Troy Angrignon - Adventure Capitalist

Inspired by Tim Ferris - working a week in Paris WORKED

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 13:04:28 -0800

I read an awesome book recently that made me rethink many things about location, work, and business. It was Tim Ferriss' book which I highly recommend.

"
"The 4-Hour work Week: Escape 9-5, Live Anywhere, and Join the New Rich" (Timothy Ferris)

I recently had reason to head to Paris for personal reasons. I thought I would use the trip as an opportunity to try working somewhere other than Vancouver - to see if it's really possible to relocate and still work? Of course, in Ferriss' world, you only work 4 hours a week. Unfortunately I didn't get to experience THAT part of the plan.

It worked. Here's how I did it.

I moved all of my landline numbers into a Vonage account about a month prior - personal home phone, company land-line from San Francisco, company land-line from Vancouver - the works. I set up one voicemail box for all of the numbers and forwarded that to Simulscribe which transcribes voicemails to email (and does a pretty darned great job at it). Then I set up the cell to roll-over to the same Simulscribe address.

Once in Paris, I plugged in the phone and Vonage box. And realized that whoops - you can't plug 110V devices into 220V. I had fried BOTH of them. Or so I thought. It turned out that fortune favours the stupid. One of the plug converters was fried so it never passed any current through.

So I bought some transformers (220V to 110V step down transformers) for my other various chargers, bought a couple of plug converters (for the Apple power supply and the new phone that I bought) and plugged it all in. It took a couple of tries but after a call to Vonage tech support, the Vonage box was up and running on the local DSL connection and voila - my phone was plugged in and ready to receive calls at any of my numbers.

I have to admit that it was freeing (and a bit strange) to have people look at my calling code and say, "OH! You're in Vancouver!" and then have to explain that no, in fact I was in Paris, ten hours ahead of them! The sound quality was as good as it is in Vancouver, which is to say, on par with the regular plain old telephone lines that I had before.

There was only one glitch and that was more to do with the Siemens phone than anything else. It would ring but only at the moment it was actually ringing, could you hit the "ACCEPT" button. In between rings, it didn't look "pick up able". Weird.

But that very small issue aside, it means that with a laptop, skype, Gatherplace (for screen sharing), Simulscribe, a good DSL connection, and a Vonage adapter - have equipment, will travel.

I hear that Puerto Vallarta has good DSL... Or maybe Costa Rica....

Bugatti Veyron races an EF-2000 jet fighter - this is AWESOME

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 18 Nov 2007 11:36:08 -0800

I found this stunning YouTube video on John Chow's blog here.

The Bugatti has to race a mile, turn around, and race back. The EF-2000 has to take off, race a mile into the air vertically and then turn around and fly towards the ground another mile and then cross the same finish line as the car.

VERY well done and hilarious that somebody bothered to do it at all!

30 Days of Sustainability 2007 is coming!

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 21 Mar 2007 01:32:15 -0700

30 days of Sustainability is once again happening in Vancouver. This year it runs from April 22 - May 21, 2007. I highly recommend that people go check out the temporary site and sign up for updates. The full site will launch sometime in the next few weeks.

Patriot Act abuse: couple being overtly sexual on a plane have been charged under the Patriot Act. WTF?

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 17 Nov 2006 11:59:50 -0800

THIS is the reason you don't allow overly broad stupid legislation like the Patriot Acts I and II and the most recent Military Commission Act to pass. They are always unintended uses that far exceed the original intent of the law. In this case, a couple in their mid-forties were being overtly sexual on a Southwest Airlines flight and have been charged under the Patriot Act (which was designed as a tool to charge terrorists.)

What a joke. Why are Americans putting up with this? WAKE UP. Unbelievable.

I mean, don't get me wrong. They should have been hauled off the plane if he was threatening the staff, but charge them with mischief, not under the fracking terrorism act.

Craig Ferguson had a funny episode on this story: "When the other passengers saw these goings-on, they were surprised and thought....'What, entertainment on a Southwest Airlines flight?'" Funny. But not.

Web 2.0 Summit 2006 - Day 2 / "It's all about the infrastructure" by Debra Chrapaty, Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Operations Group

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 09:44:02 -0800

Day 2 notes from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA:

[my analysis and notes are in these square brackets.]

"It's all about the infrastructure" by Debra Chrapaty, Corporate Vice President of Windows Live Operations

The cloud sounds romantic but it's 1.5 million pounds of batteries, 1 million pounds of steel, 300 miles of cable. Not so romantic. (Image courtesty of Niall Kennedy's Flickr photos)
Opex and Capex are THE KEYS: If your revenue goes up a hockey stick....and your CapEx and OpEx curves go up with it...you haven't succeeded

[finally!! Somebody else is talking about this!! This is super critical in SaaS. It's easy to make a company deliver apps over the web. It's hard to do it in a way that you can serve a lot of people cost effectively and make more profit as you scale.]

Scale: can you scale up to 3.5GB/minute TOMORROW?
Reach: Microsoft is running services in 235 countries around the world
Servers: This is critical

configration optimization: go for standardization / optimization
Density: watts/square foot is important; drive density up by 200% you can drop power costs 40% (!).
Storage costs: There has been an 85% drop in a Terabyte of data THIS YEAR.
Technology evolution: staying on the curve helps you be operationally efficient.

Data center critical success factors. (there are more but she wouldn't share them)

connectivity: critical
location, location, location (close to connectivity and supplies and resources and people)
materials and equipment: (if you buy a million pounds of steel and steel prices go up....you have a $5M bill)
trades and labour: we have waited months for an electrical person
power:

we now count in terms of megawatts not square footage. That is a key metric.
30-40% of your power usage is COOLING!!!! so build green!
looking at solar - it's incredibly important to us
Opening a data center in Quincy Washington that is completeley carbon neutral

Additional useful links:

Web 2.0 Summit 2006 - Day 2 / Atoms and Bits - a conversation with the CIO of Fed Ex

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 16 Nov 2006 08:27:57 -0800

Day 2 notes from Web 2.0 Summit in San Francisco, CA:

[my analysis and notes are in these square brackets.]

"Atoms and Bits" with Robert B. Carter, CIO for FedEx

Check out the Youtube video Fedex Ant Hill. The video shows the pattern of their traffic flows.
I don't really remember much of what he said! Okay, the video was interesting....

Why is $10/gallon gas a great thing? And what does it have to do with evolution, adaptation, and local economic growth? Everything.

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 10 May 2006 10:10:00 -0700

I think I have found the magic number. Every fifth article from Mark Morford is so brilliant, insightful, and articulate that I need to post most, if not all, of it here for my readers. Today is the day for another.

In one fell swoop, Mark has managed to hit on a whole bunch of my favourite subjects: the environment, structure driving behaviour, adaptation, complex system effects, social policy, cultural behaviour, global policy....he has hit it all.

The archive of his writings can be found here. The current article is below:

Bring On The $6 Gallon Of Gas
It would revolutionize America. It would make us all better humans. But could you handle it?

Wednesday, May 10, 2006

No wait, not six. To hell with that. Make it 10. Ten bucks a gallon, no matter what the going rate for a barrel of light sweet crude. That would so completely, violently, brilliantly do it. Revolutionize the country. Firebomb our pungent stasis. Change everything. Don't you agree?

Here's what we could do: Give gas discounts to cab drivers (at least initially) and metro transit systems and low-income folks, those who have to drive their busted-up '78 Honda Civics to their jobs scrubbing restaurant toilets and flipping burgers and vacuuming the residual cocaine from the seat cushions of numb SUV owners. Everyone else, 10 bucks a gallon, across the board. Eleven for premium.

It would take some finessing. Maybe also give a price break to some truckers and trucking companies (so vital to the overall economy), but not so much to global delivery companies (FedEx, DSL et al.), because not doing so would force them to raise shipping rates and force you (and me) to reconsider buying everything online and hence will encourage you to shop locally once again, thus reviving a stagnant local economy.

