Y’know, the photo of Tony Blair on the jacket of his memoir (no I won’t be buying it, political memoirs aren’t usually very interesting) looks like the solo effort of someone who used to be in a pop group. I’m not sure that was the effect he was going for.
If a psychopath’s brain is wired up to respond differently to stimulus, are they still fully responsible for their crimes? They can’t be rehabilitated if that’s the case.
Watching True Blood has made me think of another series that Neil hasn’t heard of. It probably didn’t help that I couldn’t recall its name when I was talking about it. But the penny dropped this morning — American Gothic. I remember it being pretty good. I also remember Forever Knight. Those were the days!
Everyone’s talking about this one. There’s a good reason — the video is brilliant. What a great effort.
If I could afford the time to be trained, being employed to help the police in investigating crimes (and/or helping victims) would be really excellent.
This is one of those films you need to watch on a big screen to fully appreciate just how beautiful it is. Those colours, the grain of the film (real or digitised, I have no idea), those costumes… oh my.
One of my (now former) colleagues is an Isherwood. She wishes she was related to Christopher Isherwood, who wrote the novel A Single Man (from which the film was adapted). I’ve got the book on my wishlist, too. It was Ms Isherwood who recommended the film that I was planning to watch, but wasn’t adamant that I needed the cinema experience.
From what I understand, a lot has been said (written) about the homosexual storyline. It could have been a straight storyline and still be an amazing film. It wasn’t the fact that George Falconer had a boyfriend, but the loss and loneliness he felt at losing him that actually hurt (although the theme of minority groups clearly wouldn’t have worked otherwise). The easy comfort and contentment we saw between George and Jim in the flashbacks almost made me cry because I know how mature a relationship must be to reach that level of intimacy, and losing that suddenly and unexpectedly would be unimaginable.
Colin Firth really needs to win that Oscar, he is such an excellent actor who can communicate a whole range of complex emotion with just one look. Tom Ford also needs to win awards for his brilliant direction. And we all need to thank the fridge guy.
This morning there was a feature on autism in females on the BBC World Service. I can’t find it online, but there’s something in the Independent about the issue.
Apparently one trait that is a symptom of autism in females is when someone is talkative one-on-one but super-quiet in a group. I’m definitely not autistic (at least I don’t think so), but that social awkwardness one of my defining personality traits. At least people with autism have a medical reason for being different, I’m just difficult.
But tonight we’re covering criminal profiling in my psych class, and that’s pretty cool. I’m sure I share way fewer personality traits with serial killers. Because I’m not a psychopath, I’m just difficult (hehe).
Guess what we almost froze our toes off doing last weekend? Watching the police from the Lothian and Borders, Strathclyde, Tayside, Fife, and Northumbria constabularies keep the far left away from the far right on the Royal Mile, that’s what!
The original plan was to head out for a long walk but my curiosity was piqued when we couldn’t cut through to the Mile. So we hung around near Holyrood Palace (well away from any protestors) and stickybeaked. There was a huge number of police out in force. All we saw of the ‘conflict’ were the ‘anti-Fascist’ protestors, who seemed blissfully unaware that their demands to purge fascists from our streets were pretty fascistic in the essence (something I’ve bleated about before), and all we could hear from their chanting and singing were the words ‘Nazi’ and ‘fascist’ — not the effect they were intending, I’m sure.
And Neil pointed out that a large number of anti-fascist protestors were part of socialist / communist groups, who are ignoring that the Nazis were the National Socialist party. The far right and left live next to each other in the circle of political extremism.