"Outside Online's Mount Everest correspondent, Jane Bromet, spoke with Frederic Bloomquist in Nepal. Bloomquist is a Swedish filmmaker who is documenting Goran Kropp's incredible trip by bicycle from Stockholm to Nepal. In late April he began his completely unaided climb of Mount Everest--no Sherpas, no fixed ropes, just Goran and his gear. Here's an update of the trip from Frederic Bloomquist"

Jello: This guy bicycled continuously, from Stockholm to Nepal (12,500km), then summitted mount everest, alone, without oxygen, stood up there and beheld the natural beauty of the earth for four whole minutes until his fingers turned blue from oxygen deprivation, came down to base camp, rested up, then bicycled back to Sweden. He was attacked in Iran, jacked in Bulgaria. But he made it. Tragically, he later fell off a mountain and died. But man... what a life lived. Straight pimpin...

Another new hero of mine.

I'm currently training to bicycle from Manali to Leh (475km, climbing up to 17,500 feet) in August, and its real hard to do that, so I'm memeing all these guys that make that feat look miniscule in comparison.

Goran Kropp: A Swede, his bike, 12,000 kilometers, and Everest

This guy rides his bike between mountains, and climbs them, for months at a time, in over 50 countries so far. He is so hardcore, he brings his own morphine, scalpels, thread and needle in case he has to perform self surgery and stitch himself up in the middle of nowhere. He is my hero. Oh my god, this guy is tough. Hello bicycle cowboy.

I found this while researching high altitude bike runs, in preparation for my attempt at making the Manali to Leh run in August, which will take me to heights of 17,500 feet.

Corax: Around the World by Bicycle

] Husain Haqqani, a thoughtful Pakistani scholar now
] teaching at Boston University, remarked to me: "When
] people like myself say American values must be emulated
] and America is a bastion of freedom, we get Guantánamo
] Bay thrown in our faces. When we talk about the America
] of Jefferson and Hamilton, people back home say to us:
] 'That is not the America we are dealing with. We are
] dealing with the America of imprisonment without trial.'"

Friedman is fucking pissed about Gitmo.

Just Shut It Down - New York Times

I don't know if this book is good or not, cause it hasn't prevented me from being fucked yet. But it seems like it just might. Serves as a decent intro to someone clueless about startups.

High Tech Start Up: The Complete Handbook For Creating Successful New High Tech Companies

Holy fucking shit.

daynews.ru - Tokyo purse snatcher gets nailed

I am not worried about the rise of the cultural conservatives. I am worried about the disappearance of an internationalist, pro-American business elite.

C.E.O.'s, M.I.A.

] "The more compelling our journalism, the angrier the
] radical right of the Republican Party gets," he
] explained. "That's because the one thing they loathe more
] than liberals is the truth. And the quickest way to be
] damned by them as liberal is to tell the truth."

After reading this I got the feeling he's more than a little pissed off at these guys.

Bill Moyers Fights Back

] One reason I'm in hot water is because my colleagues
] and I at NOW didn't play by the conventional rules of
] Beltway journalism. Those rules divide the world into
] democrats and republicans, liberals and conservatives
] and allow journalists to pretend they have done their
] job if, instead of reporting the truth behind the news,
] they merely give each side an opportunity to spin the
] news.

...

] Hear me: an unconscious people, an indoctrinated people,
] a people fed only partisan information and opinion that
] confirm their own bias, a people made morbidly obese in
] mind and spirit by the junk food of propaganda is less
] inclined to put up a fight, ask questions and be skeptical.
] And just as a democracy can die of too many lies, that kind
] of orthodoxy can kill us, too.

This is quite a rant...

Democracy Now! | Bill Moyers Responds to CPB's Tomlinson Charges of Liberal Bias:

] If you work your way down the Forbes 400 making an x next
] to the name of each person with an MBA, you'll learn
] something important about business school. You don't even
] hit an MBA till number 22, Phil Knight, the CEO of Nike.
] There are only four MBAs in the top 50. What you notice
] in the Forbes 400 are a lot of people with technical
] backgrounds. Bill Gates, Steve Jobs, Larry Ellison,
] Michael Dell, Jeff Bezos, Gordon Moore. The rulers of the
] technology business tend to come from technology, not
] business. So if you want to invest two years in something
] that will help you succeed in business, the evidence
] suggests you'd do better to learn how to hack than get an
] MBA. [3]

This is an excellent article. One hint, though: Your angel money doesn't have to amount to much if you're willing to work in a shack in India ;)

How to Start a Startup

] The small town of Galena, Alaska, is tired to pay 28
] cents/kwh for its electricity, three times the national
] average. Today, Galena "is powered by generators burning
] diesel that is barged in during the Yukon River's
] ice-free months," according to Reuters. But Toshiba,
] which designs a small nuclear reactor named 4S (for
] "Super Safe, Small, & Simple"), is offering a free
] reactor to the 700-person village, reports the New York
] Times (no reg. needed).

[ I've posted about this before... I think it looks very promising. -k]

Alaska Village Moves from Diesel to 'Micro-Nuke'