A landmark judgment by India’s highest court has overturned a colonial-era law that criminalizes consensual gay sex, in a long-fought for victory for the LGBTQ community. The five-judge bench reached a unanimous decision Thursday in the capital New Delhi. Delivering his decision, Chief Justice of India Dipak Misra said, “The LGBTQ community has the same fundamental rights as citizens. The identity of a person is very important and we have to vanquish prejudice, embrace inclusion and ensure equal rights.” “Intimacy and privacy is a matter of choice. We have to bid adieu to stereotypes and prejudices,” he said. The court verdict is a major milestone for LGBTQ-identifying people across the country, where homosexuality remains a social taboo and gay people face endemic discrimination.
Dutch artist Theo Jansen was born on March 14, 1948. In 1990, he began building large mechanisms out of PVC that are able to move on their own and, collectively, are entitled, Strandbeest. The kinetic sculptures appear to walk. His animated works are intended to be a fusion of art and engineering. He has said that "The walls between art and engineering exist only in our minds." He strives to equip his creations with their own artificial intelligence so they may avoid obstacles such as the sea, by changing course when detected.
Anish Kapoor was born in Bombay, India (now Mumbai), to a Hindu father and a Jewish mother whose family immigrated from Baghdad when she was a few months old. According to Kapoor, his mother had an Indian-Jewish upbringing, her father being the cantor of the synagogue in Pune. At this time, Baghdadi Jews constituted the majority of the Jewish community in Mumbai. His father, from a Hindu Punjabi family, was a hydrographer in the Indian Navy. Kapoor is the brother of Canada-based academic Ilan Kapoor.
In 1957, when Pablo Picasso was in his seventh decade, he mused that x-ray technology might one day reveal a lost work underneath one of his early paintings. Today, that prediction became reality—although the technology involved goes far beyond x-rays. Using hyper-modern tools to peer into one of his Blue Period paintings, researchers have not only shown a hidden piece of art history in stunning new detail, they have revealed a striking amount of insight into Picasso’s creative process.