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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Public Perception of the Trump Administration's Handling of the Evolving...
Shibley Telhami, Stella M. Rouse, How Are American Views of the Coronavirus Crisis Evolving as It Intensifies?, Lawfare, March 25, 2020. Read more
Posted on 26 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The President Does Not Have the Power to Override State and Local Policies on...
Robert Chesney, Can the Federal Government Override State Government Rules on Social Distancing to Promote the Economy? Lawfare, March 24, 2020. Read more
Posted on 25 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ghost Dancing in the USA [Magical Thinking, Trump and Covid-19]
Or, Why the Old Myths and Magic Don’t Work Anymore I published this in Buffalo Report on 1 March 2005 (the URL now belongs to someone else and the old Buffalo... Read more
Posted on 24 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Treasure Trove of Interviews with Jazz Musicins [Monk Rowe]
Check out the Fillius Jazz Archive at Hamilton College, which has 25 years of live interviews with jazz musicians conducted by Monk Rowe. Many of the... Read more
Posted on 16 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Posted on 12 March 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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And When the End Comes...(of the World)
Agnes Callard, The End is Coming, The Point, March 11, 2020. How long have we got? At a recent public talk, the economist Tyler Cowen spitballed the number of... Read more
Posted on 12 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Oprah and Trump, Two Sides of the Same Coin?
Natasha Zaretsky, The Odd Couple: Donald Trump, Oprah Winfrey, and Contemporary Charisma, The Hedgehog Review, Spring 2020: How, then, do we explain the... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music Education in the USA in the 1920s and 30s [#LingLing40hours]
"It was the greatest shock of my life to hear her play" (1927). It's remarkable how many magazine ads in the 1920s and 1930s were devoted to music education.... Read more
Posted on 09 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Groups of Animals Make Decisions
Elizabeth Preston, Sneezing Dogs, Dancing Bees: How Animals Vote, NYTimes, March 2, 2020: Any animal living in a group needs to make decisions as a group, too. Read more
Posted on 03 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Newborns 'wired' for Face and Scene Recognition
Face- and scene-selective cortical networks come largely "pre-wired" in newborn brains https://t.co/ZCOqirkUZV cc @ylecun @GaryMarcus HT @cedricboeckx... Read more
Posted on 03 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Vietnam Jealous Coronavirus Song on Last Week Tonight
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 02 March 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Netflix Goes to Africa: Queen Sono
“Queen Sono” is Netflix’s first script-to-screen commission from Africa. That it is unremarkable as an action and crime drama doesn’t cancel the excitement of... Read more
Posted on 29 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The World is Changing, and Increasingly Uncertain
Farhad Manjoo, Admit It: You Don’t Know What Will Happen Next, NYTimes, Feb 26, 2020. A projection of certainty is often a crucial part of commentary; nobody... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Norman Rockwell Gets Political
By 1960, Norman Rockwell's paintings had become kitschy curios at best and objects of derision at worst. Then he underwent a political transformation https://t. Read more
Posted on 27 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Guerilla Attack on (bogus) Copyright Claims Over Musical Melodies: Create...
Samatha Cole, Musicians Algorithmically Generate Every Possible Melody, Release Them to Public Domain, Vice, 25 February 2020: Two programmer-musicians wrote... Read more
Posted on 27 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wynton Marsalis on the Difference Between African Rhythm and Jazz Rhythm
Ethan Iverson [EI] is interviewing Wynton Marsalis [WM] about his composition Congo Square, which combines the Lincoln Center Jazz Archestra with Odadaa!, a Wes... Read more
Posted on 24 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Abstract Words in Prose Fiction [#DH]
Just posted the talk I gave last week to King's College, with the text synced to the slides: https://t.co/zLNOaqhu7WIt's a summary of my dissertation work on... Read more
Posted on 24 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of Telomeres, Senescence, Cancer, Laboratory Mice, Evolutionary Biology, and...
This is a long podcast (over two hours), and it takes awhile to get off the ground, but it's worth your attention. About the podcast: All of our Mice are Broken. Read more
Posted on 22 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Louis Armstrong on the Cover of Time Magazine
Jazz legend Louis Armstrong became the first jazz musician to appear on the cover of @TIME magazine #OTD in 1949. The 5-page article on Satchmo, titled “Louis... Read more
Posted on 21 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Egalitarian Proclivities of Louis Armstrong
M.H, Miller, Louis Armstrong, The King of Queens, NYTimes, 20 Feb 2020: Armstrong was born in New Orleans in 1901, dropped out of school as a child and was a... Read more
Posted on 20 February 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
