Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist

Day 5 in Paris - a run around Ile Saint-Louis

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 16 Nov 2007 05:21:00 -0800

I decided to get out for a run in the cold sunny weather today and ran around Ile Saint-Louis:

It was a crisp beautiful autumn day. I was the only runner in shorts, and one of the only runners out at ALL. There don't appear to be many runners in Paris. Maybe I'm looking in the wrong places.

On the way back home, I ran through a back alley and found this great cathedral.

And a few blocks from home there is a little shop with this sign. I liked the sign and thought that it was worth taking a photo.

There are a lot of tiny little shops near our place that have art in them. Wait what on earth is that in the window??

It's a bust of Michael Keaton's Batman. Creepy.

Day 3 in Paris - Bikram's yoga and a successful shopping trip

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 13 Nov 2007 06:50:00 -0800

Aujourd'hui était le jour 3 ici à Paris. Olivier et moi réellement avons obtenu de prendre le petit déjeuner ensemble, alors il se dirige pour travailler, et je suis allé au loin au yoga de Bikram. Il y a un petit studio impressionnant juste près de notre endroit, droite autour du coin d'un magasin de Apple.

(photos courtesy of www.yogabikramparis.com)

Alors je suis allé de nouveau au au braver les bas-côtés de BHV pour trouver un fusible pour le transformateur que j'ai fait sauter, et pour acheter quelques dishtowels. Je suis parvenu à diriger ma voie par ces essais et tout le personnel était très utile aussi longtemps que j'ai souri. Beaucoup. C'est un fait que des humains sont câblés pour sourire sur la commande pour long car vous les rayonnez un sourire et puis leur demandez de vous aider à parler meilleur français, ils semblent répondre bien.

Maintenant de nouveau au travail sur mon timezone américain du nord !

Oh yes, a little promotion for Vonage. I brought my Vonage adapter here to Paris so that I could have all of my North American phone numbers ring here. And it's working perfectly. So my SF and Vancouver numbers all ring my phone here and I can call out just like when I'm at home in Vancouver. It's a bit surreal actually how well it works. When did VoIP actually start to work?? It used to be a nightmare.

Technorati Tags: paris, bikramyoga, puppy, travel

This video made me smile and laugh all the way through it: a crazy Friday night at Crossfit suffering with good friends and enjoying life

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 07 May 2007 23:22:00 -0700

I'll keep this short or I'll get all sappy. I love hanging out with this group and pushing our bodies and suffering together. It's the best thing I could possibly do with my time. Thanks guys (and girls).

My new (other) blog: Team Sport Goofy

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 04 Mar 2007 17:20:00 -0800

I am signed up to race with a friend of mine for this year's BC Bike Race, a 450-500km, 7 day stage race on mountain bikes that goes from Victoria to Whistler from July 1st to July 7th. We put together a blog so that people can follow along if they want as we train. Our team name (and blog name) is Team Sport Goofy. Come and join us for the ride!

Club Fat Ass' Capilano Canyon Night run, no hot tub, murderball in the pool, and potluck party

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 18 Feb 2007 00:10:00 -0800

Thanks to Ean and Sibylle for throwing a great Club Fat Ass party - the Capilano Canyon Night Run. About 40 30 of us gathered at the William Griffin Rec Center tonight to do the run.

Sibylle threw me out of the short distance group, so Blue and I joined the tail end of the long course team. Thankfully Doug was at the end doing sweep. Then I stopped to wait for Doug...and lost the group entirely. So I joined up with Ryan and Ellie...and we got lost. We backtracked and found Craig who led us....onto the short course.

Finally we intercepted the Long Coursers, lost Ryan and Ellie to the LC team and Craig, Blue and I ran on through the night in relative solitude enveloped in fog. When Craig and I were almost done the course, I was attacked by a pack of coyotes that ripped at my flesh. One by one, I beat them off me, and ran to catch up with Craig. [Update: Apparently somebody at the party spread rumours that there were no coyotes and that in fact I tripped into a prickle bush that tore up my leg and hands after doing my business in the bush - the nerve of some people!]

The run ended about 1h 30 min later back at William Griffin, and was followed by a quick trip to soak in the hot tub at Harry Jerome. Lo and behold, the hot tub was out of order. Or they saw us coming all covered in mud and decided to put the sign up to stop us from muddying up their hot tub!

So, never a group to be daunted by such a thing, we created a game of six person, four ball murderball in the pool, much to the dismay of the lone swimmer in Lane 1 who we seemed to graze more often than he wanted.

Murderball was followed by a fantastic potluck at Ean and Sibylle's place. Unfortunately it looked like it was full swing when I had to hoof it back to get to bed so that I could get up early for a ride with a buddy.

Thanks for the great evening everybody!

Snowshoe Blitz 3: Blue, Michael and I run up Seymour to the second peak to enjoy the sun!

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 29 Jan 2007 00:28:00 -0800

Boy, you have to do a lot of work to escape the cloud and get near the sun when you live in Vancouver! But it was worth it.

My friend Michael and I met at Seymour Mountain at 10am on Sunday morning. Even from the parking lot, we could see a thick white cloud cover blanketing Vancouver and Burnaby. We headed up the mountain, stripping layers as we went and it didn't take long before we were down to our single layer shirts.

There were lots of people up there skiing, boarding, snowshoeing, and enjoying the sun. We had lunch on top of second peak, lay in the sun for a while, and then ran, slid, and fell down the mountain as fast as we could. Note to self: wear pants with a stronger material on the bum...

Thanks for a great day you two!

Crossfit Vancouver 6 month assessment. Yes, Crossfit is an awesome program. I highly recommend it.

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 17:42:00 -0800

Back at the beginning of July 2006, I signed up at a new gym called Crossfit here in Vancouver. I heard about them from a friend of mine who is in the emergency response team in a municipal police force and he had recommended them based on some information he had read. As you'll see from my previous post, it wasn't a good start. I didn't even make it through their assessment and was out for the count for five days.

But this was something that seemed like it was a good fit. It is designed to be useful in every day life. It had lots of variety. And it was a cross between Olympic lifting, gymnastics, and sprinting / rowing. I thought...any gym that has rings and bars and ropes hanging from the ceiling and lets you play like a kid is my kind of gym.

Well, I promised them and myself I would do a six-month review and here it is. Crossfit Vancouver rocks! The owner Craig Patterson and his excellent team are a blast to work with and are obviously really excited to be doing what they're doing and it shows. I had a great time, suffering alongside my fellow Crossfitters this past six months and here are some of the results so far:

July 1, 2006:

Weight: 147 pounds (same weight I had been for almost fifteen years of various sports training)
Bodyfat: Approx 11%
Pullups: 4 max
Deadlift: 135 pounds
Push-press: 55 pounds
Front squat: 135 pounds
L-Sit: 4 seconds before collapsing
Frog-Leg situps: NONE
Bar Dips: 3

Dec 2006 (six months later):

Weight: 160 pounds
Bodyfat: Approx 9%
Pullups: 15 continuous
Deadlift: 255 lbs
Push-press: 135 pounds
Front squat: 177 pounds
L-Sit: 25 seconds!
Frog-Leg situps: 70 in 3 min

When I did my assessment at the beginning of July, I pulled a neck muscle trying to do my fifth pullup onto the bar and had to quit for a week. Six months later, I did a Murph (1 mile run, 300 squats, 200 pushups, 100 pullups, and 1 mile run) in 48 minutes! And for another workout, I managed 60 ring dips and 60 pullups in 30 minutes. There is no way I would have been able to do any of this six months ago. So...does it work? Yep. But I would say that it requires consistency, close attention to diet, and LOTS of sleep. I CAN'T WAIT to see what we can do together this year! I'll be sure to file another update at the end of June 2007 to let you know how it's going.

The best part about this gym is the people. The trainers are focussed on our success. Everybody who shows up is there to push themselves hard and to support each other. We workout together in groups so there's accountability. And what other gym gets you to climb ropes, flip tractor tires in the snow, play on Olympic rings, learn how walk like a bear or a duck, and make you workout so hard you're not sure if you should pass out or throw up? What's not to like?

If anybody else wants to suffer have fun with us, email me at troy at troyangrignon dot com and I'll introduce you to the Crossfit team.

Happy New Year everyone and best wishes for happy and healthy 2007!

My snowshoe run up and down Cypress Mountain with Ean Jackson and Blue the Wonder Dog, January 14, 2007

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 10:03:00 -0800

Here is a little video I threw together about our epic snowshoe running day on Cypress Mountain yesterday. Remember to get out and enjoy winter while it's here! Thanks Ean and Blue for a GREAT day. Hope to have many more of these before the snow leaves us again.

This film was made entirely with my pocket-sized Olympus Stylus 750 camera and iMovie.

Soundtrack: "Running Two" from "Run Lola Run" available at Amazon.com here. To watch the large version of the film, click on the YouTube logo in the lower right hand corner, and then when you land on the video on YouTube, click the icon in the lower right hand corner of THAT. (It's two steps from here is what I'm saying.) Otherwise, just click on the middle of this video and enjoy it right here on the blog.

Dog leads rescuers 5 miles into the bush to rescue injured adventure racer owner

Troy Angrignon — Sat, 30 Dec 2006 23:07:00 -0800

Here's a great story about a dog helping to rescue Danielle Ballengee. I love these stories.

Update on GiftTRAP's Massive Play Weekend charity fundraiser October 6-8, 2006

Troy Angrignon — Sat, 05 Aug 2006 21:22:00 -0700

A few months ago I wrote about my friend Nick's company and project called GiftTRAP. It is a board game with many twists. It contains over 600 photos collected from around the world, many of them from Flickr photographers. It is being used to raise money for charity for a non-profit entity called Right to Play. And it is being launched globally on something called Massive Play Weekend where they will attempt to garner a world's record for largest number of locations playing a board game in the history of the world. Nick embodies Goethe's quote: "Dream no small dreams for they have no power to move the hearts of men."

If you are interested in hosting a game and being a volunteer:

sign up to be a Massive Play weekend volunteer on the site
order a MPW free game board (they ask you to pay the $12 to cover S&H though)
Pick a venue (home, coffee shop, bar, office your call)
Invite some friends to play anytime on 6th-8th October 2006
Play at least once with friends over the Massive Play Weekend
Send us an email to confirm your event and include a photo of your event
MPW is a fundraiser. So were asking you to use your imagination. Charge people to play, pay for the postage or auction your copy amongst friends

If you donate you will get entered into a draw. The winner will get 5 nights here; www.bigwhiteselect.com including ski passes. Pretty cool!

