Showing 1 - 10 of 49
The lonely songbird in a gilded cage
Roger Crutchley, Published on 09/02/2025
» A few words on singer/actress Marianne Faithfull who died last week at the age of 78. I have followed her career with some interest because she lived in my home town of Reading in the early 1960s, attending St Joseph's Convent school.
Facts, not fear
Oped, Postbag, Published on 01/02/2025
» Re: "Thai senator's 'live executions' proposal panned", (BP, Jan 29).
Trump's band back already
Postbag, Published on 26/01/2025
» Re: "More than Trump", (PostBag, Jan 24).
Threat of WW3
Postbag, Published on 24/11/2024
» Re: "US missiles 'a game changer' ", (World, Nov 20).
Don't send back
Postbag, Published on 23/10/2024
» Re: "Groups push for protection of dissident", (BP, Oct 19).
I'm with the band -- how music made me British
News, Howard Chua-Eoan, Published on 31/08/2024
» 'Wonderwall' is all I remember. The rest of Oasis is a blur to me. I was still living in New York City when the band had their global breakthrough -- and that song was everywhere. From the album (What's the Story) Morning Glory?, it's one of the few mid-1990s songs whose lyrics this Boomer can remember. I admired its Beatles-like off-kilter poetics, its love-will-save-the-day (if not, maybe it'll just save me) sentimentality. And Liam Gallagher's voice, while not beautiful, was pure plaintive Britpop, a plangent inflexion echoing from as far back as 1962's Love Me Do by John Lennon and Paul McCartney.
Making roads healthier for travel
News, Jesus Carlos Soto and Silpa Wairatpanij, Published on 19/08/2024
» The world's cities are growing, and their roadways are becoming overwhelmed. Motor vehicles are the world's leading cause of death for people between the ages of 2 and 29, killing 1.2 million people and injuring up to 50 million annually, according to the World Health Organization's update on Dec 13, 2023.
AI's brain fog no defence for arts
News, Parmy Olson, Published on 05/07/2024
» Ever notice how science fiction gets things wrong about future technology? Instead of flying cars, we got viral tweets that fuelled culture wars. Instead of a fax machine on your wrist, we got memes. We're having a similar reality check with artificial intelligence. Sci-fi painted a future with computers that delivered reliable information in robotic parlance. Yet businesses who've tried plugging generative AI tools into their infrastructure have found, with some dismay, that the tools "hallucinate" and make mistakes. They are hardly reliable. And the tools themselves aren't stiff and mechanistic either. They're almost whimsical.
Plain as day
Published on 29/04/2024
» Re: "NOB to investigate case of 'son of Buddha reincarnate'", (BP, April 26).
When people browsed in bookshops
Roger Crutchley, Published on 17/12/2023
» Earlier this week I watched the 1987 film 84 Charing Cross Road. The reason for my interest was that the road has always been my favourite London thoroughfare. The film, which I won't go into, is about a long-distance literary friendship between characters played by Anne Bancroft and Anthony Hopkins.