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 ( 6413 )
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To Academia.edu Or Not Academia.edu, That is the Question
There's a debate going on about whether or not scholars should participate in Academia.edu. The case against it is: because, capitalism! Read more
Posted on 16 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
YouTube Success Can Be a Financial Trap
Gaby Dunn in Fusion: Allison and I have turned down products for all kinds of reasons—the CEO made sexist comments; it isn’t something we’d really use, like... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wind and Chance, Design and Mechanism, in The Wind Rises
I’ve mentioned the film’s title in other posts, but Miyazaki is so insistent on it that I decided it required a post of its own. But not entirely its own. Read more
Posted on 15 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Merelogical Fallacy in Neuroscience
J Exp Anal Behav. 2005 Nov; 84(3): 683–692. doi: 10.1901/jeab.2005.83-05 PMCID: PMC1389787 Naming Our Concerns about Neuroscience: A Review of Bennett and... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Singing Delays the Onset of Infant Distress
Mariève Corbeil, Sandra E. Trehub, Isabelle Peretz. Singing Delays the Onset of Infant Distress. Infancy, 1–19, 2015. Copyright © International Congress of... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Time as Come for a Department of Peace
Over at 3 Quarks Daily I’ve posted The United States Needs a Department of Peace. The idea was first proposed in 1793 by Dr. Benjamin Rush, one of the signers o... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Net Buzz and Hate Crimes
Evan Soltas and Seth Stephens-Davidowitz writing in The New York Times: Hate crimes may seem chaotic and unpredictable, a consequence of random neurons that... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Everyday Life in Germany During WWII
Nikolaus Wachsmann reviews The German War: A Nation Under Arms, 1939-45 (2015) by Nicholas Stargardt in The Guardian. Most Germans did not want war in 1939. Read more
Posted on 12 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is America Obsessed with Fame? And Does That Play a Causal Role in Mass...
Stephanie Pappas at Live Science: Gun ownership can't be the entire story, though, given that overall violent crime is decreasing. There seems to be something... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Tulips for Art
My first publication in an academic journal (and so-called "little magazine") was an autobiographical piece, "Touchstones", that Art Efron published in his... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Art Efron: An Ethical Critic
I suppose it would have been some time in 1998 that I was contacted to contribute to a Festschrift for Art Efron, one of my teachers in the English Department o... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Take on Neuroscience and Literature
If someone interested in neuroscience and literature was to take a look at my work, what would they find? Quite a bit, but it’s scattered across a lot of... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Philosophical Transactions B: Understanding Self and Other: from Origins to...
Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society B Theme issue ‘Understanding self and other: from origins to disorders’ compiled and edited by Caroline Catmur,... Read more
Posted on 09 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computation & Literature: 6 EZ Pieces
Another working paper is up. Title above; introduction, etc. below. * * * * * Download at Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jerry Coyne on the Irony of Natural Selection
Mutations, though necessary for evolution, are general harmful. Jerry Coyne points out that there's an irony here: The irony to which I refer in the title is... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pastel Fog on the Hudson River
My mind seems to be on hiatus for the moment, so writing is temporarily on hold. But I can still post photos. Here's another RGB (red-green-blue) series. It's... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Miyazaki: “Film-making Only Brings Suffering”
He says that about an hour and 47 minutes into a documentary, The Kingdom of Dreams and Madness, which has made about Studio Ghibli in 2012 or so. Read more
Posted on 06 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In 16 Books Dickens Used 37,504 Words
but just what that means is subject to various qualifications. For example: I downcased everything, split hyphenated words, and counted only all-alphabetic... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Weekly Ramble 2: What’s Miyazaki Constructing? More Lit Crit
Almost a month ago I put up something I called “weekly ramble”, thinking that I might do more such columns, possibly weekly. The idea was to ramble over things... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Humans and Animals
Kerri MacDonald has a moving article in the NYTimes about humans and animals She's discussing the photographs Jayanti Seiler has taken of animals and of... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY