John Allen Chau’s very presence on the island posed a danger to the Sentinelese, since they may not have developed immunity to the common microbes he carried with him. He also threatened their way of life: In recent years, given the growing consensus that modern visitors tend to erode the cultures of isolated tribes, the Indian navy has enforced a “no contact” policy with the Sentinelese and other tribes in the area, patrolling the waters to prevent infiltration by anthropologists and adventure-seekers alike.
Tag: 11.26.18
If All The Critics Are Gone, What Happens To Explaining New Dance?
For the most part, dance criticism as we have traditionally defined it is vanishing, probably forever. And no amount of verbiage on how pointe shoes are made or what a dancer eats for breakfast is going to help audience members — not to mention future historians — understand what is happening onstage in today’s dance. “This means that dance is becoming another item in the experiential supermarket, a thoughtless art without a memory,” Mainwaring writes. “As emerging choreographers come onto the scene — and there’s some very substantive work being made today — it remains unclear as to who will have either the expertise or the outlet needed to discuss the importance of these developing artistic voices.”
Twenty Years Ago The World Made An Agreement On Nazi-Looted Art. How’s It Working?
Twenty years on, that timetable has proved much too optimistic. Nazi-looted art is still regularly restituted: high-profile cases in the past year include an Oskar Kokoschka portrait returned to the heirs of the German-Jewish dealer Alfred Flechtheim by Sweden’s Moderna Museet (and sold for a record $20.4m on 12 November at Sotheby’s in New York). Many families are still seeking pictures stolen from their forefathers in what has been called the greatest art heist of all time.
War Of The Worlds Did More Than Scare People At The Time – It Gave Us A Haunting Distrust Of Communications Technology
The supposed “panic” was exaggerated by Orson Welles after the fact, and indeed it’s hard to know if people actually did panic at the time. But “in the anxious world of 1930s listening, a radio that knew your mind was a radio that could change it. The broadcast ended soon after. It had changed minds indeed.”
A Graphic Novel Accused Of Being ‘Steeped In Islamophobia’ Is Pulled After Protests
The book, A Suicide Bomber Sits in the Library, was written by Newbery Award-winning author Jack Gantos and illustrated by artist Dave McKean, originally for a group of 2016 stories that Amnesty International put out “celebrating the power of books to transform lives.” But the publisher pulled the release after the Asian Author Alliance wrote a letter saying, among other things, “the simple fact is that today, the biggest terrorist threat in the US is white supremacy.”
Filmmaker Bernardo Bertolucci, 77
In a film-making career that stretched back to the early 60s, Bertolucci became a key figure of the extraordinary Italian new wave (alongside, and the equal of, Antonioni, Fellini, and Pasolini) but – uniquely – made a successful transition to large-scale Hollywood film-making with 1987’s The Last Emperor, which won nine Oscars, including best picture and best director for Bertolucci.
Learning Our Relationships With Robots
The word “robot,” like the words “shalom” and “free-range chicken,” does not have a universally agreed-upon definition, but the usual criteria include autonomy, an ability to change its surroundings, intelligence, and the possession of a body. Then it gets trickier: How intelligent? Must a robot be mobile? Is a dishwasher a robot? According to the podcast “Robot or Not?” a self-driving car is not (you designate its destination), but a Roomba is (because it’s more in control of its path than you are).