1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates was a man
3. Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

We can update this simple logical framework to prove that fame is totally awesome:

1. All men are mortal
2. Socrates was a man.
3. Oh! Women are mortal, too
4. Therefore Socrates (and women) are mortal
5. Except for Ray Kurzweil… he might not be, in a little while; if he tries hard enough.
6. But besides crazy people like Ray Kurzweil who’s probability for immortal survival is low–no! No probability! This is deduction.
7. No man has in the past not been mortal—OR a woman, or women—they’re all mortal too. Although is this still because Socrates was mortal?
8. Men and women, since they have been, have been mortal—with the exception of those around now, who we are waiting to decide upon.
9. AND women up until now; AND including kids in the near future whom we will keep an eye on. 9.1 The MEAN survival rate for mortal men and women… no, that’s probability. 9.2 Men and woman, as we know them by their regular descriptions, are mortal, as we have always seen to be the case.

10. Of course there might be a man who comes along, ambitious as Kurzweil when the technology is available, who might not be mostly mortal depending on the end of the universe. 10.1 But MOST men are mortal–AND women–and MOST of the time! 10.2 There might be more time from here on out then there has been, of course, so… 10.2 Technology does tend to get around this mortality business doesn’t it? 10.3 MOST men, MOST women, almost all HUMANS, are mortal until later; without technology, are mortal. 10.4 MOST HUMANS start out non-mortal and at some point… barring technology, surgery, medicine, other things humans invent; then they are mortal. 10.5 And then, of course, there’s that universe-has-got-to-end—entropy and all that—everybody’s got to be really, seriously be mortal. 10.6 The universe ends; doesn’t matter what you did. Boom. Mortal. Everybody since and you too. 10.7. DISCOUNTING the fact that some individuals, empowered by a, like, harnessed super-massive black hole; he or SHE could do something to trump even entropy, i.e. jet out of the known universe, but the probability—no, this is deduction—no room for probability. Everyone out of the super-massive blackholes! RIGHT now! Everybody out!

11. Everybody who was anybody has got to stop being anybody at some point.

12. Socrates was famous
13. All men and women at some point are famous (for a mean number of 15 minu—no!)
14. Therefore all men and woman will be famous
15. but only eventually at some point dead.
16. Well, that’s rubbish.
17. Ergo, ALL, no wait–MOST men, most of the time (and women)–most HUMANS, most of the time, are dead.
18. Therefore, most of humans are dead and not famous, most of the time. Q.E.D.

So there you have it. For the most part you will be dead and not famous. Get over it.

Moreover, the Flash plugin has historically been a resource hog. When I was doing more Flash development a few years ago, some fellow developers and I figured out that we could actually get the fan in a Pentium machine to turn on by running certain Flash scripts. What that means is Flash is eating up resources on the CPU at a ridiculous rate and heating up the chip. For Apple’s iPhone that would translate into both heat and lowered battery life. My bet, is that they want people to get used to the idea that the iPhone has great battery life and doesn’t heat up in your pocket. Then, when they do introduce Flash, consumers will more likely be aware of who is the correct party to blame when playing Desktop Tower Defense kills their iPhone.

I don’t really understand this criticism on several levels. The first problem is the idea that it’s a problem that 2% of Lulu’s titles are really supporting the other 98%. Perhaps you aren’t aware of how publishing companies, music labels and movie studios operate. They look for what they think will be hits, fund them, and hope that some of them make money. Most of them don’t. Most bands don’t get re-signed after a sophomore album. Lots of movies don’t make money. Thousands of (published) books never sell more than a few thousand copies before they go out-of-print—and some of those still win Pen/Faulkner and Pulitzer awards. The only thing that Lulu has done is turn the filtering process of what is successful over to audiences—the market decides. This puts the responsibility of marketing squarely on the shoulders of authors.

I don’t see anything wrong with that. Real creative work is 5% inspiration and 95% perspiration. So yeah, authors who are apathetic or uninterested in taking their work to the next level aren’t going to do well, but then, they never were, and you can’t blame Lulu for that. As for how the 2% are getting screwed by Lulu because they’re not switching to a POD or a “real” publisher; again, I just don’t see the problem. You keep the rights to the book. Market your work. Put it in the hands of reviewers, sell it, have a copy on you at all times. Use Lulu to organically build a fan base. Then, take your numbers to a small publisher and show them that if they opt-in on your next book, you come with a built-in audience. Lulu’s not going to stop you. But as opposed to traditional publishers, the onus to market your work is on you. And you know, if you talk to a lot of published authors you’ll find out that it’s not as if there was ever a guarantee that traditional publishers were ever going to do that good a job of marketing your book. Author’s will (even with traditional publishing) always have a responsibility to curate and sell their work (provided you care about having a career as such).

