As a young child I think every book was speculative: I assumed they would all be worth more and more as time went by. I assumed that they would be collected, reprinted, or whatever, and my original copies would one day be sold on at a profit. For example, I loved the Badtime Bedtime books (pull-out 8 page mini comics) and could see that they were the perfect size for reprinting in a paperback, or just putting all of them in one comic. So I vaguely assumed that one day I would have that better version and would then get rid of my original copies.

But I did this based purely on the love of reading: I did not care for the condition of a comic, and assumed that other people were the same. Indeed, signs of being loved made them more valuable to me if anything (rolled up, dog-eared, even the occasional pen mark or cut out coupon, as long as an ad was on the other side). Like many kids, I tried gluing, hole punching, etc., to make comics easier to read: I thought I was doing future generations a favour. I knew that old stuff tends to be more expensive, so vaguely thought I would make a profit, or at least it would subsidise later purchases.

As far as speculating, I suppose that's what I was doing when I bought comics in large quantities at jumble sales: I knew it was unlikely I would ever get the time to read every page, but I also knew I would then be free to find strips I liked later and if needed sell the rest.

Of course, I ended up with piles of comics that nobody else wanted, and the few exceptions had little value to any dealers. It seems I misjudged the speculator market completely.

Godaddy is certainly easy, but I'd avoid them if possible. Maybe they've changed, but the stories I heard were that once they have your domain it's not easy to get it back. In theory, yes, in practice, not so much. Plus they were famous for domain parking (where if you search for a domain using their site they reserve it themselves so you cannot get it unless you go to them), and other crimes. More ethical hosts don't do that.


If you already have webspace then a .com is only about ten dollars a year, and other URLs (e.g. .co.uk) are much less. I use Dreamhost and it's really easy to add another domain to my space.

Thanks - that's my kind of price! I have a birthday coming up and very cash strapped relatives and suddenly realised that nothing I wanted was cheap.

It's basically PR plus Game of Thrones. Anyone interested in PR should look behind the curtain at Mormonism. it's fascinating. Warning: another long post!

I find it fascinating how wealthy organisations control their image. Back in the 1990s Gordon B Hinckley was church president, and he'd spent his whole life in the PR arm of the church. He went on a media blitz, giving high profile interviews where he denied old doctrines (his famous quote was "I don't know that we teach that"). Behind the scenes lots of very smart and very well paid people worked to mainstream the church. Gladys Knight was their biggest coup.

I don't know the exact details of how they wooed Knight, but I do remember when there was the rumour that an actual non-Mormon archaeologist was possibly interested in the church (for social reasons). Mormon archaeology is embarrassing, but people join a religion for many different reasons. Behind the scenes all the most senior academics were desperate to get this person. The church is basically a gigantic sales organisation: every young man is expected to spend two years as a full time unpaid salesman (i.e. serve a mission) and that sets the tone for life. Selling the church is what they do: it is their life. It is why the church has continued to grow (at least until the Internet age) despite toxic beliefs and toxic history (polygamy, racism, at last one massacre, being on the wrong side of every social advance, etc). The Mormon sales machine is a wonder to behold.

I am reminded of Sideshow Bob in the Simpsons: he has "die Bart, die" tattooed on his chest, but was able to convince a jury that he was a really nice person and "die bart, die" was an innocent German phrase, "the Bart, the". Or perhaps a better real world example is Julie Andrews
, star of Mary Poppins. Disney recently produced its whitewashed "saving Mr Banks", a PR piece to show that Disney was a very nice man and P L Travers ended up loving the movie. Yet as far as I can tell, Travers simply needed the money and wen to her grave hating what the company did to her book. Never mind, the Disney version is the one that sticks. I heard a recent interview where Andrews praised the movie, saying it was really interesting and she didn't know that - she completely bought the revised story. Now surely she of all people should know, right? Not really. She was young, and busy and was hired for her acting and her voice, not her investigatory journalism.

Like Andrews, Knight is getting older and wants a happy life. Whereas she obviously experienced racism when younger she obviously never had bad experiences with Mormons, and now that she is old these really nice people treat her like royalty and say all these nice things: why not believe them?

The easiest part for the church is controlling information inside the church: the vast majority of Mormons are now either unaware of past racism or are convinced it was a minor technical thing and the church was always progressive. Meanwhile, every Mormon is schooled in being friendly. So that is the image people see when they meet Mormons. And while it is easy to be cynical, a church full of millions of nice people is not necessarily a bad thing.

As for controlling information to outsiders, that starts with controlling inside information. If you know a few Mormons and they are all nice people, and none of them believes those bad things, it is easy to believe that the church is misunderstood. Add to that a lot of money spent on PR: at the same time they are funding anti-gay campaigns they spend millions on the "I am a Mormon" advertising campaigns showing gays and feminists in the church. (Due to a recent change it is now technically possible to be gay in the church as long as you don't talk about it or actually have sexual relations.) Finally you have an army of Internet savvy members ready to edit every Wikipedia article and reply to every online post. Try saying anything bad about the church and a dozen genuinely nice people will appear to say it is not like that and would you like some cookies? As for Search Engine Optimisation, Mormons pretty much wrote the book.

Regarding SEO it took them while to get it right, but the church has pretty much unlimited funds an a very tech savvy and obedient membership: it is no coincidence that the NSA data centers are often located in Utah.

