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 ( 7824 )
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Why American Politics is a Tissue of Self-destructive Lies and Misdirections
Elizabeth Bruenig, Kavanaugh is one more step in America’s cycle of self-destruction, Washington Post, October 4, 2018: The Brett Kavanaugh Confirmation Affair... Read more
Posted on 05 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump Works the Presidency: Imperial Boss and Cyborg Operator
Another working paper; title above; abstract, contents, and introduction below. Download here: Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computation BURNS Energy, It IS a Physical Process, It's NOT Etherial Spirit
From David Wolpert, Why Do Computers Use So Much Energy?, Scientific American (4 oct 2018) Precise estimates vary, but currently about 5 percent of all energy... Read more
Posted on 04 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lost in Math: Sabine Hossenfelder at Stevens Institute
My buddy John Horgan brought Sabine Hossenfelder to Stevens Instituted to talk about her current book, Lost in Math: How Beauty Leads Physics Astray. Read more
Posted on 04 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lady Gaga as Star
When I met Lady Gaga on a hazy afternoon a few days after her Venice tour, at her house so high up in the Hollywood Hills that I broke through the fog line... Read more
Posted on 03 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Frank Sinatra as Mother?
I've been going through a a bunch of passages I cut from my book, Beethovens's Anvil, for one reason or another. This one is about Frank Sinatra's singing style. Read more
Posted on 03 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hermeneutic Hairball: Intuition, Tracking, and Sniffing out Patterns
This post serves three purposes: 1) It’s an elaboration on the middle section of a post from last month, Still, why do literary critics find it so difficult to... Read more
Posted on 02 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Howard Rheingold is Leaving Facebook
As many of you know, Howard’s been in the vanguard of thinking about and building online communities since the 1980s – see the online version of his 1993 book,... Read more
Posted on 02 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Musical High: Free, Rockin’ and Tight as a Frog’s Bottom
This is cobbled together from notes and from out-takes from my book, Beethoven's Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture, and my personal notes. Zoom!!! Read more
Posted on 02 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tyler Cowen on Kavanaugh: Asymmetry Between Male and Female Perceptions
There is an asymmetry between male and female perceptions. Most men are not abusers, yet very large numbers of women have been abused. So if a man is an... Read more
Posted on 01 October 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
I Was Right, Shakespeare Isn’t Real (Lit Lab 17) [#DH]
Yes, I know, all those plays were written by a real person, not by an alien from another world. And no, I’m not alluding to that inane controversy over whether... Read more
Posted on 30 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Heart of Darkness: Kurtz’s Mistress is Murdered
Sometime well after I’d finished my various notes about Conrad’s Heart of Darkness I came across an interview that Rachel Kaadzi Ghansa had conducted with Samue... Read more
Posted on 30 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Story of My Intellectual Life, Short Version (136 Words)
In the early 1970s I discovered that “Kubla Khan” had a rich, marvelous, and fantastically symmetrical structure. I'd found myself intellectually. I knew what... Read more
Posted on 29 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Michael Bérubé Tells All
I was making my rounds the other day and followed a link to an interview with Michael Bérubé. But what really caught my attention was the name of the reviewer... Read more
Posted on 28 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Contact & Dialectic (sky)
Posted on 28 September 2018
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Tech Firms Are Not Soverigns
This is a very important issue: Andrew Keane Woods writing at Lawfare: Technology firms are extraordinarily powerful. They control vast sums of money. Read more
Posted on 28 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Earl Wasserman, a Lifelong Student, a Scholar’s Scholar
I’m told that he was sometimes known as “Earl the Pearl” among the English Department grad students. Why, I don’t know. Well sure, there’s the sound of the... Read more
Posted on 27 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Notes Toward a Theory of the Corpus, Part 1: History [#DH]
By corpus I mean a collection of texts. The texts can be of any kind, but I am interested in literature, so I’m interested in literary texts. What can we infer... Read more
Posted on 27 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From a Big Wave to a Great Wave
Evolution of Hokusai's "Great Wave". 1. When he was 33 (1792).2. When he was 44 (1803).3. When he was 46 (1805).4. When he was 72 (1831). pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 27 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Importance of Words and Stories: If We Don't Know How to Put It into Words,...
Penelope Trunk, Judge Kavanaugh has taught me so much about how the world works. First four paragraphs: I can’t stop reading about Judge Kavanaugh. I am learnin... Read more
Posted on 26 September 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
