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Articles by J S Bird

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About J S Bird

A retired academic, Jeremy will contribute article on subjects that attract his interest. More Posts

Struggling to keep up

Many years ago [I just looked it up on Google and saw it was launched in 1999] there was a futuristic science fiction film called The Matrix, starring Keanu Reeves, which was very cleverly produced and featured new special effects, including ‘bullet time’, in which – via mixing footage [...]

January 2, 2016 // 0 Comments

What’s in a reputation?

Last week Jimmy Hill and Greville Janner, two gentlemen of public note who had been stricken with dementia of one form or another, both died at the age of eighty-seven. I ought to note here that I always steer clear of stating that anyone actually died of dementia because, having had a close family [...]

December 21, 2015 // 0 Comments

Stuff

Last week I met up with a lady of my regular acquaintance – a great lover of animals, especially dogs, almost to the point where she prefers them to humans – who in passing remarked that it was now over a month since she had to take the second of her pooches to the vet to have him put down. [...]

December 7, 2015 // 0 Comments

The internet has a lot to answer for

It occurs to me that a feature of the internet and its attendant modern social media phenomenon is that most people over the age of fifty have a difficulty to some degree or another in understanding what on earth is going on and why. I know I do. Furthermore, anyone who claims different is being [...]

November 25, 2015 // 0 Comments

Meeting up with an old friend

Yesterday I had occasion, as a bit-part player, to join a gathering of the military great and good in central London for lunch – for security and other reasons I fear I cannot give many more details than that. At my advanced age I don’t get out much these days so I guess that readers should [...]

November 19, 2015 // 0 Comments

Life imitating art, or something …

The process of growing old is a strange phenomenon. As an oldie I sometimes frighten myself by how little I can remember about the past, not just in history generally but about what happened when in my own life. Having said that, ironically perhaps, it is also the case that simultaneously – [...]

October 22, 2015 // 0 Comments

Going back and learning stuff

Last night I attended a firm’s annual dinner with my father. It was a fun evening and ended up with several speakers in succession paying tribute to him on their hind legs, which was a somewhat surreal but welcome circumstance for me as a family member. Why? Well, because these were tales and [...]

October 8, 2015 // 0 Comments

What a difference a day makes

With no particular interest in sport myself, I’m currently dipping in and out of the BBC’s coverage of the Commonwealth Games now taking place in Glasgow. However, over the weekend I noticed a classic example of glaring lazy, if not shoddy, British media journalism. Specifically, a [...]

July 28, 2014 // 0 Comments

Once upon a time …

My first-ever WW1 battlefield tour, over two decades ago now, began with joining a coach at Victoria Station which departed for a Channel ferry and then on towards Ypres. Our guide, a former military man who was rarely without a gin-and-tonic in one hand and a cigarette in the other, specialised in [...]

June 8, 2014 // 0 Comments

Casus belli? The WW1 debate continues

As I expected – although it seems that Education Secretary Michael Gove, accused of playing politics with the varied opinions upon the cause of World War One, has been told by some Cabinet colleagues to ‘button it’ – the ripples from his Daily Mail article at the beginning [...]

January 9, 2014 // 0 Comments

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