I highly recommend that people take a look at Nick's site and consider helping him raise the charity funds and maybe even be part of setting a world record.

Good luck Nick!

I better look like a Navy Seal when I'm done this program because I'm in a lot of (good) pain from my new workouts with CrossFit Vancouver

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 07 Jul 2006 06:41:00 -0700

If you haven't read the LA Times article, the Men's Health article, or the Men's Journal article on Crossfit, you might not know what it is. It is a fitness regimen/program that started in LA about ten years ago and that is now spreading across North America, and which is favoured by the firefighting, police, military, and mixed martial arts type folks.

I signed up two weeks ago and went in to do my assessment. It was an inauspicious beginning. After about 15-20 minutes, I strained my neck doing pull-ups and had to pull the plug on the day and start over again a week later. Not surprising given my various back injuries that have kept me in rehab over the past 12 years. Interestingly, both of the main trainers had serious back injuries which they managed to heal with this workout so I'm hopeful that it will continue the progress I have made by trainiing with other methods.

A week after my false start, we tried again. I did the full asssessment and then began the one-on-one classes with the instructor. I have done only three classes so far. Without a doubt, it uses more of my muscles and is more exhausting than most of the workouts I have done in the past except perhaps all out adventure racing. It feels AWESOME in a "can you scratch my back and shampoo my head because I can't reach behind my head right now" sort of way.

The primary trainers Craig and Trevor are great guys and the other folks I have met at the gym have all been really great and super supportive. Supportive in a way that says, "oh you have no idea how much pain is coming your way" ;-)

I'll report back on it in a month or two once I have gotten past the introductory sessions that one has to do before one can join the beginners class. The reason for the rigor on that is that they want to ensure that you have good form and movement pattern in all of trhe exercises before they unleash you in a classroom. It's a great practice on their part.

More soon.

Boris Mann explains why Vancouver is such a great place to start or join a cool company (UPDATED)

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 09 Apr 2006 08:20:00 -0700

My friend Boris Mann had some great things to say about Vancouver being an excellent place to join or start a company here in this posting. However, I would add "capital efficiency", great education system, and an awesome talent pool to to the list of reasons that Vancouver is a great place to build a company.

Back in November 2005 at the IT Financing Forum, Anthony Lee from Altos Ventures talked about how he was particularly interested in "capital efficiency" and he found that Vancouver companies were, on average, 10x more capital efficient than Valley companies. At the time, they had a 75M fund open and had earmarked 4 of the 20 slots for Vancouver-based web 2.0 related companies. Anthony commented that more companies dies from too much money rather than too little and that capital efficiency = a higher Internal Rate of Return = the company is more appealing to venture capitalists.

John Berchers from Crescendo Ventures (Palo Alto, Minneapolis) whose fund had 1B under management and a currently open fund of 650M, commented that Vancouver had "great people".

And finally, Nicholas Darby from Dow Venture Capital Fund (a 400M fund inside the $48B Dow Chemical), talked about how there were only four countries that they invested in because of the great education system and good talent pool: Israel, USA, UK, and Canada.

Also, Boris was being modest and didn't include his own startup in the list. So I would add some more interesting companies to the list starting with his:

* Bryght - Boris Mann, Roland Tanglao, Kris Krug, Richard Eriksson, and Colin Brumelle's Drupal based startup that extends the Drupal platform and builds cool apps. This team works with Dries Buytaert, James Walker and Adrian Rossouw, the original Drupal team.
* DabbleDB - Avi Bryant and Andrew Catton's Access/Filemaker killer (easy database creation on the web)
* Raincity Studios - Robert Scales' Drupal/Bryght site web design firm
* Flourish Media - Karen Olsson's Web & TV production firm that produces among other things, "Universe Village" - a sustainability game/TV show for kids
* Ma.gnolia - Todd Sieling's social bookmarking application that looks nicer and does more than competitor del.icio.us.

Updates:

* EZ Systems - the open source CMS people are building a new office here with Zak Greant helping to set it up. (Thanks Ben!)

Know any other interesting companies you would add to the list? Drop me an email or add a comment!

Jesper Olson's 26,323km lap of the world. How one man ran a single lap of the Earth. Come and meet him in person. (And get 2 for 1 tickets!)

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 19 Mar 2006 11:14:00 -0800

On October 23, 2005 Dane Jesper Kenn Olsen, 34 became the first person to successfully run, in daily increments ranging from 14-93km, one lap around the Earth on land masses, setting a Guinness Book of World Records record.

What began from the Old Royal Observatory in Greenwich, London, England on January 1, 2004, ended there 26,323 km later - One lap around the World - on October 23, 2005.

During his World Run Jesper passed through Vancouver and was immediately adopted by the local ultrarunning community. All that have met him were inspired by his humble spirit, determination and humour.

Jesper will be back in Vancouver to present "How on Earth" did he do it? During this World Run Project Lecture you will have the opportunity to hear first-hand from Jesper himself how the impossible became reality, not only from the perspective of an ultrarunner, but from that of a University of Copenhagen scholar of international politics.

If you order the tickets through me (troy at troyangrignon dot com), you can get them 2 for 1 (2 tickets for $30, or $15 each).