Another interesting angle is the personality battles at the top of Mormonism. This is politics at its finest: on the surface the Mormon leadership is in complete unity, and the way they are chosen ensures there is deference behind closed doors as well. Any Mormon with business skills is tracked since about the age of 30, using software specially designed for the purpose. They are then watched carefully as they rise through the ranks, and only the safest of safe hands ever gets to the top of the greasy pole. But if you watch carefully even then there are basically four groups in gentle competition:

1. The guy at the top is nearly always a schmoozer. He genuinely believes the church is all sweetness and light, he is personable, kind, and very likeable. He and people like him will "love bomb" any celebrity who might be susceptible for whatever reason. The current president, Thomas S.Monson, was famous for never saying anything except folksy stories and never doing anything except smiling. You can be sure that Gladys Knight will consider him a personal friend: she will "know" that all the bad stories are unfair because she has heard what the church "really" believes it from the horse's mouth.

2.Then we have the new generation of media savvy folk. The king of these is Dieter Uchdorff, the darling of the younger generation. He is a handsome ex airline pilot, an urbane ans silver tongued German (so the church can say "see, we're not all from Utah!") who speaks about inclusivity and understanding. Everyone calls him the silver fox.

3. Then we have the old guard of hard liners, led by Boyd K Packer. He will be the one behind the anti-gay crusade, and will resist any change. Gradually the church is becoming more and more corporate, so new leaders are chosen purely for their management skills and these doctrinaire types are slowly dying off, but it might take another 30 years.
Because...


4. With the rise of the Internet the real power is now with the faceless bureaucrats in the Church Office Building (COB), endlessly crunching numbers and issuing carefully worded press releases. The official leaders (there are 15: a presidency of 3 plus 12 apostles) are all in their eighties or older, and do not understand the Internet. But they are gradually learning that the less they say the better. So General Conference is now a series of speeches on "be nice to people" while official spokesmen tackle all the sensitive stuff. The young suits in the COB have to say "yes" to everything the 15 say, but when you have a thousand young and very smart people running a multi billion dollar organisation for 15 elderly men who are somewhat out of touch, they find ways.

The suits in the COB know that the church pulls in 8 billion dollars a year and they plan 50 years ahead. they know that the number one risk to that income is bad publicity. When word got around that an actual genuine black female celebrity was friends with somebody high up in the church you canimagine the buzz. How would they gently pull her in? Get the best leaders involved! Gently does it! A Meal? A visit? A gift? Are we pushing too hard? How can we insulate her from XYZ? Think of manipulating Truman in The Truman Show and you'll have the idea. I was once a missionary. Missionaries spend hours planning every contact with potential converts, anticipating every problem, sweating over every tiny "accidental" contact. Working with Knight would have been that on steroids. Not necessarily cynically, perhaps not even consciously - Mormons are conditioned to try to convert others without even thinking. But make no mistake, she would be the top priority for a lot of very experienced people. Gently, gently does it. Boy, what a catch!

Sorry, I am rambling now. Maybe I should stick to comics.

Maybe your comics have the same schedule as mine: four days ago I received Fantastic Four issue 4 through the post. Today I received issue 5.

Fair point. I wonder if my reaction is an autistic thing. I was diagnosed a couple of years ago. The interviews took several days (with both my parents present!) and one of the key questions was how I played with toys. I never role played toys: I never acted out stuff, I saw toys as something to explore. I see toys and stories the same way I see the fields outside my window - as something that never gets old. As an adult I see the grass and flowers in a different way, but they are just as interesting as ever.

I find the idea of tools for imagination alien to me. I see them as fascinating in their own right, and that never gets old. The first toys I remember wanting were "Weebles" - egg-like characters with weighted bases so they can't fall over. I never gave them names or role played anything, I just loved their elegance. That never gets old : I feel the same way now, except I now had added appreciation for the physics and minimalism. It bothered me that later versions had colour added to the clothes or were larger - the colour added nothing, and therefore reduced their efficiency, showing that Hasbro never understood what they had

I am the same with comics: it probably explains why I love to study the Fantastic Four, and find endless depth, whereas others seem happy to just take the surface reading and move on to some other title. In a way I never grew up. I could spend my whole life exploring the first things I ever looked at.

I think this is why I never really grew up and had a career. I see others rush into things and focus on adult interests, and they have friends and money, they fit in, and I'm still where I was as a child - I can't understand why people would abandon their first discoveries without seeing what they have. In a way I admire them they must be so clever to be able to do so many things, when I still sit here and stare out of the window, as awe-struck as ever by a blade of grass or the fact that eyes can see.

Information overload is perhaps the defining feature of autism. I see so much. I notice so much, nothing is ever boring except change. Why change when there is so much undiscovered? Why discard a childhood idea just when we are about to learn something useful? I see the normal "growing up" as horribly inefficient and superficial. Yet on the other hand, in terms of the normal fast paced world of people, I am very slow and stuck at the start. I obsess endlessly over details. Neuro typical people miss the details and move on. In most situations being neuro typical is more efficient. But sometimes there is value in stopping and looking deeper. Neither is "right", the are just different ways of thinking.

This also explains my fascination with reasons for things (see my web site AnswersAnswers.com/ ) and why I like my art to be very detailed (I create portaits using fractals). And why I tend to write very long replies when others have the gift of brevity.