Mark Ruffalo and Martin Sheen and George Carlin are all men that I respect and admire for their talent. But they are not engineers, architects, and physicists. I respect your right to question the government’s investigation, but where here on your site are the opinions of professionals with valid arguments against the facts as they currently stand?

I really don’t think the 9/11 truth movement does itself any good at all by trying to change the physical facts of what happened. If you believe that someone was behind it, pursue who you think was responsible; but stop reducing the travesty of the event by claiming that it was something other than what it was. Calls came off those planes—to friends and loved ones. There were witnesses to these crimes who testified just before losing their lives. There were men on those planes who steered them into the towers. If you believe those men were paid by our government or secretly given access with weapons to the planes, that’s one thing. Publishing nonsense about missiles and cockpits being empty or how Hollywood stars don’t understand structural engineering isn’t helping your cause any.

Some of you may have noticed how quiet it’s been around Banapana lately (for about the last month). I am now prepared to reveal the reason why. I have been spending the last few weeks preparing my novel, “Carousel Cowboy,” for indpendent publication with Lulu. I’m currently in the typesetting stage, the cover is designed, and things look good for hitting my September 22nd deadline. I’m actually glad I went the independent route because it’s given me the freedom to do some things that I don’t think traditional publishers are quite ready to stick their necks out to do.

First and foremost, the entire book will be available on my fiction blog Troped. Secondly, many of the parts that were cut from the book will still be available on the blog. As you can see from the cover design, an email for the book’s narrator is prominent. That puts everyone who buys the book in direct contact with me, which I very much want to be the case. And finally, since the parts of the book and the blog coincide (the book is structured around posts as opposed to chapters) people can comment on the book by going to the blog entry of the same name and making their comments there. ((I’m not quite through posting it in its entirety. That will take another month or so. And it won’t be in the same order as the book until I implement a timeline function on the blog in a little while.)) Last but not least, publishing it myself allows me to release it under a Creative Commons license—same as the blog—reflecting my stance on copyright law. So stay tuned. ((And sign up for an email notification if the book’s release over at Troped.))

I also think the suit is really off the mark because it is utterly beside the point that Facebook has created a social-networking site. Been there, done that. What facebook has managed to do, that no other web site has, is create an intersite applications platform. Even now, as I post this, on my own blog, on my own server, this post is being injected into my Facebook news feed via the awesome Wordbook plugin. It turns out to be a dynamite way to update your friends about your blog. ((I’ve always felt that an email list was just too intrusive)) Perhaps that sounds trivial, but intersite networking through web service APIs is a good chunk of the future of the web. Some folks call it the mashup for short. ((Intersite web service API networking application is such a ridiculous phrase, it would probably net you $100,000 from a VC if you had the balls to say it in front of one.)) The mashup is one thing, establishing a site where regular non-coder folks can essentially create their own mashup page is why you should head over to the Yahoo Buzz Market and buy some Facebook shares. And if they ever go public, they’d be a pretty good real stockmarket bet too.

Wow. In this fantastic film clip from 1994, Dick Cheney eloquently explains why the US should NOT invade Iraq. I suppose, if shown the clip today, he would just say that 9/11 changed everything. Surreal.

Needless to say, I’ve started to get a better handle on the blog’s theme, and one thing that occurred to me is that banapana, as a word, has actually come to have a slightly different definition for me then just silliness. In fact, the recent bridge collapse in Minneapolis brought this meaning into focus as I watched reporters gather information (some accurate, some false) and generally frenzy like sharks. ((By the way, did anyone else get an auto insurance ad before seeing the video clip of the bridge collapsing? Is that just me, or is that callous?)) So, I dropped in on Urban Dictionary, and threw up this suggestion for the meaning of banapana:

“The distortion of reality that results from the chaos of information produced by news media swarming on a story.”

The fact that the press is in a constant battle to get their headlines first because they depend on ratings for profit, oftentimes means they don’t get things right. I mean, have you ever read the corrections in a magazine or newspaper? The print medium is fairly well edited and they still get a lot of stuff wrong. But that bad information permeates through the noosphere and can sometimes hang around for a while, influencing decisions (poorly).