Mark Morford strikes again: More communication and more technology equals more work equals more stress equals less sleep

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 10 Mar 2006 06:02:00 -0800

Mark Morford strikes again. I have been having this very conversation with everybody I know. It seems that my entire circle of friends, colleagues, and acquaintances is in the midst of this overwhelming busy-ness right now. I have been questioning the value and the lack of stillness myself and then Mark, as usual, did it more justice than my half-formed thoughts could have:

Full reprint below but the source is here.

No one is getting enough sleep.

No one is getting enough sleep because everyone is so damned stressed.

Everyone is so damned stressed because everyone has way, way too much to do and far too little time in which to do it.

Everyone has way too much to do and far too little time in which to do it because modern technology has made us a thousandfold more accessible and more wired up and more media drenched and able to communicate in 157 different instant digitized ways, has given us entree to so much astounding information at so much faster and more unbearable rates that it has, in effect, compressed time into sweaty slippery little knots we are forever trying to untie as quickly as we possibly can even though we can't.

Slathered all over this is the fact that the Internet is a gorgeous wanton free-for-all of deliciously annoying distraction, porn and Instant Messenger and iTunes, eBay and Amazon and roughly one million blogs, RSS feeds and multimedia and movie trailers and the great time-sucking killer app of the 20th century, e-mail, and did I mention the porn and the music?

It's enough, verily, to give normally sane and balanced and disciplined people a serious case of attention deficit disorder, the inability to focus for any length of time on any one project at hand without the mind and the eye and the desire immediately jumping away to the umpteen other activities and ideas and fun bits your brain felt it was ignoring by trying to focus on one measly paltry thing.

Is this happening to you? Are you not multitasking right now, calculating your to-do lists, answering your cell, text messaging your sister, reading this column, burning a new CD, thinking about sex, programming your Bluetooth, ordering some Astroglide online, processing 50 items at once? No? Something is wrong with you.

In fact, I have no idea how I am getting through this column right now. It has taken me roughly 19 hours to complete the handful of paragraphs above because I keep checking e-mail and configuring my iTunes playlists and responding to my girlfriend's IM messages and reading my colleague David Lazarus' trilogy of columns on the mad increase in sleep disorders and sleeping-pill intake in America.

And the phenomenon is, as you might expect, disturbing and telling and just a little sad, but I didn't have all that much time to dwell on it because I also felt compelled to watch nine new movie trailers on Apple.com ("Mission: Impossible III" looks just god-awful and someone really should slap Tom Cruise) and check the status of two eBay bids and read up on a new Aneros sex toy over at Blowfish.com and satiate a nagging question I had about a quote from "The Love Song of J. Alfred Prufrock" and read up on BushCo's nefarious plans to bomb the crap out of Iran, and did you know the newly redesigned Audi TT is coming out in April?

This is why God invented coffee. Coffee is our national narcotic. Caffeine is time's Viagra. It is no coincidence that the rise of the godlike Starbucks Corp. coincided almost exactly with the rise of the Internet and the cell-phone explosion and the dot-com boom -- that is, with the insane rise in instant communication and multitasking. Caffeine helps up keep up with the mad onslaught, even as it destroys our ability to calm the hell down and get some deep rest.

Did you know caffeine has a half-life in the body of six hours? That if you drink a big cup around noon, half of its 80-100 milligrams of nefarious caffeine are still bouncing through your bloodstream by dinnertime, and by midnight you've still got a happy glob of the stuff slapping at your exhausted brain stem like an angry wife slaps her ex-husband? Do you wonder why we're taking more and more sleeping pills and screwing with the body's natural rhythms and entering a vicious cycle of artificially jacking up/calming down to the point of, well, exhaustion?

Reminds me of Joshua Foer's terrific piece over at Slate from May 2005 about his experience taking the prescrip amphetamine Adderall (normally prescribed for ADHD), just to see what it would do to him, just to see if he could, in fact, focus better and get more work done and imitate, to some pale degree, Jack Kerouac, who allegedly wrote "On the Road" in one insane brilliant nonstop stream-of-consciousness binge while jacked on so much Adderall-like amphetamines it would've choked a llama. The upshot: Except for the weird side effects and the numbing comedown and the various health hazards, Adderall worked, almost too well.

Of course, digging out the link to Foer's piece also enticed me to read Slate's review of alarm clocks, which also led to Will Saletan's thick science-over-morality piece on South Dakota's hideous new abortion law, which in turn somehow pointed to a mention of the New York Times story about the new rash of "sleep-driving," about all the zombie-like people who are now getting into their cars after taking the sleep drug Ambien, which led me to the original NYT Ambien piece on the subject, which in turn flicked me over to the NYT Book Review, where I drifted in a literary haze until the sun shifted in the sky and the morning turned to afternoon and I realized I really needed to get back to work because the paragraph you just read took me about one hour and 13 minutes to complete. See?

Adderall sounds perfect. Adderall is exactly what I need. I could write five columns in two days! I could get ahead and forget my rolling deadlines, for once! I could start my novel, make more progress on my essay collection, learn podcasting in Garageband, finally read that 400-page book on digital photography, get all the way through "From Dawn To Decadence" and still have time to learn about Japanese sake prefectures!

Is this our national affliction? Our collective destiny? A nation of willful ADD sufferers, wired up and jittery and increasing unfocused even as we have more and more crap demanding our attention and even as we are increasingly unable to pause the chaos and sink into a moment and find some peace and actually feel the world around us?

