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 ( 6406 )
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Fear of Death as a Driving Force in Human (cultural) Life
Jonathan Jong, Faith and the Fear of Death, The New Atlantis. The line primus in orbe deos fecit timor — “fear first made gods in the world” — appears in at... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is There a Meaningful Technical Difference Between an Language and a Dialect...
John McWhorter says, "no", in an article in The Atlantic. Here's how he opens: What’s the difference between a language and a dialect? Read more
Posted on 14 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Temporal Processing in Huma Memory
Qiaoli Huang, Jianrong Jia, Qiming Han, Huan Luo, Fast-backward replay of sequentially memorized items in humans, eLife 2018;7:e35164, DOI:... Read more
Posted on 14 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Networks and Success in Art
S. P. Fraiberger et al., Quantifying reputation and success in art, Science 10.1126/science.aau7224 (2018). Abstrarct: In areas of human activity where... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music Evolving
Eita Nakamura, Kunihiko Kaneko, Statistical Evolutionary Laws in Music Styles, arXiv:1809.05832v1 [physics.soc-ph]. If a cultural feature is transmitted over... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Placebos Work [annals of Mind and Body]
Gary Greenberg, New York Times Magazine, What if the Placebo Effect Isn’t a Trick?, November 7, 2018. And after a quarter-century of hard work, they have... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Beatles' 'White Album' Has Turned 50
and Jordan Orlando writes about it in The New Yorker (10 November 2018). “The Beatles” is as much a concept album as “Sgt. Pepper,” and the concept is, again,... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bergen Arches @3QD
I’ve got another article at 3 Quarks Daily: Bergen Arches: Living for the City. This arched door graced the Transportation Building at the 1893 Chicago World’s... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Open Source & Community-owned Infrastructure for the New Academy (the Old One...
A little peek into a long thread: 5. Community-owned infrastructure allows more persons groups (institutionally supported, or not) to participate in to... Read more
Posted on 11 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Role of the Bedroom in the Invention of Privacy in the Wet
Lisa Hilton reviews (Lauren Elkin's English translation of) Michelle Perrot, The Bedroom in TLS. “Before the bedroom there was the room, before that almost... Read more
Posted on 11 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music Helps Children with Autism
Megha Sharda, Carola Tuerk, Rakhee Chowdhury, Kevin Jamey, Nicholas Foster, Melanie Custo-Blanch, Melissa Tan, Aparna Nadig Krista Hyde, Music improves... Read more
Posted on 10 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friends, Romans, Countrymen, Lend out Your Toys!
Toy libraries, or “toyeries,” were once popular, but they fell out of favor in most communities. It’s time to bring them back, argues @langealexandra, because... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bridging Cultural Gaps: Interdisciplinary Studies in Human Cultural Evolution
From the Preface to Bridging cultural gaps: interdisciplinary studies in human cultural evolution, a special theme issue of Philosophical Transactions of the... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: The Bergen Arches in Five
Posted on 09 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Dignity of Work
David Brooks, What the Working Class Is Still Trying to Tell Us, NYTimes: Working-class voters tried to send a message in 2016, and they are still trying to sen... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Spot the Spider (Bergen Arches)
Posted on 08 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The World-Wide Wall, Evolving Over Time
Video: 30 seconds of animated geolocation data for street art images taken around the world over time pic.twitter.com/YzTjdN2sLY — Leonard Bogdonoff... Read more
Posted on 08 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To War, Via Information in Cyberspace
Paul Rosenzweig reviews P.W. Singer and Emerson T. Booking, LikeWar: The Weaponization of Social Media (Eamon Dolan/Houghton Mifflin Harcourt, October 2018) at... Read more
Posted on 07 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s That Mysterious Light in the Tunnel? A Case of Investigative Photography
Long Dock Tunnel in Jersey City It was late in the afternoon of December 2, 2006. I was taking photos of graffiti and whatever else near the Long Dock Tunnel... Read more
Posted on 07 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Synchronous and Asynchronous Applause at the End of a Performance
I've posted before about synchronized applause: The Sound of Many Hands Clapping: Group Intentionality, and Synch and Society, Two Articles: A Synthesis and... Read more
Posted on 06 November 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY