Every now and then I read a book that terrifies me. The Atomic Bazaar: The Rise of the Nuclear Poor is one such book. I’m not entirely sure why I grabbed it at the bookstore last week – it might have been that I recognized the author’s name (William Langewiesche) or that it wasn’t a very long book. I sat outside yesterday afternoon and read it as the sun went down and my dogs played. As I turned each page, I felt myself getting more and more anxious. The core story is that of Abdul Qadeer Khan and Pakistan’s rise as a nuclear power, but all the usual characters (Iraq, Iran, North Korea, and Russia) are a deep part of the story. Oh – and the United States.

If you are obsessed with Facebook, you should be reading Read/WriteWeb this week (as they’ve declared it the week of Facebook.) The first post is Facebook Week: Analyzing The Facebook Platform and Apps*.* Has anyone else noticed that Facebook Inbox doesn’t have a “Forward” (or – in Facebook land – “include more friends on thread”) feature? What’s with that? On the heals of my friend Andy Sack giving up his switch over to a Mac, Fred Wilson blogged this morning that he has been unable to fulfill his New Years Resolution of getting rid of Microsoft software from his computing infrastructure. In Fred’s case, the culprit is Exchange + RIM. He’s given up on trying to use OSX for work and is going back to Windows / Parallels land.

My partner Ryan pointed me to Daniel Rozin’s Wooden Mirror. It’s a delightful example of humans + technology + art. All of this stuff is starting to “Blur” together (EricN – hint.)

Andy Sack just gave up on his switch from Microsoft to Apple. I’ve tried to make this switch twice over the past few years (once randomly, once on the eve of the Vista launch) and ended up in Vista land. Each time I write about it, I get comments from a bunch of Mac fans saying something to the effect of “Brad – the problem is you – you’re just stupid.” Ok – whatever. I think Andy said it better – “I guess I’m just a PC nerd.” Of course, my iBrick experience (and deep satisfaction with my Dash) just reinforces this. Now – the big question is whether I plan to get the Xbox 360 or the PS3 version of Harmonix’s Rock Band.

My partner Seth Levine has written an excellent summary of Startup Weekend. It’s hard for me to fathom that it happened merely a week ago. As I sit here early this Sunday morning getting ready for a long run into town, I’m wondering how many of the 70 or so people involved with Startup Weekend are still chanting “VoSnap” every hour. Upon reflection, while the product didn’t ship at the end of the weekend (and still hasn’t – although I’ve seen a working version and it’s pretty cool for a weekend’s worth of work) I think the weekend was a massive success. I viewed it as a sociological experiment that I’d participate again in a heartbeat.

Last week Don Dodge, Dan’l Lewin, and Dave Drach from Microsoft visited TechStars. Don has a nice post up about his visit including brief descriptions of several of the TechStars companies that I don’t think has appeared in the wild yet. Don, Dan’l, and Dave are good friends – among other things Dan’l runs the Microsoft Emerging Business Team which is responsible for Microsoft’s relationship with the VC community and venture-backed startups. Scott Maxwell from OpenView – who sits on Dan’ls advisory board with me – summarized how EBT works from a VC’s perspective in a 2006 post titled Microsoft’s Work with Emerging Growth Companies – Five Stars.

Wesabe just came out with an API. If you aren’t familiar with Wesabe, it’s a new investment by my friends at Union Square Ventures – Brad Burnham describes why they made the investment in his post Wesabe Is More Than A “Personal” Financial Service*.* A quick search on Fred Wilson’s blog (via Lijit) shows tons of chatter on the term “API” on both his blog and his network. API is also prevalent in my blog postings and my network.

One of the investment themes I’m intrigued with is human computer interaction (HCI). I believe that in 20 years the notion of typing on a keyboard and moving a mouse around will seem quaint. If you are skeptical about this, remember that punch cards were all the rage a mere 35 years ago when IBM came out with a new 96 column format, our good friend the IBM 3270 came out in 1972, and the ubiquitous VT100 came out in 1978.

While FeedBurner is no longer an investment of mine, I still am a huge FeedBurner fanboy and love everything about those cuddly little guys and gals. Today they announced that they have seemless integration with Blogspot. If you are a Blogspot blogger, you can now be as happy as the TypePad bloggers (at least as far as your feed is concerned.) Zap! Pow! Kraaakkkk! – I’m so delighted that the humor gremlin at FeedBurner has not left the building – I guess he likes the free Google food.