Because I have news: We have been misled. It is one massive lie, a great myth of modern American culture that the more you think, the more you multitask, the more you process and analyze and ponder and the more stuff whirling around your brain at any given moment, the smarter and more connected you are. It is, in short, a total crock.

We equate deranged, caffeinated busyness with smarts, with success, when in fact the exact opposite is true. Just ask the yogis, the gurus, the healers of the past 5,000 years: It is actually when you calm the mind, clear things out, breathe deep and sleep deeper and clean out the toxins and the caffeine and the Ambien, that's when real wisdom, real intuition comes your way. The rest is just, well, noise. Happy delicious annoying caffeinated sexy fun infuriating obnoxious unstoppable noise, but still noise.

But not to worry. They'll soon develop a pill to block that, too.

The First Annual "30 days of sustainability" has launched in Vancouver!

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:13:00 -0800

(If you are looking for the 2007 event information, please click HERE.)

I am very excited about our launch of the 30 Days of Sustainability. For the month of March, Vancouver will host a cornucopia of events and activities, all focused around bringing sustainability to our lives and our city.

One key component of the 30 Days of Sustainability is a dynamic, interactive website, which also launched on March 2nd, 2006. To learn more about the 30 Days, check out http://www.30daysofsustainability.com.

Special features of the website include:

a comprehensive event calendar, listing the dozens of workshops, sustainability cafes, speakers, and so much more taking place through the 30 Days;
a collection of photographs that will be taken by attendees at events all month;
A What's New section that lists all of the news updates;
an interactive 30 Questions section, where a new question will be posted each day, and the public will have the chance, along with our panel of sustainability experts, to discuss actionable things we can do to advance sustainability.

This website is our primary tool for getting the word out about all the exciting events taking place this month. Please take a minute to forward it far and wide to your sustainability / environmental / social change networks, and encourage others to do the same.

Thanks so much!

The short, happy, engaged life of a great athlete

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 16 Feb 2006 06:00:00 -0800

I caught this story about the death of Paul Pearce, a runner in the UK, through a Google link and had to post it. It sounds like this guy was awesome. I love that they asked for people not to wear black ties but to come in running gear instead.

Good luck Paul in the "next stage" of your race. And congratulations on having lived such a great life in the last stage.

Full article here.

Book Review: "Live Long Enough to Live Forever" by Ray Kurzweil and Terry Grossman, M.D.

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 29 Jun 2005 09:00:00 -0700

If you haven't checked it out yet, check out "Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough To Live Forever" by Ray Kurzweil. It's his newest book. The premise is that there are three bridges to get us to a nearly unlimited life span. The first is using what we already know. The second bridge is using biotechnology that does not yet exist. The third is nanotech to allow us to directly connect our biology to other technologies.

I'm just starting on it but I love all of his books and this one is already awesome and I'm only on page 19!

The ideas build heavily on Ray Kurzweil's work on the double exponential technology growth rate and singularity theory.

"Ray has spent several decades studyingand modeling technology trends and their impact on society. Perhaps his most profound observation is that the rate of change is itself accelerating. This means that the past is not a reliable guide to the futre. The 20th century was not 100 years of progress at today's rate but, rather, was equivalent to about 20 years, because we've been speeding up to current rates of change. And we'll make another 20 years of progress at today's rate, equivalent to that of the entire 20th centure, in the next 14 years. And then we'll do it again in just 7 years. Because of this [double] exponential growth, the 21st century will equal 20,000 years of progress at today's rate of progress -- 1,000 times greater than what we witnessed in the 20th century, which itself was no slouch for change."

Study shows that running and weight training are positively correlated with internal and external success and goal-achievement

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 29 Dec 2004 07:45:00 -0800

Wow. Here is an interesting study that was pointed out to me by Ed Sim on his BeyondVC blog.

QUOTE:

A survey of 336 entrepreneurs found those who regularly run reported better personal satisfaction, independence and autonomy than their non-running or weight-training counterparts. The study also found that companies managed by runners report better sales results than firms directed by non-runners.
[...]
The results indicate that running is positively related to all three outcome variables while weight training is positively related to external and internal rewards but not sales.

UNQUOTE:

Live six more years by consuming wine, fish, dark chocolate, fruit, vegetables, almonds and garlic every single day. Sounds good to me.

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 16 Dec 2004 21:53:00 -0800

This article from News.com.au discusses the research findings of a team in Australia that found that eating those seven foods every day resulted in five to six years more life and a 76% decrease in cardiovascular disease. Sounds like a good plan to me!

Canada goes to hell! Legal pot? Legal gay marriage? Universal Healthcare? (from Mark Morford)

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 15 Dec 2004 08:49:00 -0800

Many of you know that one of my favourite columnists is Mark Morford, who writes for the San Francisco Gate news. This is this weeks rant on Canada's policies versus those of his own government. It's a fantastic read and nice to see that at least one American is aware of what is going on outside of his country. I have posted the entire article below because it is so brilliant but it is also available on Mark's archive over here.

By Mark Morford, SF Gate Columnist

Wednesday, December 15, 2004

Did you hear the screams? Did you feel the menacing chill? Did you see the black and ominous clouds, moving north?

Did you sense, in other words, the very presence of Satan himself as he laughed maniacally and tossed around bucketfuls of ultrathin condoms and little travel-size packets of Astroglide like confetti while riding his Harley Softail up to Toronto or maybe Edmonton to join the ghastly and sodomitic celebrations?

