Neil Armstrong

Saturday

Neil Armstrong

The DNA revolution

From our UK edition

You’ve secured an audience with your overworked GP. You roll into the surgery clearly suffering from the effects of a gargantuan hangover, reeking of fresh cigarette smoke and chomping on a fistful of cheese sticks. After listening to your laboured heartbeat, ascertaining your blood pressure is off the charts and checking how overweight you are, your doctor doesn’t have to be Sherlock Holmes to deduce that, never mind the trifling complaint you presented with, you’re in the danger zone for heart disease, diabetes and God knows what else. You’ll be sent away with a flea in your ear, told to quit smoking, lay off the booze, chuck out the cheese and develop a taste for quinoa and power-walking.

Saturday

Neil Armstrong

Welcome to the brave new world of artificial intelligence

From our UK edition

In the 1966 film Fantastic Voyage, a submarine crew is shrunken to microscopic size and injected into the bloodstream of a defector to remove a blood clot from his brain. Critics agreed that it was an entertaining movie but that the impossible premise took some swallowing. Last month John McNamara, a leading IT specialist at IBM’s research and development laboratory in Hursley, Hampshire, suggested to the House of Lords Artificial Intelligence Committee that within 20 years ‘We may see AI nano-machines being injected into our bodies. These will provide huge medical benefits, such as being able to repair damage to cells, muscles and bones — perhaps even augment them.

Thursday

Neil Armstrong

Raising the roof

From our UK edition

It is a ‘fantastic night out’, insists the theatre’s artistic director. Gemma Bodinetz is right, of course, but it is easy to see how those unfamiliar with Fiddler on the Roof might take some convincing. The first act ends with a pogrom, the second with the village’s Jews being expelled from the country. This doesn’t immediately suggest an evening of joyous, life-affirming entertainment. ‘It’s the story of people being forced to leave their homes by the powers that be, and that scenario, sadly, is still playing itself out all over the world today. But it’s also about family and joy and love and it has terrific songs,’ says Bodinetz. It opens the first season of Liverpool Everyman’s new repertory company later this month.

Thursday

Neil Armstrong

Screen grab

From our UK edition

St James’s Palace. 1953. A dynamic Duke of Edinburgh is relishing a ding-dong with the antediluvian fossils of the Coronation Committee. He wants to embrace modernity by allowing the BBC to televise the ceremony. The ‘grey old men’ want to continue doing things in exactly the same way that they have been done since 1066. Modernity prevails and the coronation is the biggest television spectacular there has been. This episode, splendidly recreated with a little artistic licence in The Crown, Netflix’s epic about the Queen, was a tipping point in terms of the public’s acceptance of the medium of television. Many viewers acquired their first sets for the sole purpose of watching the coronation. Now, in the television world, the wind of change is rising again.

Thursday

Neil Armstrong

Kids’ stuff | 6 October 2016

From our UK edition

When a new TV channel calls its flagship food show Fuck, That’s Delicious, we might surmise that the Reithian ideals are not foremost in its corporate philosophy. You probably haven’t heard of Viceland. You certainly haven’t watched it. It seeped on to the airwaves with little fanfare and few viewers. Viceland is the new 24-hour TV channel of Vice Media, the Canadian-American outfit that describes itself as the ‘world’s preeminent youth media company and content creation studio’. Vice began in 1994 as a magazine but now encompasses a news division, a record label, a film studio and myriad digital ventures.