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 ( 6484 )
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First Man, a Remark Or Two on How It Achieves Its Effects
I saw First Man last fall when it came out. Last night I saw it again, on a large TV. I find it impressive, still. As I argued last year, the film reaches for... Read more
Posted on 21 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Oral Transmission of Folksongs
Daniel Shanahan, Joshua Albrecht, Examining the Effect of Oral Transmission on Folksongs, Music Perception: An Interdisciplinary Journal, Vol. 36 No. 3, Februar... Read more
Posted on 19 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Chinese and U.S. Economies, Brexit
Yngve Slyngstad is CEO of Norway's sovereign wealth fund, the worlds largest at $1 trillion. Jonas O Bergman and Sree Vidya Bhaktavatsalam of Bloomberg Markets... Read more
Posted on 18 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Lke Erie a Juridical Person? The Voters Will Decide.
Timothy Williams, Should a Lake Get Legal Rights Like a Person? Toledo Voters Will Decide. NYTimes, February 17, 2019. The failing health of Lake Erie, the... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Red White and Green
Posted on 17 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Climate Change, from Panic to Politics
David Wallace-Wells, Time to Panic, NYTimes, 16 Feb 2019. The number of “good news” scientific papers that I’ve encountered in that time I could probably count... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gay Priests in America
Elizabeth Dias, ‘It Is Not a Closet. It Is a Cage.’ Gay Catholic Priests Speak Out, NYTimes, February 17, 2019: Fewer than about 10 priests in the United... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Rise of the Black Market in North Korea
Travis Jeppesen, Shopping in Pyongyang, and Other Adventures in North Korean Capitalism, NYTimes Magazine, 14 Feb 2019. “Jangmadang! Jangmadang!” I echoed... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How the Chinese Communist Party is Using Digital Tech to Promulgate Ideology
David Bandurski, The Dawn of the Little Red Phone, China Media Project, Feb 15, 2019: How can, and how will, the Party leverage digital technology to... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Layers
Posted on 16 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Efficacy of Nonviolent Resistance
Michelle Nicholason, Nonviolent resistance proves potent weapon, The Harvard Gazette, February 4, 2019: Recent research suggests that nonviolent civil resistanc... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Emotional Expressioin in Anglophone Fiction Delines Over Two Centures
Oliner Morin and Alberto Acerbi, Birth of the cool: a two-centuries decline in emotional expression in Anglophone fiction, Cognition and Emotion, Volume 31, 201... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Christianity is Spreading to China Via Africa
Christopher Rhodes, How Africa is converting China, Unherd, 13 feb 2019: Much has been made of the influx of Chinese money and workers into Africa over the... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computing Had Lots of Woman Programmers in the Early Days
From an article in the NYTimes Magazine(Clive Thompson, The Secret History of Women in Coding): Elsie Shutt learned to code during her college summers while... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
When Do Students in Elementary School Have Agency?
Not very often. Recess and "show and tell" are virtually the only times elementary school students are granted agency. Democracy, fair play, imaginative play,... Read more
Posted on 13 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jordan Peterson on Education
Tyler Cowen has interviewed Peterson on a variety of topics. Education is one of them. Peterson's started an online education project and Cowen quizzed him on... Read more
Posted on 13 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Globalism, the Fall of the USSR, and the Rise of an International Kleptocracy...
Franklin Foer, Russian-Style Kleptocracy Is Infiltrating America, The Atlantic, March 2019. The collapse of communism in the other post-Soviet states, along wit... Read more
Posted on 13 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Map of Nuclear Explosions Since 1945
Map shows all nuclear explosions since 1945. Slowing down nuclear tests and minimizing nuclear weapons must be a main objective of every government. Nice... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Psychology Needs is Theory
Michael Muthukrishna and Joseph Henrich, A problem in theory, Nature Human Behavior, https://doi.org/10.1038/s41562-018-0522-1. Read more
Posted on 12 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reframing 1619 and Enslaved Africans at Jamestown
Michael Guasco, The Misguided Focus on 1619 as the Beginning of Slavery in the U.S. Damages Our Understanding of American History, Smithsonian, Sept. 13, 2017:... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY