science
Sunday Book: Henry Marsh - Admissions: A Life in Brain SurgerySunday, 07 May 2017
Is it true that the blob of jelly resembling convoluted grey matter that we carry around in our skulls is really what we are? And how we are, and why? This is the profound question that is obliquely omnipresent in Henry Marsh’s second book on his... Read more... |
Artist Tyler Mallison: 'I don’t think about materials as being merely visible objects or things'Saturday, 25 March 2017
Artist and curator Tyler Mallison has chosen the world’s most generic title for his current exhibition. It's called New Material, and the surprising thing one discovers is that the hackneyed "new" really can be quite fresh. Sculpture and painting... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: The Creeping GardenMonday, 13 March 2017
The creative, organisational and intellectual properties of slime mould are outlined in loving detail in Tim Grabham and Jason Sharp’s engaging documentary The Creeping Garden, though even this peculiar organism seems a little colourless when... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Daniel Levitin - A Field Guide to Lies and StatisticsSunday, 29 January 2017
Daniel Levitin makes one reference to Donald Trump in this book (to the latter’s claim to have seen on TV “thousands and thousands” of Muslims in Jersey City cheering when the Twin Towers fell) but he couldn’t have known quite how apposite these... Read more... |
DVD/Blu-ray: Lo and BeholdFriday, 16 December 2016
Werner Herzog isn’t visible in his documentary Lo and Behold but he’s a constant throughout, his sonorous, quizzical tones an ideal counterbalance to some of the more scary talking heads he encounters. In essence the film doesn’t tell us anything we... Read more... |
Westworld, Series 1 Finale, Sky AtlanticMonday, 12 December 2016
Anyone who expected a simple robots-versus-humans confrontation, like in Michael Crichton's original Westworld movie from 1973, had another think, or bunch of thinks, coming. The final episode of the Jonathan Nolan/JJ Abrams Westworld was more like... Read more... |
Sunday Book: Carlo Rovelli - Reality Is Not What It SeemsSunday, 16 October 2016
Scientists today tend to patronise the early Greek philosophers who, 2500 years ago, inaugurated enquiry into the nature of things. The Atomic Theory? A lucky guess, they allege. But Carlo Rovelli accords them, and especially Democritus, the key... Read more... |
ExperimenterWednesday, 23 March 2016
If an authority figure ordered you to inflict pain on another person, to what extent would you comply? That is the subject of Experimenter, which focuses on Stanley Milgram's controversial obedience experiment. Unable to secure a theatrical run in... Read more... |
Leonardo da Vinci: The Mechanics of Genius, Science MuseumTuesday, 01 March 2016
Was Leonardo da Vinci (1452-1519), who straddled the arts and science in such a unique way, several hundred years before his time? Did the painter-inventor-engineer really draw the prototypes for, inter alia, the aeroplane, the motor car, the... Read more... |
DVD: The MartianSunday, 14 February 2016
The flip side of the apocalyptic evolution-and-destiny concerns of Prometheus, Ridley Scott's previous foray across the Last Frontier, The Martian is a feelgood take on the theme of space travel. Having landed the first astronauts on Mars in 2029,... Read more... |
The Amazing World of MC Escher, Dulwich Picture GalleryTuesday, 08 December 2015
Walls that are floors, floors that are walls, and stairs that go up to go down: in the brain-befuddling art of MC Escher (1898-1972) the mundane everyday meets a world of paradox in which the rules of gravity, space and material reality are thrown... Read more... |
Photograph 51, Noël Coward TheatreTuesday, 15 September 2015
Nicole Kidman has returned to the West End 17 years after causing an innuendo-laden sensation in The Blue Room, the David Hare play that promptly transferred from the Donmar to Broadway, where one major magazine at the time actually bothered to... Read more... |