Voilá -- gas crisis, oil crisis, warmongering agenda, pollution issues, road rage, traffic congestion, urban decay, oil profiteering -- all completely almost totally somewhat solved. Or at the very least, dramatically, gloriously shifted toward ... I don't know what. Something better. Something more humane, less greedy, more sustainable. Could it work? How outraged and indignant would you be to have to pay that much for gas? How long would that feeling last?

Take it one logical step further. Set up a national system whereby if you want to buy a vehicle that gets less than 20 mpg in the city, you pay a $1,000 Global Warming Surcharge and that money goes straight to a local organic farm, or school, or environmental think tank. And if it gets under 12 mpg, make it three grand, plus a slap to your face from a small, angry child. Got yourself a shiny new Hummer? You pay five grand extra, you can only buy gas once a month and all the truly beautiful women of the world will shun you like Charlie Sheen (oh wait, that already happens). See? Revolution is easy.

What, too far fetched? Too implausible? Not at all. Sure, 10 bucks a gallon would be extremely painful for a while. Citizens would wail. Commuters would scream and stomp and die. But then we would do what we always do. We would evolve. Adapt. Systems would quickly transform, habits would instantly shift. It would be easier to implement than the goddamn mess that is Medicare reform, far easier than Lots of Children Left Behind, more viable and livable than the toxic existence of Homeland Security and the disgusting Patriot Act.

But of course such an idea is also, right now, absolutely impossible. It will never happen -- not 10 bucks, not six, not even a buck more per gallon -- and not just because no politician anywhere on either side of the aisle has the nerve to come out and suggest that Americans might actually need to drive less and conserve and make a change in their gluttonous habits. This is, of course, absolute death for a politician. Tell Americans what to do? Dare to suggest that they're doing something wrong, or that their behaviors are dangerous and destructive and irresponsible? Are you insane? This is America! We're flawless!

No, the primary reason such reform won't happen is because, simply put, we are the most entitled nation in the world, perhaps in the entire galaxy. Americans are trained from birth to believe we deserve as much as we desire of every exploitable resource on the planet, be it water or natural gas or oil, coal or salmon or steaks, Big Macs or diapers or iPods or bizarre varieties of blue ketchup. It is, in a word, perilous. It is also, in another, slightly more devastating word, our downfall.

Look, I adore cars. I adore driving and I cherish open roads and smooth horsepower and a musical exhaust note and I fully believe most German automotive engineers should be sent gifts of candy and Peet's coffee and porn. I would, like most everyone else, be absolutely loathe to give much of it up.

But you know what? Big freaking deal. I could learn to live without so much. I like to think I would be able to step back and see the bigger picture, realize what is and isn't absolutely essential, what does and does not absolutely define my identity and my life, modify accordingly and laugh/shrug/sigh it off in the process. In other words, I could make it work. And so could you.

Ever been in a citywide blackout? One that lasted for more than a few hours and stretched on into the night? Ever see people suddenly shift gears and become astoundingly helpful and polite and sharing? Happens in a matter of moments. Disasters do it. Katrina did it, on a scale we haven't seen in years. Sept. 11 did it, emotionally speaking, before BushCo whored that tragedy and turned it into the most vile political poker chip in American history. Shocking change brings people together. Brings out the best in humans. Or at least, makes you rethink what's truly important in your life.

Another example: You know what would happen if guns -- all guns, everywhere -- were banned outright tomorrow? Well, right off, nothing much. Criminals would still commit crimes. Lawsuits would skyrocket. The NRA would shoot itself in the face in screaming protest. Crime rates would dance all over the map. It would be a little ugly.

But then something remarkable would happen. Over a short blip of time -- say about 10 or 20 years, as gun manufacturing ceased and the culture of gun violence died down and our favorite death object was less visible in the news and in video games and on TV and in every aspect of modern life, well, guess what? Guns would begin to disappear. From the culture, from the drug dealers, from the streets, from public consciousness. They would turn into a sad relic, like eight-track tapes, like the bubonic plague, like the Miami Sound Machine. Think 20 years is too long? BS. It is but an eyeblink, a twitch, a faint toe spasm in the great long orgasm of time.

