 billion taxpayer loan is almost certain to lose money as it is being used to backstop stinky assets on the Bear Stearns balance sheet — the same assets whose plummeting fall in value catalyzed Bear Stearns’ effective bankruptcy. It is virtually certain that taxpayers are going to take some loss on that $29 billion loan. When we do, we will have the immense satisfaction of knowing that the first $61.3 million of those losses represent a direct cash transfer from US taxpayers to Jimmy Cayne.

I’ve been listening to NPR since I was 7 years old. Whenever my mom or dad drove me to school, NPR’s Morning Edition was playing. Guilty weekend pleasures of mine include Car Talk and Wait Wait… Don’t Tell Me! While I don’t watch any news on TV, I do admit to listening to NPR on my drive to the office in the morning and I occasionally catch Talk of the Nation.

Time to actually figure out the real job board thing on this blog since I’m now posting job notices a couple of times a week (feel free to comment if you provide these things and I’ll try them out and pick one.) There has been plenty of response to the job postings so I assume those of you that don’t care are just filtering them out and those of you that do are appreciating them!

As I was reading through my RSS feeds this morning, I came across Graeme Thickins reposting of the Google 2007 Annual Letter (this year written by Larry Page.) It a good one – written in plain, straightforward English. Worth a careful read for anyone that interacts with The Google.