Helen L-H

• 2011-08-19

  This video alone justifies the creation of the internet.

• →

  

  ROBOT TAXONOMY

  Finding Wall-E is relatively easy. Can you find all of these?

  • Henry Hoover
  • Tick Tock from Return to Oz
  • C3PO, teamed up with Maria from Metropolis.
  • R2-D2
  • A Dale
  • kA Quark
  • Hewey and Lewey from Silent Running
  • The old and new version of K9
  • Bender from Futurama
  • Marvin the paranoid android (both versions)
  • Metal Mickey
  • Robbie the Robot 
  • Kryten
  • The chicken from The Clangers
  • The witch from Willo The Wisp
  • The tin man from the Wizard Of Oz (two versions)
  • Cybermen
  • A robot from Woody Allen’s Sleeper
  • Something from George Lucas’s THX1138
  • GortThe owl from Clash Of The Titans
  • Kamelion
  • Bill and Ted
  • The Terminator
  • Owlma and Greenclaws
  • “Andrew” from Bicentennial Man
  • Jonny 5
  • Dot Matrix from Spaceballs
  • “The one from Laputa”
  • Atlas from Portal 2

  (thanks to Richard Hall, @nebolland, @fanfaronade, @timaustin2k and others)

• 2011-08-11

  Forgiveness.

  “How would you feel if your life was about the worst thing you ever did?”
  
  It seems odd to be thinking about the TV series House at a time like this. But the first episode of the second season keeps coming back to me today as the first rioters appear in court.
  
  In it, a Death Row inmate, Clarence, arrives at the hospital. Dr House is his usual cynical self: the man’s an animal, but an interesting case. He takes it.
  
  Dr Foreman sees things differently. House often reminds him that he picked him for his elite team because ‘he used to steal cars’. Is this a man from the same kind of background, who just made the wrong choices?
  
  During the episode, another potential explanation emerges: has a tumour on his adrenal gland, which means he is pumping out savage, uncontrollable extra adrenaline at random moments.
  
  So what’s to blame for Clarence’s crimes? Is he innately evil? Or simply unlucky, weak-willed or ill?
  
  The episode doesn’t offer an answer, but it does offer a moment when Foreman asks the patient about his life on Death Row.
  
  ‘Imagine,’ says Clarence, ‘if your life was about the worst thing you ever did.’
  
  **
  
  Up in court this morning for her part in the riots was Natasha Reid, a 24-year-old graduate from Edmonton. She stole a £300 TV from Comet, but felt so guilty the next morning that she handed herself in. She wants to be a social worker.
  
  District judge Elizabeth Roscoe said her remorse counted in her favour, but she could still go to prison because of the seriousness of the crime. 
  
  **
  
  When David Cameron was at university, he was a member of the Bullingdon Club. The club - without the waistcoats we’d call them a gang - were notorious for smashing up restaurants.
  
  Boris Johnson and George Osborne were also members of the Bullingdon Club. Nick Clegg, meanwhile, received a community punishment for trashing a prized collection of plants as a 16-year-old in Germany.
  
  Cameron has since said he is “deeply embarrassed” by his Bullingdon Club days. Asked if the famous photo of him in its uniform represented the ‘real him’, he said: “No. We do things when we are young that we deeply regret.”
  
  *
  
  I agree with that David Cameron. I don’t think that being a member of the Bullingdon Club means that you can’t be a decent citizen, that you can’t be Prime Minister. I’m glad that his youthful violence has been swept away by years of public service since. But I do wonder if Natasha Reid will have the same opportunity. Will she still get to be a social worker?
  
  *
  
  I only thing I really know about the riots is that I don’t have any idea what caused them. I think both the Left and Right have valid points to make; I also think that the “rioters” aren’t one uniform bunch of people. Some are bad people, undoubtedly; others are silly, or weak-willed, or hopeless.
  
  But as so many people thirst for punishment, the idea of stripping benefits and housing from those convicted is gaining traction. Tory minister Grant Shapps tweeted yesterday that he supported the latter; an e-petition on the former is first past the 100,000 signature mark to get it considered by a parliamentary committee. 
  
  Yes, those who have turned on their own communities, raiding and looting, should be punished. But I’m not sure how depriving people with criminal records of their only legitimate source of income in a time of high joblessness is going to do anything other than store up problems for the future. Why turn a moment of madness into a wasted lifetime?
  
  That’s why I am left wondering: “What if your whole life was about the worst thing you ever did?”

• 2011-08-06

  Hello.

  You might think one blog was enough, but this one is for all the opinions which are half-baked/too personal to go on my other one.