Because it's happened. Canada's high court just ruled that the government can, if it so desires, redefine marriage to include gay couples, which it has declared it will do almost immediately, thus solidifying Canada's place as the chilly yet mellow and gay friendly and hockey-riffic epicenter of all known hell.

It's true. It's rather amazing. Gay marriage will be completely legal in Canada very soon. It's been oddly ignored in much of the U.S. media and hasn't really been much discussed among those in the terrified red states except when, deep in the night, from their respective lumpy twin beds, they whisper to each other across the room as they pop their Ambien and stroke their portfolios and curse their very genitals: oh my God what's wrong with those freakin' Canadians?

I mean (they continue), I thought they loved red meat and brutish sports and manly hunting. Are they all just freaks and perverts now? Have they been sniffing too many elk pelts? Is it something in the clean and plentiful water up there? Something to do with those weird French-esque people in Quebec, maybe?

I knew we should've been paying more attention to that border! Didn't I say so, honey? Didn't I say we should keep an eye on those northern weirdos after they dissed the Iraq war and legalized pot and sort of went about their happy and calm Canadian business whilst we here in panicky red-blooded America chewed our own karmic legs off in a paranoid and jingoistic rage? Hippies and perverts, I said! Save a few bombs for Ontario, George, I say!

Let us now do the naughty math: Canada has roughly 32 million inhabitants, of whom about 75 percent are over 18, of whom it can be loosely estimated that anywhere from 2 to 8 percent are gay (depends, of course, on who you ask).

All of which translates into a ballpark figure of anywhere from 1 million to 2 million gay Canadians of legal marrying age who will now eagerly laugh and kiss in the streets and confound poor reactionary born-again George W. Bush, and they will flash their wedding rings at parties and annoy all the single people, all while proving for the umpteenth time that love knows no gender limitations or legal restrictions and will trump your whiny sanctimonious religious puling any given Sunday. Heathens!

It's getting more confusing by the minute, isn't it? I mean, Canada now has legal pot and legal gay marriage and universal health care and no known terrorist enemies and a relatively successful multiparty political system. They also have, according to U.N.'s Human Development Index, one of the highest qualities of life in the world. All coupled with a dramatically reduced rate of gun violence and far better gun-control legislation than the U.S., despite having the exact same per capita rate of gun ownership and gun-sport enthusiasm.

What the hell? How is this possible? Why aren't they scared to death like whiny red-state Americans? Why don't they want to kill each other along with anything that might threaten their access to televised hockey and cheap beer and yummy poutine?

Aren't they aware of what's happening in the world? Don't they know they are openly hated for their freedoms and their cafés and their vinegared french fries? Aren't they human, fer Chrissakes? Oh, red states. How confused and irritated you must be.

After all, unlike the U.S., Canada backed the Kyoto Treaty (along with 165 other heathen nations). They also spend more per capita on education and less on health-care overhead than the U.S. They have a $10 billion federal surplus, a new record. They are not, as of yet, abusing the hell out of their vast natural resources (freshwater, huge forests, oil and natural gas, mineral deposits, etc.) and embarrassing themselves on a global scale every single day and making a mockery of their constitution or their citizens' civil liberties. What the hell is wrong with them?

Yes yes, I know, Canada's universal health care is flawed and not always of the best quality, and a great many Canadians think their prime minister is a bit of a schmuck and they hate paying taxes and of course they can be all profitable and progressive when they don't have a massive bogus unwinnable war to pay for, one run by a ravenous and fiscally idiotic federal government, and they only have one-tenth of our population and one-fiftieth of our desperate consumeristic gluttony. They have it easy, right?

Remember, Canada is boring. Canada is rarely in the news. Canada has no massive belching socioeconomic engine like America does, what with our NASCAR and Hollywood and Fox News and bad porn and the absolute best medical care on the planet despite how only a tiny fraction of us have access to it while the rest languish in bloated abusive HMOs and poverty and disease and 40 percent of us have no access to health care whatsoever. Take that, Canada! Oh wait.

We hate gays and love guns and think pot is evil but hand out Prozac and Zoloft like Chiclets. Meanwhile (as "Bowling for Columbine" so beautifully illuminated), Canadians leave their doors unlocked and don't feature violence and death on every newscast and still value community and diversity and discussion over solipsism and protectionism and a general hatred of foreigners and the French. See? We rule! Oh wait.

All of which makes you wonder: how many more countries will it take? How many more nations will have to, for example, prove that gun licensing works, or that gay-marriage legislation is a moral imperative, or that health care for all is mandatory for a nation's well being, before America finally looks at itself and says, whoa, damn, we are so silly and small and wrong? Is there any number large enough? After the announcement that gay Chinese and gay Russians may legally marry and grow lovely gardens of marijuana as they all get free dental care, will America remain terrified of nipples and queers?

Canadians. So mellow. So laid back. So gay. So not producing any truly superlative modern-rock music or ultraviolent buddy-cop movies and not actively siccing Wal-Mart or Starbucks or Paris Hilton on the rest of the world like a goddamn cancer. They're just so ... nice. And boring. And calm. And solid. And friendly.

And they simply beat us senseless on the whole open-minded, progressive thing. Kicked our flag-wavin' butts. Trounced our egomaniacal self-righteous selves and made the red states look even more foolish and backward than the whole world already knows them to be.

