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The Prisoner(1967)
The Prisoner(1967) Few TV shows have been subject to as much analysis as The Prisoner(ITC, 1967). There have been many books and learned treatises written about the core themes of the show such as individualism, rebellion, collectivism, conformity, freedom and control, surveillance, indoctrination, unfettered technological progress, welfare and so on. In some ways it is…
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Forgotten British TV of the 1970s
There was certainly a lot of rubbish on the “box” in the 1970s and a lot of it (are you being served, love thy neighbour, The Black and White Minstrel show, anything with Benny Hill in it ,on the buses) would be best forgotten, or better still hurled into the Sun. That said, amongst the…
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The writings of Philip K. Dick (1928 – 1982)
Very much a case of a prophet without honor in his own country. Almost unheard of in the USA until his death, Dick was immensely popular and influential in Europe, but was practically a pauper. Dick did not live long enough to financially benefit much from the vast sums of money derived from mostly terrible…
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Classic Horror Movies
We love to be scared. Horror Movies engage with some of our deepest darkest elements of self. These can be creepy, gory, suspenseful, chilling, hammy or just downright unpleasant. A Key player in this arena was Universal Studios with their movies featuring Dracula, Frankenstein, the Mummy and the Wolfman in the 1930s. In the 1950s…
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Vinyl vs Digital ?
My first memory of listening to a record player was about 1969, it was a very primitive portable player. As my dad improved his Audio system he gave me his older kit which included a Garrard SP25 MK IV turntable (pictured above) and a Rotel 211 amplifier and I bought myself a pair of Solarvox…
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Should speakers and headphones have a flat frequency response ?
Given the curves above we might assume that easily audible differences between different speakers (and headphones) are a given. Speakers and headphones are at the end of the audio chain. Can we apply an objectivist lens here? Can we say that the “best” speakers will have the flattest FR and the lowest distortion? We do…
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HiFi Audio: A means to an end
I am pretty much an objectivist here. I am a recovered subjectivist. If two amplifiers sound very different (verified with carefully controlled Double Blind Tests and less common than you might think) then: (1) It is a matter of Physics not some fuzzy vague magical property and (2) at least one of them is probably…
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AI will cost us the earth
In 2025 I retired from academic/teaching work at a small Liberal Arts college. I taught Data Science including Artificial Intelligence & Machine Learning but was first introduced to AI in the late 1970s while an undergraduate at Warwick University. There are many good applications for AI and certainly some activities would be impossible without it.…