This is the unappreciated, under-reported magic of the human animal. We are infinitely adaptable. We can accommodate far more than politicians and pundits and the morally knotted Christian right would ever have you believe.

Ten bucks a gallon. Imagine the mad scramble by carmakers to invent new ultra-gas-sipping, enviro-friendly technologies. Imagine communities coming together for ride-sharing and mass transit. Bike sales would skyrocket. Walking shoes would be the new bling item. We would mourn the loss of cool car culture even as we celebrated the birth of, say, moped culture. Telecommuting would explode. Sure, the superrich would still tool around in their bloated Escalades, oblivious to the world around them, thinkin' the world is their dumb bitch.

So what? The rest of us can simply roll our eyes and laugh, evolve and sharpen and sigh, and wonder what great change we can embark upon next.

Hey NASA, we're going to call it the Vancouver-levator. (or how Vancouver's geeks and visionaries will build the space elevator that allows us to leap into the solar system.)

Troy Angrignon — Fri, 07 Apr 2006 10:47:41 -0700

Space Elevator illustration by Kenn Brown and Chris Wren from Mondolithic
(Vancouver's own brilliant illustrators with a global fan base!)

I recently had the pleasure of meeting Steven Jones, the leader of the UBC Snowstar team - a team of UBC students who are entering the NASA Beam Power and Tether Strength Challenges - two contests that are used to encourage research and development in technologies that could be used to build a space elevator.

The challenges are held during the Elevator Games in Mountain View California by the Spaceward Foundation; a group dedicated the development of a Space Elevator. The technologies that are required to win the competitions will have many uses and one of those will be in the construction of a long cable in stable geosynchronous orbit around the earth that will allow for equipment and people to be transported to space on a space elevator at a fraction of the current cost.

In the 2006 NASA Beam Power Challenge the team has to provide a robot that is at least 10kg and capable of climbing a 60 m cable in 60 seconds but it can not have any batteries or other stored energy on board. All of the power must be transmitted wirelessly from the ground by a beam source that the team also has to provide.

In the 2006 Tether Strength Challenge teams must create a 2 gram cable that forms a continuous loop with a circumference of 2 meters and is stronger than the cable supplied by Spaceward that is allowed to weigh 3 grams. UBC Snowstar is one of the few teams in the world to have experience at the Elevator Games through their participation in 2005 and in the Beam Power competition they were given the only award at the competition: "Most Likely to Win in 2006".

The New York Times just ran a great story which the Snowstar team uploaded onto their site in a PDF.

If you are interested in helping Steve and his team by sponsoring them, please contact him directly at info@snowstar.ca.

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

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 05 Mar 2006 22:13:11 -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!

Business idea: Backups of all of your web-based services in one spot and also to a hard drive or DVD.

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 03 Oct 2005 14:38:42 -0700

So now that many of my applications live on the web, I'm kind of wondering..how do I back them up? I mean, I know that THEY are backing up (aren't they?) But what if the company evaporates one day trapping all of my precious data inside?

What I would like is a backup service that connects to all of the major web-based services (Salesforce, yahoo, flickr, gmail, etc.) and that picks up a copy of my data in some raw, simple, easy to import format so that if a crisis were to occur, that I would be able to at least look up the data, even if I couldn't do more than that with it. Salesforce could be publishing my subset of data as an Excel workbook with worksheets for each table. Gmail could backup in MBOX format. Flickr could backup as JPEGs with tags.

With the exception of photo and movie data (because of the potential volume), I could pull the entire dataset down onto my own spare USB hard drive or set of DVDs.

Any one want to put together a business plan for this one? I don't want to build it, but I do want to use it.

(Boris Mann's "how do I backup my Flickr photos?" question and then my own "how do I backup my Salesforce and Gmail" questions are what prompted this posting.)

Web 2.0 Primer Part 1: Web 2.0 - So what and who cares? Why should you bother jumping into this at all?

Troy Angrignon — Sun, 02 Oct 2005 16:45:24 -0700

Okay, here goes my attempt at creating a totally incomplete, biased, and opinionated summary of why you should care about Web 2.0 as a non-techie geek who can barely use their computer to begin with:

Why do it at all?