They did it. Canada made the whole gay marriage issue look effortless and obvious and healthy, and a massive black rain of hellfire did not pour down upon them and the very idea of hetero marriage did not immediately explode and their economy did not unravel like all the sneering cardinals and right-wing nutballs screamed it would. We must ask, one last time: what the hell is wrong with them?

Oh wait. Maybe we should rephrase. What the hell, we should be asking, is wrong with us?

Listening to Robin S - Show Me Love (Stonebridge mix) from the album "Club Sounds Vol. 27 CD2"

Have your next seven person board meeting....on a bike....a VERY BIG bike.

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 08:31:00 -0800

Now your board members can't say that the board meeting is stopping them from getting any exercise! Just have it while riding the Conference Bike! Although you would probably be well advised to make sure that the person steering doesn't also have to chair or do secretarial tasks.

Massive Change - the future of global design

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 22 Oct 2004 20:32:00 -0700

This is an extremely long post on Massive Change, the multi-media exhibition that is intended to be the starting point for a global discussion on the role of design in creating our world. Here is a bit from their website that gives you a sense of the goals of the project.

Finally...Some nanotech that makes sense...odor-killing socks

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 27 Sep 2004 13:58:00 -0700

Sure it would be nice to have a googlebajillion MIP processor or some nano-opto-electronics to speed up your internet connection or a petabyte of storage on your keychain fob but these people are working on something that REALLY matters: odor-killing socks.

Open any Kryptonite bike-lock with a Bic Pen in 2 seconds

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 17 Sep 2004 07:30:00 -0700

Ouch. This article from Wired Magazine confirms that the 50 year old barrel lock design used in all Krypto bike locks and in many other applications, can be opened with a Bic Pen. The funny part is that this has been known for at least twelve years. This story illustrates so many things.

• It has been common knowledge but Kryptonite has not done anything about it; now that the poop has hit the fan, they will "upgrade" owners to a different lock - for a fee;

• locks are funny things in that they are lousy, and we know they are lousy, but they are adequate so we continue to buy and use them - not because they're GOOD - but because they make us FEEL GOOD.

• there is an interesting cross-over point in this story. Real computer security professionals know that "security through obscurity" is a doomed strategy and that if there is a security hole, you are better off to report it and patch it, than to hope it goes under the radar. It's funny to watch that ethos play out here in the meatspace world.

U.S. National Cancer Institute announces 5 year nano-medicine funding plan

Troy Angrignon — Tue, 14 Sep 2004 07:22:00 -0700

Here is a Reuters article on the National Cancer Institute's new $145M USD nano-medicine funding plan.

Fantastic business to build: Pro-active wellness systems (fitness, nutrition, support, education, sport, coaching) for the over 60 crowd

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 06 Sep 2004 11:55:00 -0700

This article and many other articles like it point out the coming demographic bubble. What I always notice is that the responses are always very pro-active. They assume that the seniors will enter their golden age with problems and then degrade from there when that does not have to be the case at all.

I think that a fantastic business opportunity exists in building a complete system including gyms and fitness clubs, books, educational materials, coaching, social network-type online/offline communities, kinesiologists, high-level athletic coaches, and athletic therapists to grab seniors as they head into their 60's and to get them from their entry point up to their maximal health capacity as quickly as possible so that they will live better, longer, more active, healthier lives. The ones who go first can then be there to coach the next round of entrants. The money spent on this would probably be 1/100 of the medical cost to just wait for these people to age and start to break down.

Of course, not all seniors will be interested in this. But to capture a large portion of them would still do wonders for our society, for them, and for overall healthcare costs.

Ideally, these funds would come OUT of the medical establishment budget (which they would fight tooth and nail.) That may not be possible, so it may have to come from the users themselves.

Study: 29,000 people, 52 countries, ten years, 262 scientists = Global causes of heart attack are the same: cholesterol profile (50%), smoking (36%), diabetes, high blood pressure, fat belly, stress, inadequate fruits and vegetables, lack of exercise.

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 30 Aug 2004 00:27:00 -0700

This article at Newsday.com talks about the release of the findings of a major study being presented at the Annual Meeting of the European Society of Cardiology.

The research [...] followed 29,000 people in 52 countries. It took a decade and 262 scientists to complete the work, which, according to the editor of The Lancet medical journal, is probably the most robust study on heart disease risk factors ever conducted.

The scientists, who concluded that about 90 percent of the risk factors for heart attacks can be prevented, are scheduled to published the findings in The Lancet next week.

[...] "It is clear that not a single continent, not a single civilization, not a single race, can be spared from cardiovascular disease, which will hit humankind more dangerously than the Black Death in the Middle Ages," said Bassand, who was not connected with the study or the publication. "What we need is political action."

[...] A bad cholesterol profile, measured using a new test considered better than the standard one that looks at the balance between good HDL cholesterol and bad LDL cholesterol, was the most important risk factor.

Smoking was the next most important player, followed by diabetes, high blood pressure and a fat belly.

Stress came next, followed by inadequate fruit and vegetable intake, then lack of exercise. Light to moderate alcohol consumption was found to be of slight benefit.

[...] The study implies that the main way to tackle the problem is societal change, including better urban planning and health-promoting food policies and advertising regulations, experts said.

