Booklist 2011 #2 Batgirl Rising and #3 Ghost Stories of an Antiquary

Batgirl Rising - Writer: Bryan Q. Miller. Pencillers: Tim Levins, Trevor Scott & Lee Garbett. Inkers: Trevor Scott, Dan Davis, Aaron Sowd, Sandra Hope, & Oliver Nome. Colorist: Guy Major. Letterer: John J Hill. Covers: Phil Moto

Jeez, you can't just say "by" with a comic book, can you? I have been inactive in Batfandom for a while now - since the Long Halloween, really - although I've kept up with some of the important stuff via Debi. So I knew there was doing to be a new Batgirl, and I knew that she was going to be ex-Spoiler and one-time Robin, Stephanie Brown.

What I didn't really expect was how important original Batgirl (and one of my all-time favourite characters) Barbara Gordon was going to be in this story arc. I am loving the interaction between Steph and O, and the way they behave towards Dick Grayson Batman and the most annoying Robin ever, Damian. And, you know, first important villain was Scarecrow, who is also one of my faves, although I have to say he was a bit underused... The scene where Steph is almost beaten by him and then rises and fights back is beautiful, though. Beautifully written, beautifully drawn, and Barbara finally referring to her as Batgirl was earned, and well done.

Props for having a barely-commented-upon gay couple in this paperback too. I enjoyed this very much, and hope to keep up with how Steph is getting on. 9/10


Ghost Stories of an Antiquary - Montague Rhodes James

This is comfort reading for me. I am up very late tonight due to anxiety over something I can do nothing about, so I am reading a book I know backwards to take my mind off things. The Ash Tree. Lost Hearts. The Treasure of Abbot Thomas. And, of course, the amazing Oh Whistle and I'll Come To You, My Lad... I could probably recite them, if I tried.

Hopefully the anxiousness-causing-thing will be cleared up tomorrow, but until it is getting lost in Monty's dry, dusty, academic prose style will alleviate things a bit. You know how HP Lovecraft has an instantly recognisable style, and Poe? Well so does Monty, and it makes me feel all warm and fuzzy, even though it's all about unknown and unknowable horrors from the beyond.

10/10

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The Blood is the Life: 9-1-2011

• Sartorial Differences
  WARNING! CONTAINS SLASH FIC! It's Six/Ainley!Master, though, so that's ok.
  (tags: doctorwho fic)
• The sound of gunfire
  Sara talks about the political angle on the horrific events in Tuscon in a sensible manner. I'm still too stuck in horrified mode to post about this, but my hopes are with those wounded that they pull through, and with the families of those killed.
  (tags: usa tragedies)
• Should you join a gym in January? No. | The Lay Scientist
  Tessera lists all the reasons why you shouldn't join a gym.
  (tags: funny advice)
• BBC News - Glasgow pantomime dress broke Geneva Convention
  File under "youcouldn'tmakeitarrrrrrrp"
  (tags: law silly)
• The cowardly fudge behind the rhetoric of Control Orders
  Hold onto your hats, folks, there's a post I agree with on Liberal Conspiracy.
  (tags: law freedom government)

On the politics of blame

In the wake of the shootings in Tucson, there has been a lot of discussion of who is to blame. Apparently either society is to blame, or the shooter is to blame. I can't tell you how much this false dichotomy infuriates me. Rather like the nature/nurture debate in biological science, it's oversimplifying matters to an enormous degree to try to paint this as a zero-sum game in which it must be EITHER one OR the other to blame when it's perfectly obvious that it's both.

Of course the shooter bears personal responsibility for his actions and his decisions. But those actions and decisions are informed and shaped by the society he lives in and the culture he is embedded in.

Much has been made of the fact that his favourite books list contains works like Mein Kampf and the communist manifesto; hardly anybody mentions that ON THE SAME DAMN LIST is Animal Farm, Fahrenheit 451, and a whole load of other books that DON'T fit the "this guy is a communist nutter" rhetoric being spewed by many on the right.

By the same token, Sarah Palin's stupid and irresponsible actions in posting a picture of the congresswoman-in-question's constituency with crosshairs over it, and using the sort of language which, as Elisabeth Moon rightly points out, if she were poor or brown or otherwise not in a highly privileged group would get her arrested for incitement to violence, have been lambasted by those on the left who want it all to be the fault of the right-wingers.

Every human being is a complex thing. There is not one simple cause for any action any human takes. Yes, there may be a trigger, but that trigger will not work unless the prevailing conditions are in place. So yes, it MAY have been Sarah Palin's crosshairs map which gave him the idea, but that map would not have had that effect on someone who wasn't already predisposed to take that sort of action. Yes, he might have read some books with dodgy ideas in; but so have I, and I don't go around shooting people, no matter how much I might sometimes be tempted.

Once you have accepted that there is no one simple solution to stop randoms shooting people, that is where it gets complicated for us as a society. Because now we have to decide whether or not we do ANYTHING. If we value freedom, which I personally do, you have to make the acknowledgement that FREEDOM HAS CONSEQUENCES. If we embrace freedom, that means that we necessarily give the opportunity to randoms to do things which we, personally, might find unacceptable. If the freedom to own guns exists, there will always be a small number of randoms who will go around shooting people. Those of us who love freedom need to acknowledge and accept this. In my view the vanishing small chance of a random doing something unacceptable is not a reason to take away freedom from everybody, and that is why I am a liberal, but there are those who sincerely believe the opposite, and those people are not necessarily stupid and ill-informed.

Arguing that the shooter has sole responsibility for his actions simply infuriates those people. What we need to do is find a way to argue that EVEN THOUGH this person has shot people, freedom is still overridingly important.

And this is where we hit another stumbling block. It is my right to believe that freedom is overridingly important. It is my right to decide that freedom is worth dying for, if I so choose.

But is it my right to decide that other people's deaths are an acceptable price to pay for freedom? I don't think it is.

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