Now and then I have to steer myself over to the conspiracy wing of the Internet. There are so many conspiracy theories out there that you have to assume some of them are true—if only in part. Some part of me has no question that our government is nefarious enough to act out covertly against its own citizens, but when the facts start becoming visibly distorted—look at the domain on that link again, because the report is not coming from Ananova—you have to question the motives of the conspiracy theorists themselves. Worse still, rather than present coherent data or evidence, they point to the fact that Hollywood stars are asking the “same questions.” I don’t know if they are fair-minded enough to post my comment to their article, but here’s what I had to say about it:

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.

I’m coming out of the novel-preparation-stasis today just to post a real quick note about a talk that I just saw Cory Doctorow give at Clemson. His presentation was fantastic. I had been expecting a somewhat understated “nerdy” talk, but not at all—the issue of copyright history and reform is clearly where his passion lies. I was amazed that he kept up the pace and energy that he did for the entire hour. Beyond that, he managed to draw some wildly clear connections that, though I’ve read quite a bit about the issue before, I had never noticed before. The talk was just rife with fantastic information and anecdotes, and he was even nice enough to answer a copyright question I had about my own work. Probably, the highlight of the talk, though, was that after championing the creative commons and railing against our current copyright regime, one of the audience members asked him if he knew he was being videotaped. He responded by saying that he was glad to see it, and that “for the record I release” the audience, the university, etc. to a resounding round of applause. Nice to see someone put their money where their mouth is these days. I pledge allegiance to the creative commons.

[9/25 update: The book is actually complete and online! I'm not quite ready to shout about it though. I ordered a proof copy for myself---just to check every last detail. But you can look at it, if you want. Actually, I guess you could buy it, but at your own risk! And you should definitely check out the cover. I got some fantastic help from an exceptional designer, Johnathan Van Winkle.]

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.))

[editor's note: Phooey on Digg. Sorry that this post is a bit of a repeat, but I used their "blog this" link and all it ended up doing was truncating what I wrote and didn't put any links in the body of the post (which is just my style). So I'm posting this again with some additional information]

So Gen X were slackers and Gen Y are kickin’ it? There are some nice statistics on Steven Johnson’s blog that show that our new Web medium is encouraging participation and entrepreneurship. Kids rule! —give them video games. And maybe Johnson is right in his tome “Everything Bad is Good For You” that this development has more to do with a generation that has grown up with interactive mediums (i.e. video games and the web) than a generation that grew up with a passive medium (i.e. television).

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It’s one of those things that is questionable ethically, but unfortunately the matter is just not covered by the law. Mark Zuckerburg, of Facebook founder fame, is getting sued by several old classmates who say that he stole their idea. From the stories, I’d say it looks like he did, but personally, I take an ideas-are-free stance on this. In fact, I don’t think patents should be issued unless there is a functioning prototype, not vaporware. Getting a patent should be about investing the time and energy into making an invention work, not just thinking of it. I mean, after all, even Edison said that success was 10% inspiration and 90% perspiration. I think the perspiration should be rewarded.

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.