Regular readers of my Research Picks may well have noticed an occasional musical or artistic reference in the headlines I write here’s a selection from some of the more recent items:
- Come together, online – Beatles song Come Together
- Wheels within wheels – Rush lyric from the song Natural Science
- Click the habit – “Kicked the habit” Sledgehammer lyric by Peter Gabriel
- Ergonomic for the people – “Automatic for the People” REM album
- Lessons in empathy – Lessons in Love, Level 42 song title
- Chain, chain, chain – Chain of Fools lyric from Aretha Franklin song
- Closer to the art – Closer to the Heart, Rush song
- Noise to signal – Signal to noise, Peter Gabriel song
- A loom with a view and A view of a room with VR and AI – EM Forster’s A Room with a View
- Truly moving pictures – Rush album Moving Pictures
- Grid expectations – Charles Dickens’ Great Expectations
- The left and right of recycled price tags – Rush lyric from song Distant Early Warning “the lefts and rights of passage” and Jessie J song Price Tag
- Don’t you know that you’re toxic? – Britney Spears lyric from song Toxic
- Mowing the green, green grass of social media – Tom Jones’ The Green, Green Grass of Home and George Ezra’s Green, Green Grass
- Minting wafer thin defect detection – The wafer-thin mint offered to Mr Creosote in Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
- Winter is coming…check the powerlines – “Winter is coming” catchphrase of Game of Thrones
- AI learns elephant talk – King Crimson song Elephant Talk
- A leap towards an emotion detector and Criminal emotion detector – Rush song Emotion Detector
- Let’s get physical, virtually – Lyric “let’s get physical” from Olivia Newton-John song Physical
- Better watch out for facial recognition that is more than skin deep – “Better watch out for the skin deep” lyric from The Stranglers’ song Skin Deep
- New model armed with subtlety gets sentimental – Band New Model Army and allusion to Cromwell historically
- Talkin’ about your generation! – “Talking ’bout my generation” lyric from My Generation by The Who
- Oil agility is a gas! – Rolling Stones’ song Jumpin’ Jack Flash “it’s a gas, gas, gas”
- The social gold rush – tales from the crypto – Neil Young album “After the Gold Rush” and “Tales from the Crypt” horror anthology
- Five whys failed M.O. – “Five Guys Named Moe” musical
- Supply chains under pressure – Queen/Bowie song Under Pressure, Rush album Grace Under Pressure
- Is silence golden? – Silence is Golden, song recorded by The Four Seasons and The Tremeloes
- From the Norfolk Broads to Ibiza – “From Ibiza to the Norfolk Broads”, David Bowie lyric from the song Life on Mars
- Candidate crush – Candy Crush online game
- Art for AI’s sake – Art for Art’s Sake 10cc song
- Deduplication, that’s the name of the game – Elvis Presley song “Multiplication, that’s the Name of the Game”
- The digital jean genie is out of the bottle – Bowie song The Gene Genie
- Red, red wine data for me – Neil Diamond song Red, Red Wine
- Does everybody hurt? AI detects depression online – Everybody Hurts, REM song
- Watcher of the Spies – Watcher of the Skies, Genesis song
- Communication breakdown when the heat is on – Led Zeppelin song Communication Breakdown and Glenn Frey’s song The Heat is On, also The heat is on in the airport lounge
- Parklife’s mental health benefits come into focus – Blur song Parklife
- Sleepless in IT – Sleepless in Seattle, movie
- A borrower and a lender be – Paraphrasing from Hamlet, “neither a borrower nor a lender be”
- Bail the bait and switch, avoid ambiguous advertising and Masking for a friend? Just checking! – David Bradley songs Bait and Switch and Masking for a Friend
- Where have all the flowers gone? and Where have all the flowers gone? – Pete Seeger song
- Just a jealous buy – John Lennon song Jealous Guy
- Here comes the flood – Peter Gabriel song
- A time to live, a time to buy – Paraphrasing The Byrds’ song Turn, Turn, Turn, “a time to live, a time to die”
- Detecting deviators from the norm – Paraphrasing Rush song Vital Signs, “everybody’s got to deviate from the norm”
- How green is your t-shirt? – John Ford movie How Green Was My Valley?