The study comes on the heels of a World Health Organization vote in May to implement a global strategy on diet and exercise aimed at combatting obesity, diabetes, heart disease and other illness linked to an unhealthy lifestyle.

White House lied about air quality post 9/11. This is what the EPA Inspector General says in their new and damning 160 page report

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 19 Aug 2004 12:48:00 -0700

Here are a couple of articles on the new report from the Inspector General of the EPA where he states that the White House directly changed the language in the press releases before they were releaased to the public around the time of 9/11.

Now there is still a huge amount of pollution, possibly including PCBs, Mercury, dioxins, asbestos, and others permeating the buildings across Lower Manhattan.

I actually understand why, from a National Security perspective, the nation-state would insist that it was okay to go to work. They needed the financial district to be rebuilt as soon as possible and didn't want to scare people away from doing that.

But it is unconscionable to now have those people who may have sacrificed their long-term health for that effort, to not be taken care of. Apparently as many as 40% of the people affected do not have any healtchare coverage at all.

Here is a quote from one of the articles:

QUOTE

I think also the most important thing I think out of the report that has not gotten a lot of attention is that the I.T.'s office looked at the current clean up that the E.P.A., finally after months and months of criticism and public outcry, agreed it was going to do a clean up of lower Manhattan, but decided only to do residential apartments and only those where people requested it. The inspector general's report says quite clearly that this clean up is inadequate--that the only way that a real clean up of downtown Manhattan can happen is, number one, if buildings are cleaned up as systems. If you have a central air conditioning system and three or four apartments want to be cleaned up but the whole building is not cleaned up that pollution can travel through the HVAC system back into apartments that have been cleaned.

The Inspector General is recommending that buildings be cleaned all together, all at once and also the inspector general is saying that the commercial office buildings have to be cleaned, not just residential buildings. And the E.P.A.'s response to that is that’s going to cost a lot of money. So the inspector general reminds E.P.A. in his rebuttal or her rebuttal that President Bush and Christie Todd Whitman originally said that no expense should be spared for the people of lower Manhattan. I think that is the battle that is still being waged by people like Congressman Jerry Nadler and Senator Hillary Clinton. I think they will have a press conference today about it--that the full clean up of lower Manhattan still has to be completed because if there were pollutants, and there were, that made their way into buildings that have not been properly cleaned, then that pollution and those toxic chemicals are still there, circulating in the air.

UNQUOTE

Macro-structural evolution and continuity despite micro-structural decay, dissolution, and death. How do brains, bodies, ant farms, or civilizations persist when small parts of them die every day/hour/minute?

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 12 Jul 2004 10:49:00 -0700

This article on the Science & Consciousness review discusses the fact that brains appear to be persistent and consistent but their actual physical molecules are recycling in days, hours, and minutes. This makes me think of Steven Johnson's excellent book Emergence: The Connected Lives Of Ants Brains Cities And Software wherein he discusses the life cycle of ant colonies from birth to death which have an arc of months or years, despite the fact that the ants themselves live only weeks (not sure if I have the timelines correct but that's the basic gist of it.)

Another author who may be able to she light on this would be Ken Wilber in his book, A Brief History of Everything. His principle of holons (all things are both a whole and a part of something else larger which is also a whole) would certainly encapsulate (no pun intended) the findings in the Sci-Con article about how the whole shapes the parts as much as the parts shape the whole.

This also feeds into kinesiology and athletic rehabilitation theory around why the body continues to have persistent injury sites even though the molecules themselves are being replaced on a weekly or monthly basis.

It appears that for better or worse, the whole reinforces the new parts coming in and keeps them in the same functional or dysfunctional role/position that they were in before.

Nanospeheres: 100% success-rate non-invasive cancer killing nanobits

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 11 Jul 2004 11:00:00 -0700

From one of my favourite newsletters, The Harrow Group Technology Report, comes this article on nanospheres, tiny little bits of material that were used in an amazingly successful cancer killing experiment:

As published in pages 171 - 176 of Issue 2 of the June 25 Cancer Letters (an abstract is freely available while the full text requires a subscription), and summarized in a June 21, 2004 Rice University press release, the researchers created silica spheres 20-times smaller than a blood cell and then added a surface layer of gold. One characteristic of these spheres is that, depending on their size and the ratio of silica to gold, they can be "tuned" to respond to particular wavelengths of light. In this case they're sensitive to near-infrared light, which passes through normal tissue without hindrance and without causing damage.

Once injected into the veins of test mice that all had significant cancer tumors, the researchers waited six hours for the nanospheres to circulate through the body. Because of a characteristic of cancer tumors, that their internal blood vessels are poorly formed and tend to leak fluid into the surrounding tissue (the tumor), the gold nanospheres tended to collect within the tumors. Then, the researchers applied a near-infrared laser to the skin over the tumor areas. Although the healthy tissue was not affected, the nanospheres became quite hot as they absorbed the near-infrared light, raising the temperature in the tumor tissue by "around 50-degrees C". And the tumors were destroyed. (When the laser was applied to areas that did not have nanosphere-holding tumors below them, there was virtually no temperature change.)

Within ten days, the nanosphere-treated group of mice was cancer-free and continued to live a normal lifespan!

On the other hand, the tumors in two control groups (one receiving only saline injections plus the near-infrared light, and another group receiving no treatment), continued to grow "rapidly," causing the mice in these two groups to die in 10 to 12 days respectively.