· Web 2.0 is about connecting people: it won't change the world, it won't make money irrelevant, it won't revolutionize poverty or the gap between the have and have-nots. But it will connect people across the planet in ways that we are only now beginning to understand.

· If you don’t build your online identity, somebody else will. If you haphazardly build identity chunks or worse, don't pay attention at all, then you either don't show in Google at all (you are who???) or what shows up is the stuff that OTHER people are saying about you.

· Harness the wisdom and energy of your network: these tools allow you to tap into the wisdom of crowds and the collective energy of your team, group, company, or organization.

· Learn faster: With many people working on many problems in collaboration, all of them can learn faster and build on each others’ knowledge more easily.

· Be more visible on Google: If you, your company, your products, and your issues are not at the top of the Google ranks, then you’re effectively invisible. Web 2.0 tools including blogs are the fastest way to fix that.

In the next post (Part 2) we will discuss how to go about building your online identity in a Web 2.0 world…

Report to the home planet: Earthlings break their own rules so that they can watch other earthlings run around with a small round object

Troy Angrignon — Wed, 21 Sep 2005 10:47:32 -0700

Report to the home planet:

Solar date: 4034583.9.20

The humans on this planet are very fond of their sports. One sport in particular which involves running around a field moving a round object from player to player seems to be popular across the many nations. It is so popular that the other day, despite the serious negative consequences they might face, a group of the humans convinced the pilot of their airship to contravene another nation's airspace, so that the passengers on the airship could watch this so called "soccer game". Their ability to be driven by multiple conflicting desires, in this case, a desire to uphold their air space regulations, and the conflicting desire to go watch some of their fellow humans run around a grassy field with a round object, seems to be a somewhat defining character trait of the entire species. Very curious.

Next report within 7 solar cycles.

Hmmmm, there seems to be a theme happening in the past few posts. Yes, it's one more smart car - now good for water-skiing!

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 18 Jul 2005 07:35:55 -0700

Okay, okay, THIS is my new favourite smart car. Sheesh, there are too many cool Smart cars!!!

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 15:32:35 -0700

My new SMART car

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 14 Jul 2005 08:02:16 -0700

Okay, this is by far, my favourite Smart car so far:

The best car ad I have ever seen

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 02 Dec 2004 11:32:44 -0800

I know a guy who knows one of the CGI animators who worked on this new Citroén advertisement. This is one of the best car ads I have ever seen.

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

Troy Angrignon — Mon, 01 Nov 2004 08:31:03 -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 20:32:14 -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.

Big Questions, Long Views, and the Intersection of Technology and Society (UPDATED Oct 30/05)

Troy Angrignon — Thu, 06 May 2004 00:44:06 -0700

The Universe is 14 billion years old and will either either re-collapse into itself, expand into a completely diluted state, or rip apart in its 36th billion year in a runaway expansion so violent that galaxies and planets will be torn asunder in a fraction of a second. How do we manage the polarity inherent in knowing that our influence on the universe at that scale is essentially zero balanced against the fact that here in our own very small sphere of influence, we can have an effect on things around us that only exist in this little slice of time?

The Earth formed about 4.5 billion years ago. 2 billion years ago, our first ancestors were microbes. It took 1.5 billion years before those microbes turned into something resembing fish, another 400m years for those fish to turn into mice-like creatures, another 90m years for those mice to evolve to apes, 9 m years for the apes to turn into proto humans and then we evolved from there. No matter what religion you are, you have to look at that in awe and wonder.

Now for the bad news. The sun in our solar system is expanding and it is expected that it will eventually absorb Mercury, Venus, and Earth, causing life here to only last for another half billion years. I am pretty sure that the last life forms left will be single-celled bacterium, cockroaches, and spammers. So the window of opportunity for life to develop here and then migrate throughout the rest of the solar system and Universe is about a billion years. Given that we didn't invent space travel until the first half billion were over, that window is now a half billion to get off the planet and out into the Universe. Given that we only have another half a billion years, shouldn't we all just get along, enjoy the sunset while it's that far away, and figure out how to get the hell off this planet? Of course, while we're here, we should do as much mountain biking, trail-running, paddling, travelling and exploring as we can.

