Bbenzon
Description
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 ( 7356 )
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Facebook Or Freedom, Part 4: Notes on Doctorow, How to Destroy Surveillance...
Cory Doctorow has recently published, How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism, August 26, 2020 (on Medium). He spends much of the first half of the book arguing... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gojira Contemplating Their Next Move in a Troubled World
Posted on 14 October 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Birds in San Francisco Have Been Singing More During the Shut-down
@dchiasso @Powell_DA @kjavadizadeh @nathanheller @jerichobrown @IGalleymore @ltjournal @Deardarkness @JulianGewirtz @amandathegunn @brendashaughnes... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Plasma Sluggs at Work [graffiti as She is Made, July 2007]
For the story behind that photo, see Journey to 3Tops: Indiana SLuGS and the Land that Time Forgot. Read more
Posted on 13 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Similarity in Neural Processing Among Friends
Looks like an intriguing paper:"social network proximity, is associated with increased similarity of real-time mental responding"Similar values and looks on... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Speaking Rhythmically Can Shape Hearing
? Yep! https://t.co/TaYOl2Lt86 Quirky new paper by @NYU @MPI_ae team. @FlorAssaneo and @johannarimmele (w assists by @ysanz6 and me) designed a sensitive... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Photographs of Light at 3 Quarks Daily
I've got a new post at 3 Quarks Daily, Some Varieties of Light, consisting of photos that in one way or another call your attention to the fact of light. Read more
Posted on 12 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chinese History is Best Conceptualized as a Succession of Different Polities...
In a long review of Klaus Mühlhahn, Making China Modern: From the Great Qing to Xi Jinping (2019) James Millward argues for rethinking the course of Chinese... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How TV Gives an Education About Class in America [Media Notes 48]
Rob Henderson, Everything I Know About Elite America I Learned From ‘Fresh Prince’ and ‘West Wing’, NYTimes, Oct. 10, 2020. A working class background: I starte... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The State of AI, MIT 2019 [be as a Child – DARPA Machine Common Sense]
I've now turned this into a PDF file which you can download here: https://www.academia.edu/37815917/Mind-Culture_Coevolution_Major_Trans... In the early 1970s... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is It True That One Day the Chinese Will Dictate the Content of American...
Some day the ask to Disney and Comcast will be that they censor ABC and NBC News’ coverage of China for the sake of access to the Chinese movie market and... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Whoa! Not for the Color-blind. [structural Analysis]
[Bonus points: look to the center] Read more
Posted on 10 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Frozen Politics of Debate About Nuclear Energy
Taylor Dotson and Bouchey, Democracy and the Nuclear Stalemate, The New Atlantis, Fall 2020. This is a long article about nuclear power. Read more
Posted on 10 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Literary Canon Wars of the 1990s
If this was true in the 90s, imagine how much truer it becomes with English major enrollments in free-fall.— Ted Underwood (@Ted_Underwood) October 9, 2020 The... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
New Social Sciences Journal Devoted to Description
Eszter Hargittai at Crooked Timber: Does the world really need yet one more academic journal? It does when there is an unmet need for disseminating certain type... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: It's a Purple World [then Along Came Matisse]
Posted on 09 October 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Why Do We Need a Genotype-phenotype Distinction for Cultural Evolution? Because...
When I first published about the process of cultural evolution a quarter of a century ago, in Culture as an Evolutionary Arena [1], I insisted on... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Form, Computation, and Plot Summary: A Short Note on Method
I’ve just made a short post about To Catch a Thief. It’s been on my mind for weeks but I didn’t post because: 1) what I had in mind was simple, really, but 2) a... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cary Grant Kisses Grace Kelly – Eww! [To Catch a Thief, Media Notes 47]
I watched this film, say, two months ago, and recoiled just a bit the first time Cary Grant kissed Grace Kelly. Why? At the time – the film is from 1955 –... Read more
Posted on 08 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
New England Arborists Are Replanting with Climate Change in Mind
Marguerite Holloway, New England’s Forests Are Sick. They Need More Tree Doctors. NYTimes, October 7, 2020. There's more in the article, which is about the... Read more
Posted on 07 October 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
