Did he have to be a comics retailer?

Comix
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Tom Spurgeon reports that comic retailer and internet hard man J.I. Corcoran is under investigation by his local police force for the remarks he made after the Tucson shootings:

Robot 6 has their usual sterling write-up here about this article from regional Boston media about the police in the community of Arlington (about five, ten minutes northwest of Boston proper) suspending the firearms license of Heavy Ink comics retailer Travis J.I. Corcoran and seizing what they called a “large amount” of weaponry and ammunition from his possession. Both moves were made pending the outcome of an investigation into statements made by Corcoran after the shooting of Arizona congresswoman Gabrielle Giffords and 19 others on January 8 in Tucson. The main statement in question was “one down 534 to go” in reference to her membership in the House Of Representatives. As tracked by on-line comics media — including at Comics Alliance, where apparently the police encountered the story — Corcoran has thus far qualified rather than backed down from the statement.

Spurgeon also mentioned that several comix creators had “expressed their distaste” at Corcoran’s remarks, some going so far as to call for a boycott, or rather, that he should stop selling their works. His sentiments were, if not nasty or evil, certainly mistimed and boorish. Yet it all seems a bit over the top to try and destroy his livelihood for what at heart is the same sort of half-joke many Americans could’ve made in private about Congress, or other “hated” groups like lawyers. Corcoran’s mistake was his bad timing and his inability to let go of it graciously, rather than dig his heels in. It’s understandable that the police is investigating him in the current climate, but it’s also clear that all he was doing was being a typical, rightwing internet blowhard talking bull when he should’ve kept his mouth shut. Bad publicity for comics, but nothing serious.

The moving finger blogs; and, having blogged, moves on, selfconsciously

Meta, socialism
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Just put a post up at Prog Gold, where I try to explain what I think is now happening in Tunesia in that great blogging tradition of instant expertise on subjects learnt about in five minutes of cribbing from smarter people. You may want to go over there and see if I make any sense.

Or you could read Lenny’s last, three posts and get his, much more self assured, analysis of the situation,as he’s actually quite good at this sort of thing. Mind, there’s a thin line between what Lenny does and the sort of communique put up on the websites of every obscure Trotskyite three man band revolutionary tendency, explaining Tunesia in their own, slightly warped Marxist theory and why only their interpretation of what $INSERT_DEAD_SOCIALIST said about The Revolution can provide a full understanding of the revolt in Tunesia and why this is the True Start of the WorldWide Revolution, or just a Intra-Capitalist Struggle, though not why they never paid attention to the country before.

Because for the most part of course none of us in the English language, political/socialist blogosphere did, but we do now do our level best to become instant experts on it. Just as we did with Honduras last year, or Georgia before that. Nothing wrong with that, but there is a tendency to fit such happenings in whichever schema we’re pushing on our blogs, especially on the more hardcore socialist blogs, without much regards for what’s happening on the ground.

Portugal shows Holland the way

Dutch politics, Oh Those Crazy Cloggies
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Nine years ago, Portugal decided to try and solve its persistent drugs problems through decriminalisation: the results are encouraging:

As the sweeping reforms went into effect nine years ago, some in Portugal prepared themselves for the worst. They worried that the country would become a junkie nirvana, that many neighborhoods would soon resemble Casal Ventoso, and that tourists would come to Portugal for one reason only: to get high. “We promise sun, beaches, and any drug you like,” complained one fearful politician at the time.

But nearly a decade later, there’s evidence that Portugal’s great drug experiment not only didn’t blow up in its face; it may have actually worked. More addicts are in treatment. Drug use among youths has declined in recent years. Life in Casal Ventoso, Lisbon’s troubled neighborhood, has improved. And new research, published in the British Journal of Criminology, documents just how much things have changed in Portugal. Coauthors Caitlin Elizabeth Hughes and Alex Stevens report a 63 percent increase in the number of Portuguese drug users in treatment and, shortly after the reforms took hold, a 499 percent increase in the amount of drugs seized — indications, the authors argue, that police officers, freed up from focusing on small-time possession, have been able to target big-time traffickers while drug addicts, no longer in danger of going to prison, have been able to get the help they need.

Here in the Netherlands we’ve had this policy for much longer with largely the same results. Softdrugs like hash and wiet became generally accepted, as normal as drinkign alcohol and — surprise — turned out to be much less dangerous too. Meanwhile the greatest problem with hard drug users, especially heroine addicts, was that they were getting older and less healthy, as the existing users aged and few new people got addicted. Decriminalisation worked, but was awkward as no government ever quite dared to take the step to full legalisation. And now we have a rightwing government that is actively trying to hollow out decriminalisation by ill thought out measures like the “wietpas”. Ironically, it’s only now that other countries like Portugal have discovered the benefits of a more measured antidrugs policy…

Second Variety

science fiction, video
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Philip K. Dick lives! As Beamjockey explains, this is the second robotic head of Philip K. Dick, the first having been lost in transit back in 2005. Hanson Robotis now has rebuild the head, stronger, better, faster and what’s more, this was supposedly done with support from Dutch broadcaster VPRO. This doesn’t surprise me; the VPRO is the kind of broadcaster that suits Dick very much, somewhat on the experimental side with not every experiment being a success.

Serious book collecting

books and books review
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What with the v. small apartment we’re living in (2 rooms, 48 square metres in total) and the …slight… increase in book buying I managed last years, the physical limits to book collecting have been on my mind lately. There are only so many Billy bookcases we can fit in our living room and S. has put her foot down on getting them in the bedroom as well. I would love to have my old comic book collection over from my parents, but there just isn’t room. It’s getting so bad that I’m judging new books on format as much as on content: paperbacks are okay, trades are doubtful, hardcovers are right out. And no, a Kindle is not an option. It’s vexing.

And I barely got 200-2500 books or so at home (2020 currently admitted to on Librarything), while the two people in the documentary I watched tonight Boekenjagers (bookhunters) each are responsible for collections in the hundreds of thousands of books, even millions. Charles Blockson is the curator of the Afro-American Collection at Temple University in Philadelphia and had been collecting books on Black history for years before he donated them to the university, hoping to gather together the history of a people who for centuries were not allowed to have one, as he puts it. Aaron Lansky was writing a dissertion on Yiddish literature back in the early eighties and by sheer coincidence got started collecting books in Yiddish, saving them from the garbage dump as those elderly Jews who still read Yiddish were slowly starting to die off and their children, who couldn’t read the language themselves, started to get rid of these books that had meant so much to their parents. That ultimately lead to the National Yiddish Book Center, which at the time of the documentary 13 years ago already had some 17 million books.

Now those are collectors, even if they “cheat” a bit by being professional collectors. Anybody who loves books and loves looking for books and buying books can recognise themselves in these two men. I sure did.