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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The OED is Listening
Yesterday I discovered, thanks to Jerry Coyne (scroll down a bit), that Gary Larson had coined the term "thagomizer" in his comic strip. Read more
Posted on 24 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DON’T PANIC: Will Space-travel Be a Transformative Experience for Humankind?...
I’ve got a new piece up at 3 Quarks Daily: Three Children of the Space Age: Elon Musk, Freeman Dyson, and Me. Dyson was born in 1923; I was born in 1947; and... Read more
Posted on 23 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pop Music, by the Numbers: 1950-2015
Rosebud Anwuri took data from the Billboard Hot 100 and ran the numbers. Big finding: 1. In the past sixty years, we have had only two major changes in music... Read more
Posted on 23 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mommy, What's a Thagomizer?
I love this. When the Far Side came out in 1982, paleontologists realised they'd never actually named that part of a stegosaurus and began using the term... Read more
Posted on 23 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Effing Heist Movie: Commentary on a Passage from New York 2140
Note: I originally published this at 3 Quarks Daily earlier this year. But 3QD has just moved to a different platform and some of the posts haven't yet made it... Read more
Posted on 22 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Green Villain Massive Block Party 2018
Posted on 22 July 2018
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Two Silly Ideas: We Live in a Simulation & Our Computers Are Going to Have Us fo...
You know, I was trained as a humanist–English lit plus other stuff. I watched postmodernist criticism rise out of the smoke of New Criticism and phenomenology.... Read more
Posted on 22 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To the Moon, Alice! To the Moon!
Where were you 49 years today when @TheRealBuzz and Neil Armstrong made those historic first steps onto the Moon. Congratulations to the #Apollo11 crew and to... Read more
Posted on 22 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Life in China, the Rule of Law
Christopher spent "nine years working for the HSBC Business School of Peking University Shenzhen Graduate School as a professor teaching international trade,... Read more
Posted on 20 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Brooks on the Rise of Localism
NYTimes, July 19: We’ve tried liberalism and conservatism and now we’re trying populism. Maybe the next era of public life will be defined by a resurgence of... Read more
Posted on 20 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Fruits of "l'art Pour L'art"?
“I find it troubling that writers, musicians, and other members of the creative economy are often asked to work for free...No one would ever ask a car mechanic... Read more
Posted on 19 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another Romp Around Searle's Chinese Room
First Thoughts I don't know quite what I think about that Chinese room. When I read it in Brain and Behavior Science I was puzzled. So what, thought I to myself... Read more
Posted on 18 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Soros on the Roma
Michael Steinberger profiles George Soros, the mega-biolionaire investor, philanthropist and student of Karl Popper, in the The New York Times Magazine. Read more
Posted on 18 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Spearmaster's Way of Death
Mary Douglas, Purity and Danger (1966) 178-179: Another example of death being softened by welcome, if we can put it that way, is the ritual murder by which... Read more
Posted on 17 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Continuity and Discontinuity in Literary History, H Vs. DH? (Literary Lab 4) –...
If, a few years ago, you’d asked me whether or not a half dozen scholars could have an interesting and fruitful conversation 280 characters at a time, I’d have... Read more
Posted on 16 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is It Moral to Raise Children in a Doomed World?
Roy Scranton, Raising a Child in a Doomed World, NYTimes: I cried two times when my daughter was born. First for joy, when after 27 hours of labor the little... Read more
Posted on 16 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Google AI in Ghana
Victor Asemota, CNN International: The question everyone was asking after Jeff Dean (the Google AI and Google Brain team lead) announced that Google AI Lab was... Read more
Posted on 15 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jordan Peterson Interviews Nina Paley
Nina Paley is an animator and artist who makes unbelievably beautiful films. We discussed her life, her views, and her work, interspersing her animation... Read more
Posted on 15 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Books on Universal Basic Income (UBI)
Robert Reich reviews two books in the NYTimes: Annie Lowrey, GIVE PEOPLE MONEY, How a Universal Basic Income Would End Poverty, Revolutionize Work, and Remake... Read more
Posted on 15 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hasui Kawase, Japanese Print-maker
#TheNewPaintingHasui Kawase (川瀬 巴水 Kawase Hasui, May 18, 1883 – Nov 7, 1957) was a Japanese artist. He was one of the most... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
