Far and Away: Reporting from the Brink of Change

395 Global warming’s impact on the ability of scientists to reach their posts in Antarctica is the subject of Michael Safi, “Antarctica’s increasing sea ice restricting access to research stations,” Guardian, May 11, 2015.

396 The deterioration of the West Antarctic ice sheet is discussed in Chris Mooney, “Scientists declare an ‘urgent’ mission—study West Antarctica, and fast,” Washington Post, September 29, 2015.

396 The potential fate of the Totten Glacier is described in James Hamblin, “How the most important glacier in east Antarctica is melting,” Atlantic, March 20, 2015; this article is also the source of the quote from NASA.

396 Record temperatures in Antarctica are reported in Katia Hetter, “Antarctic hits 63 degrees, believed to be a record,” CNN News, April 1, 2015.

396 The effects of warmer temperatures on fungi, crustaceans, and penguins are discussed in Australian Associated Press, “Temperature affects fungi in Antarctica,” Special Broadcasting Service, September 28, 2015; Chelsea Harvey, “Next up from climate change: Shell-crushing crabs invading Antarctica,” Washington Post, September 28, 2015; and Chris Mooney, “The melting of Antarctica is bad news for humans. But it might make penguins pretty happy,” Washington Post, August 13, 2015.

396 China’s intent to expand operations in Antarctica is detailed in Jane Perlez, “China, pursuing strategic interests, builds presence in Antarctica,” New York Times, May 3, 2015.

When Everyone Signs

397 Bengkala is the focus of I Gede Marsaja, Desa Kolok: A Deaf Village and Its Sign Language in Bali, Indonesia (2008). The first report in the medical literature of the strain of deafness prevalent there is S. Winata et al., “Congenital non-syndromal autosomal recessive deafness in Bengkala, an isolated Balinese village,” Journal of Medical Genetics 32 (1995). For a general, accessible discussion of syndromic deafness within endogamous communities, see John Travis, “Genes of silence: Scientists track down a slew of mutated genes that cause deafness,” Science News, January 17, 1998. Additionally, for an opinionated overview of the academic research on the subject, see Annelies Kusters, “Deaf utopias? Reviewing the sociocultural literature on the world’s ‘Martha’s Vineyard situations,’ ” Journal of Deaf Studies & Deaf Education 15, no. 1 (January 2010).

398 The complex webs of relations among the Balinese are the subject of Hildred and Clifford Geertz’s oft-cited Kinship in Bali (1975).

403 “Deaf” with a lowercase d refers to hearing impairment; the same word, capitalized, refers to the culture of those who communicate with each other in sign language and identify themselves as part of a community. For an exploration of Deaf politics in the United States in the nineties, see my article “Defiantly deaf,” New York Times Magazine, August 28, 1994.

405 The postscript on the Kata Kolok language relies on the work of Connie de Vos of the Max Planck Institute for Psycholinguistics, who has emerged as the most prolific scholar of the language. See, for example, Connie de Vos and N. Palfreyman, “Deaf around the world: The impact of language,” Journal of Linguistics 48, no. 3 (November 2012), which describes the relative numbers of deaf and hearing users of Kata Kolok; Connie de Vos, “Absolute spatial deixis and proto-toponyms in Kata Kolok,” NUSA: Linguistic Studies of Languages In and Around Indonesia 56 (2014), which examines the relocation of Kata Kolok signers from Bengkala; and Connie de Vos, “A signers’ village in Bali, Indonesia,” Minpaku Anthropology News, 2011, which chronicles the lack of new transmission of the language.

Rio, City of Hope

407 The 2014 World Cup finals are the subject of both domestic and international corruption investigations; see Lisa Flueckiger, “Brazil’s federal police to investigate after FIFA scandal,” Rio Times, May 29, 2015; and Vincent Bevins, “Coming ‘tsunami’? In Brazil, calls for reform in wake of FIFA scandals,” Los Angeles Times, June 12, 2015.

407 Circumstances surrounding Brazil’s selection as the site of the 2016 Olympics are also suspect; see Caroline Stauffer, “Brazil’s Petrobras corruption investigators to probe Olympic contracts,” Reuters, November 25, 2015; and Tariq Panja and David Biller, “Soccer icon Romario, Rio mayor Paes cited in corruption tape,” Bloomberg, November 25, 2015.

408 For more on the work of Vik Muniz, see Carol Kino, “Where art meets trash and transforms life,” New York Times, October 21, 2010; and Mara Sartore, “Lampedusa: Migration and desire, an interview with Vik Muniz,” My Art Guides, June 2015.