James Owen

Nov 29, 2024 | thetimes.com | James Owen |John Dugdale

The thriller world has been rejuvenated recently by the arrival of two former intelligence operatives who are bringing fresh insights into how spies operate on the ground in the 2020s. David McCloskey and IS (Ilana) Berry lead the pack of our best thrillers of the year. But maybe you want lighter fare? What about a Miss Marple-style whodunnit mixed with scabrous social satire? “Think Jilly Cooper meets noir,” our critic says. Intriguing.

Oct 11, 2024 | thetimes.com | James Owen

In the most famous episode of Curzio Malaparte’s novel La Pelle (The Skin, 1949), recounted in Keith Lowe’s history of wartime Naples, the conquering American soldiers enjoy a banquet. The dish served up has the form of a pubescent girl. The diners are assured it is only a fish known as a sirena. In legend, however, Naples took its original name after the sirena — a siren girl called Parthenope who drowned herself there after failing to seduce Odysseus.

Sep 25, 2024 | columbiatribune.com | James Owen

Most press screenings simply consist of the feature presentation — sans trailers — with a crowd largely plucked from radio contests where “the fifth caller gets a free ticket.”The press screening for Francis Ford Coppola’s “Megalopolis” was also billed as the film’s “Ultimate Imax Experience”! There was a prelude with sweeping music. The film’s visuals filled up a very large screen. There was also the much-talked-about — but perplexing — live element where an actor performed in the theater.

Aug 7, 2024 | ladailypost.com | James Owen |Carol Clark

New Mexico abounds with places to see the stars, thanks to low levels of light pollution. With that in mind, Los Alamos National Laboratory student Aerin Jacobson set out one August evening to photograph the Milky Way above this radio telescope, which is located on Lab property and is part of the Very Long Baseline Array—a network of 10 radio telescopes across the United States that is operated f rom the Array Operations Center in Socorro.

May 7, 2024 | philsci-archive.pitt.edu | James Owen

March, Eleanor and Weatherall, James Owen (2024)A Puzzle About General Covariance and Gauge. [Preprint] TextCovariance_and_Gauge Archive Version Updated.pdf Download (336kB) | Preview Abstract We consider two simple criteria for when a physical theory should be said to be “generally covariant”, and we argue that these criteria are not met by Yang-Mills theory, even on geometric formulations of that theory.