- Patient, heal thyself! With the help of bioinformatics – Paraphrasing Luke 4:23 “Physician, heal thyself”
- A spoonful of tech delivers food industry boost – Paraphrasing the song from the movie Mary Poppins, A Spoonful of Sugar Helps the Medicine Go Down
- Don’t cry for me Pingtan Island – Paraphrasing song title Don’t Cry for me Argentina
- Acer: Legends of the fall – From title of Edward Zwick movie, Legends of the Fall
- Put another record on… – Genesis song lyric from Another Record
- The dark side of relationship marketing – Star Wars allusion or Pink Floyd, The Dark Side of the Moon
- Declassifying the best things in life – “The best things in life are free…” lyric from the Barrett Strong song Money (That’s What I Want)
- A bit like a bridge under troubled water – Simon & Garfunkel song Bridge Over Troubled Water
- Push the button – Sugababes song
- What a difference a dayflower makes – Dinah Washington song What a Diff’rence a Day Makes
- Is football coming home? – Paraphrased lyric “football’s coming home” from the song Three Lions by The Lightning Seeds, Skinner, and Baddiel
- That’s entertainment – Song by The Jam and Jack Haley Jr musical movie
- 2G or not 2G? That is the question! – Paraphrasing Hamlet
- Ha Noi rocks electronic waste – Finnish rock band Hanoi Rocks
- A flock of seagulls improves edge computing – Band, A Flock of Seagulls
- Streaming to the cinema show – Genesis song, The Cinema Show
- The greatest gift that we possess? – Lyric from Ken Dodd song Happiness
- Chairperson of the Board – Band: Chairman of the Board
- Here comes the sun – Beatles song
- Insta karma – Instant Karma! (We All Shine On), John Lennon song
- A hard rain’s a-gonna fall – Bob Dylan song
- Closer to the entrepreneurial heart – Rush song, Closer to the Heart
- The eyes have it – Jack Hannah movie
- How do you know music was my first love? – John Miles song Music was my First Love
- It’s sheep we’re up against – Lyric from The Housemartins’ song Sheep
- Watch with teacher – Allusion to children’s TV Watch with Mother
- Zen and the art of virtual reality maintenance – Robert Persig book Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance
- Controlling tremor, hand in glove – Song by The Smiths, Hand in Glove, also John Lyly’s Euphues: The Anatomy of Wit
- Big in Japan – Alphaville song
- Let it snow – Antarctica, frozen legal state – Song, Let it Snow
- A little trouble in big data – John Carpenter movie, Big Trouble in Little China
- Let’s get physical – Olivia Newton-John’s song Physical, again
- You need a frost report if you want to save your fruit crop from the big freeze – The Frost Report, satirical TV show
- Fishbone ash blowing free to treat landfill – Band, Wishbone Ash and their song Blowin’ Free
- For whom does the online bell toll? – Hemingway novel, For Whom the Bell Tolls
- How does it feel? – Social data mining the student mood – Slade song “How does it feel?”
- Bad vibrations for motorbike couriers – Beach Boys song Good Vibrations
- Blurred lines in face recognition – Robin Thicke song Blurred Lines
- Fame and fashion – Two Bowie songs, Fame and Fashion
- Apocalypse when? – Francis Ford Coppola movie, Apocalypse Now
- Privacy in the time of Covid – Gabriel García Márquez novel Love in the Time of Cholera
- As sure as eggs is eggs – Title of section in Genesis’s Supper’s Ready
- Automatic for the pharma – REM album Automatic for the People
- You’re beautiful, it’s true – James Blunt song lyric, You’re Beautiful
- Mentoring the good, the bad, and the ugly – Leone movie, The Good, The Bad and The Ugly
- You can tell me by the way I walk – Genesis lyric from the song I Know What I Like (In your wardrobe)
- What are words worth to business schools? – Tom Tom Club song lyric “What are words worth?” Wordy Rappinghood
- Deep space mine – Star Trek: Deep Space Nine
- We’ll meet again, online – Vera Lynn song, We’ll Meet Again
- Breaking brand – TV show Breaking Bad
- Lyre, lyre – there’s an app for that! – Movie Liar, Liar
- How do you solve a problem like Pereira? – Song from The Sound of Music, How do you solve a problem like Maria?
- Pull up to the bumper – Grace Jones’ song
- Is honey as sweet by another name? – Shakespearean question on a rose
- No driving required – Phil Collins’ album No Jacket Required