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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Ring Composition by J. S. Bach, the Crab Canon
"The enigmatic Canon 1 à 2 from J. S. Bachs Musical Offering (1747), The manuscript depicts a single musical sequence that is to be played front to back and bac... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Happy Birthday is Free
As some of you no doubt know, "Happy Birthday" had been in copyright jail for years and years. Whenever the song was performed, Warner/Chappell would collect... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Faculty Psychology: The Triple Soul
Theory of Mind 101: the triple soul The ancient Greeks believed that humans had three souls, a rational soul, a sensitive soul, and a vegetative soul. Freud... Read more
Posted on 08 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Thermodynamics of Life
Jeremy England, MIT physicist, in Aeon: The theoretical research I do with my colleagues tries to comprehend a new aspect of life’s evolution by thinking of it... Read more
Posted on 08 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mnozil's "Blue", a Bunch of Other Tunes, a Man in a Ratty Black Wig & Red Cape....
I've been watching Mnozil Brass for several years now and think they're fabulous. They combine music and comedy in a stunning way. They're septet out of Austria. Read more
Posted on 07 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Vehicularization: A Control Principle in a Complex Modal Animal (w/ New Note on...
I'm bumping this to the top because it has direct bearing on my current ring-composition work. Consider the temporal horizons of actions undertaken in each... Read more
Posted on 07 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Traffic's Wonky at New Savanna
First, sometime in the last day or two page views went over 2 million: What's really interesting, though, is the ups and downs over the past week. Read more
Posted on 07 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tags/labels at New Savanna: What's up with That?
I've listed New Savanna's tag cloud below, though of course it's over there to the right, with hyperlinks. What's up with that? Why so many? Is it useful? Read more
Posted on 07 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Lolita, Light of My Life..." – Diagrammed!
Opening Sentences From Great Novels, Diagrammed: Lolita, 1984 More https://t.co/mhwy7FhQrW pic.twitter.com/G4e7plS9j7 — Open Culture (@openculture) November 7... Read more
Posted on 07 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Interior Journey in Heart of Darkness
This is just a quick and dirty note, as a reminder and for the record. The orange arrows in the figure below indicate Marlow’s narrative/journey in Heart of... Read more
Posted on 06 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Polarization, We Need More, Not Less, but of the Right Kind
The problem is not polarisation but that polarisation is too rarely rooted in fundamental political differences https://t.co/e8A7ajA0ZW — Kenan Malik... Read more
Posted on 06 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
That Blade Runner Look
I've been watching the original Blade Runner and it occurred to me: THAT's where I got the look. That's why I like to take flicks like these: And I don't care i... Read more
Posted on 05 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Heart of Darkness as a Ring-composition
In the process of preparing a PowerPoint presentation for my talk at HEX01, the First Workshop on the History of Expressive Systems, I took another crack at... Read more
Posted on 05 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tracking “Xanadu” Around the Web
I'm gearing up to write a review of Franco Moretti's latest; well, actually, not just Moretti, but Moretti plus thirteen others: Mark Algee-Hewitt, Sarah... Read more
Posted on 05 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"To Kill a Mockingbird" IS NOT a How-to Book for Hungry Cats
After a long torturous process learning to read 177 pages of irrelevance, Mabel was incensed at her book's lack of useful information. pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 04 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“St. George and the Dragon” as Ring-composition
I’ve been having a discussion of my HEX01 presentation with Per Aage Brandt over at Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 04 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Philosophy Doesn't Do Nuance" – Will Computers Ever Be Able, You Know, to Think?
Luciano Floridi in Aeon: Philosophy doesn’t do nuances well. It might fancy itself a model of precision and finely honed distinctions, but what it really loves... Read more
Posted on 04 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump, "profound" in Spite of His Efforts to Corrupt
Lawfare's Benjamin Wittes argues that Trump has blundered into a profound acknowledgment of the separation of powers embodied in the US Constitution. Read more
Posted on 04 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: The Return of Shaky-cam
Posted on 03 November 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Notes from a Recording Session Involving Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, John...
Early in January of 1993 I spent two days as a page-turner on a classical recording session. Nadia Salerno-Sonnenberg, John Cerminaro, and Cecil Licad were... Read more
Posted on 03 November 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