By the time the Earth has hit 8 billion years, long after we are gone, the oceans will have vaporised and at the 12 billion year mark, Earth will have folded entirely into the sun. If the planet is going to be gone, does that mean I think that we should use up the precious natural resources pollute our biosphere while we are here? Of course not, that would be asinine and short-sighted. But then again, humans are not the best at extending their time-scales, nor at empathizing enough with future generations. Although that does seem to be changing in some small but important ways with the spread of the sustainable development movement. I may be a bit of an odd realist/pragmatist in the sustainability movement in that I'm not sure I believe in the implicit value of resources, plants, and animals on earth for their own sake. If they're all going to be gone anyway, that seems moot. But since these things took tens and hundreds of millions of years to develop, I do believe that we should learn from them (biology), design things based on them (biomimicry and nanotechnology), be efficient in our use of them so that we do not mortgage our children's future (sustainability), and learn how to build efficient systems so that we can spread out into the universe and live in harsher, resource constrained regions as we do so.

Of course, we're not good at passing along our knowledge on long time lines, and we're quite adaptable in the moment so maybe it is just the way of our species that we will consume all available resources where ever we go but that we will conserve it when we are pressed to do so. Sort of future-blind, but highly adaptable, with very little long-term memory. Which leads me to think that maybe Mr. Kurzweil's great leap forward really will be the best way for our species to spread itself.

Ray Kurzweil has calculated that by 2040, we will hit the inflection point of the technology development curve of mankind, known as the Singularity , an event horizon beyond which we can not possibly see with our tiny little massively parallel chemical-processing brains. By around 2040, $1000USD of computing power will be the equivalent of all human brain processing capacity on the earth combined (about 12 billion brains worth). He posits that in order for the technology development curve to be maintained, our inefficient genetic mutations will not be able to keep up, meaning that humans will essentially pass the "smart creature" torch to the robots and computers which will have the same brain processing capacity as us, but with MUCH faster substrate (silicon or otherwise, raher than our slow massively parallel chemical brains).

What is really great about this is that in a few more decades we may get to really explore questions around whether consciousness is something spiritual/other-worldly, or simply an emergent property of going beyond a particular threshold of neuronal capacity or simply a self-referential program that is convincing enough to appear conscious. I can't wait. Really.

Given Kurzweil's supposition about the double exponential rate of expansion of technology, that means there is a heck of a lot of stuff that will need to be brought to market in the next 35 years. Hence my interest in venture capital, angel investing, technology cycles and trends, and the tricky process of nurturing technology from idea to plan to funding to company to production, and eventually to some sort of exit. Hence I will be writing a lot on business and technology development.

Some of the most fascinating events are transpiring in the border wars between business, technology, society, and our natural environment. Bio-ethics - how will we use cloning? Nanotechnology - will it create autonomous gray-goo that will devour us and the earth? Bio-IT convergence - will we really build the Ceylons? What about the ability to project power and wage war - on a budget? According to Lord William Rees-Mogg and James Dale Davidson in "The Sovereign Individual", that is one of the key factors that contributes to massive historical inflection points. As technology changes the power equation, power-structures and economies follow suit. Consider: Osama Bin Laden, a multi-millionaire (who was supported by the U.S.), is now the enemy of the American goverment. They have for the first time in history chosen to target an individual rather than a nation-state. Primarily because of the alleged threat of relatively massive power (bio-weaponry) for minimal cost. I will rant, question, and point to interesting discussions in this area as they develop.

Finally, I have some more mundane, smaller-view areas that I am very interested in as well. They include but are not limited to: Complex Systems, Emergence theory, Health & Wellness, Environmental issues, Renewable Energy, Ethics, Fitness and sport, Humour, Interesting People, Nanotechnology, Philanthropy, Privacy/Security, Sustainable Development, and World Affairs.

I wish I could remember the author who said, "I do not write what I know, I write so that I may know myself." That was very wise. That is also a goal of this blog. Thanks for reading.