Bbenzon
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. Intellectually, I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
MY BLOGS
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New Savanna
http://new-savanna.blogspot.com/
Humankind got its start on the African savannas some hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of years ago. At various times in our cultural history we’ve moved to distinctly new cultural ground, as it were. And so we are moving now, and have been for the past half century. This blog is how I see that move. I'm broadly interested in culture and the brain. Within that compass, anything could show up here. Literature and films (including animation), certainly, music as well, and graffiti. But, other things may show up as well. It's a blog, don't you know, it moves.
LATEST ARTICLES ( 6405 )
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Fallen Angel
When I saw this at night I wondered what it was, perhaps some strange art project? When I came back the next day I realized that it was simply a decorative ange... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Howard Rheingold on Democracy and Online Media
Howard Rheingold, Democracy is losing the online arms race, February 4, 2020. Opening paragraphs: Democracy is threatened by an arms race that the forces of... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wild Child
Cressida Cowell, I Had a Gloriously Wild Childhood. That’s Why I Wrote ‘How to Train Your Dragon.’ NYTimes: The hill was covered with strange grassy mounds abou... Read more
Posted on 08 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“Undecidability, Uncomputability and the Unity of Physics. Part 1.”
That's the title of a post by Tim Palmer at Backreaction. Here's the opening: Our three great theories of 20th Century physics – general relativity theory,... Read more
Posted on 07 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Life in the Ocean Depths, Minerals Too
Wil S. Hylton, History's Largest Mining Operation Is About to Begin, The Atlantic, January/February 2020. As the title indicates, the article is primarily... Read more
Posted on 07 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ezra Klein on the Deep Problem Posed by Social Media
From a conversation with Tyler Cowen: I think that social media and the way we deal with it — and this is true in a lot of places — we end up focusing on, one,... Read more
Posted on 29 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump and TV: They Grew up Together
In this episode of Bloggingheads.tv Aryeh Cohen-Wade interviews James Poniewozik, chief TV critic with The New York Times. Poniewozik has just published Audienc... Read more
Posted on 28 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Aligned in the Crosshairs
Posted on 28 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Current Coronavirus Pandemic is One in a Continuing Series [biology is Bigge...
David Quammen, We Made the Coronavirus Epidemic, NYTimes, Jan 28, 2020. ...this Wuhan emergency is no novel event. It’s part of a sequence of related... Read more
Posted on 28 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Modes of Religious Expression and Organization
R.I.M. Dunbar, Religion, the Social Brain and the Mystical Stance, forthcoming in Archive for the Psychology of Religion. Abstract: This paper explores the... Read more
Posted on 27 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sun Showers
Posted on 21 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Third 20th-century Revolution in Physics [non-linear Dynamics]
Ashutosh Jogalekar,has an interesting article, The Fermi-Pasta-Ulam-Tsingou problem: A foray into the beautifully simple and the simply beautiful (3 Quarks... Read more
Posted on 21 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Yuval Levin on the Collapse of Institutions in Contemporary America
"Collapse" may not be quite the right word, but read these paragraphs from his current article in the NYTimes, How Did Americans Lose Faith in Everything? Read more
Posted on 19 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Random One
Posted on 17 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
TwoSet Violin – In Synch and Holding It in
I’ve been watching a lot of TwoSet Violin recently and wanted to bring two rather different videos to your attention. The title of the first is... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Thomas Chatterton Williams on Living in the Muddle [abundance]
Thomas Chatterton Williams, An Incoherent Truth, Harper's Magazine, February 2020. Like Nietzsche (and Schmitt), Hannah Arendt argued forcefully that life is... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Eat What You Love, Love What You Eat, in Midtown Manhattan
Posted on 14 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Nina Paley on Sex and Life
Nina Paley reflects on sex and her complex experience of it in, My Sex-Positive Memoirs, 4W, January 14, 2020. It's mostly about her years in San Francisco in... Read more
Posted on 14 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ceaze, Meres – Jersey City Wall of Fame
Posted on 13 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories [Media Notes 31]
I’m now well into the second season of Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories. It’s one of my favorite series (on Netflix), but I don’t binge it. Rather, I watch an... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY