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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Saturday Ramble: Ethical Criticism and Too Much to Do
“Deck the Halls with Double Joy” –It’s early Saturday morning, December 23, 2017. In a couple of hours I head off to Philadelphia to spend the Christmas... Read more
Posted on 23 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Manhattan from Hoboken
Posted on 22 December 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Textual Closure and Literary Form
The process whereby word forms, whether spoken, written, or gestured (signed), are linked to meaning/semantics is irreducibly computational. Read more
Posted on 22 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Enjoyment in Music
PERSPECTIVE ARTICLEFront. Psychol., 13 December 2017 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fpsyg.2017.02187A Neurodynamic Perspective on Musical Enjoyment: The Role of... Read more
Posted on 21 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From Canon/Archive to a REAL REVOLUTION in Literary Studies
Another working paper, title above, abstract a contents below.Download at:Academia:... Read more
Posted on 21 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Four Phrases Coined by H. G. Wells That Endure
Adam Roberts, in a post from September: I'd say that there are four phrases in particular, out of all the many phrases and ideas Wells coined, that have... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
H. G. Wells and Harvey Weinstein as Mama's Boys, After a Fashion
H. G. Wells and Harvey Weinstein? Two very different guys to be sure. Weinstein is much in the news these days as a sexual predator. He's a very successful movi... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Monk Says... Thelonious That is
Thelonious Monk’s 25 Tips for Musicians (1960) https://t.co/xWGToCzx3O pic.twitter.com/hDtNsTu7QS — Open Culture (@openculture) December 18, Read more
Posted on 18 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reflections on Entering My Eighth Decade and Why Portends to Be the Most...
In destinies sad or merry, true men can but try. – Sir Gawain and the Green Knight In scientific prognostication we have a condition analogous to a fact of... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To Mars, Because We Can, Really
Because right now, we think we can't, build for a future, that is, we're sticking our collective heads in the sand and saying "Oh, noes! Read more
Posted on 18 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mind Or Machine?
I have, in various posts, expressed skepticism about the long-standing conversation about whether or not the mind is computational. Read more
Posted on 17 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Emotional Intelligence for Artificial Beings? With a Potential Application to...
2AI Labs, Tim Barber and Mark Changizi, has announced a model of emotion: VICTOR Socio-Emotional AI. We at 2ai Labs have spent the last decade deciphering the... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Snoboken
Posted on 15 December 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Group Identity
From an essay, The age of white guilt: and the disappearance of the black individual (Harper's, November 1999), by Shelby Steele: The greatest problem in... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Structuralists Behaving Badly at Johns Hopkins
The Quarterly Conversation has just published an essay excerpted from Cynthia L. Haven, Evolution of Desire: A Life of René Girard (Michigan St. U. Press 2018). Read more
Posted on 14 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Should I Refuse to Watch a Movie Because Harvey Weinstein Was Involved?
Alas, I'm SOL because I've seen many films he's produced. But going forward? The New York Times has a short story about a publicaly searchable database, Rotten... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Peer Review is Known to Be Ineffective in the Sciences
So why is the practice continued? Writing in Times Higher Education, Les Hatton and Gregory Warr identify various problems and then observe: We are not the firs... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Teaching World Literature
Martin Puchner, Inside Higher Education: More to the point, world literature is a phenomenon of the southern United States. The 11 southern states contained onl... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Problem of State Capacity in India
Shruti Rajagopalan in LiveMint: Lant Pritchett famously labelled India a flailing state—one where “the head, that is the elite institutions at the national... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sometimes Seeing is Hearing
Heather Murphy in the NYTimes: This week, in an improbable turn of events, the sound of silence went viral. An animated GIF showing an electrical tower jumping... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
