CULTURE

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slcNOnogtps World War II offi­cial­ly end­ed on Sep­tem­ber 2, 1945. It fol­lowed, by less than three weeks, an equal­ly momen­tous event, at least in the eyes of cinephiles: the birth of Wim Wen­ders. Though soon to turn 80 years old,...

Image by Riz­ka, via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons In South Korea, where I live, there may be no brand as respect­ed as Habodeu. Chil­dren dream of it; adults seem­ing­ly do any­thing to play up their own con­nec­tions to it, how­ev­er ten­u­ous those...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ipRvjS7q1DI Though its answer has grown more com­pli­cat­ed in recent years, the ques­tion of whether com­put­ers will ever tru­ly think has been around for quite some time. Richard Feyn­man was being asked about it 40 years ago, as evi­denced by...

Is per­pet­u­al motion pos­si­ble? In the­o­ry… I have no idea…. In prac­tice, so far at least, the answer has been a per­pet­u­al no. As Nicholas Bar­ri­al writes at Mak­ery, “in order to suc­ceed,” a per­pet­u­al motion machine “should be free...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WsfciwU59hE “In the future, e‑mail will make the writ­ten word a thing of the past,” declares the nar­ra­tion of a 1999 tele­vi­sion com­mer­cial for Orange, the French tele­com giant. “In the future, we won’t have to trav­el; we’ll meet on...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AC440k6iByA By the time he filmed this video archived on Iowa Pub­lic Tele­vi­sion’s YouTube chan­nel, Jim Hen­son was just about to strike gold with a new children’s show called Sesame Street. The year was 1969, and he already had 15 years of...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rRDYP95lhjc Home­work has late­ly become unfash­ion­able, at least accord­ing to what I’ve heard from teach­ers in cer­tain parts of the Unit­ed States. That may com­pli­cate var­i­ous fair­ly long-stand­ing edu­ca­tion­al prac­tices, but it does­n’t nec­es­sar­i­ly reflect an absolute drop in stan­dards...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXR9PByA9SY Three Yale pro­fes­sors—Tim­o­thy Sny­der, Jason Stan­ley and Mar­ci Shore–have spent their careers study­ing fas­cism and author­i­tar­i­an­ism. They know the signs of emerg­ing author­i­tar­i­an­ism when they see it. Now, they’re see­ing those signs here in the Unit­ed States, and they’re...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AEtiECT9Gdk On his 84th birth­day this past Sat­ur­day, Bob Dylan played a show. That was in keep­ing with not only his still-seri­ous tour­ing sched­ule, but also his appar­ent­ly irre­press­ible instinct to work: on music, on writ­ing, on paint­ing, on sculp­ture....

Images or Orwell and Dali via Wiki­me­dia Com­mons Should we hold artists to the same stan­dards of human decen­cy that we expect of every­one else? Should tal­ent­ed peo­ple be exempt from ordi­nary moral­i­ty? Should artists of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter have their...