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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Culture is a Driving Force in History
I'm thinking about this a lot these days. May write a book about it. So I'm bumping this post from April 2011 to the top of the queue. Read more
Posted on 08 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Wealthy Are (sometimes) Ambivalent About Their Wealth (pssst...they're Only...
Rachel Sherman in the NYTimes: We often imagine that the wealthy are unconflicted about their advantages and in fact eager to display them. Read more
Posted on 08 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Perpetual Election?
For some time now the American presidential election has run on for a year or more, staring in the year prior to the actual election with trial balloons and... Read more
Posted on 08 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jakobson’s Poetic Function and Literary Form
Two years ago Sandra MacPherson wrote [1] that she's looking for “for a genuinely formalist critical practice, a little formalism that would turn one away from... Read more
Posted on 07 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
1981: My Summer with NASA
Something I painted when I was, oh, nine or ten. See that meteor streaking at the upper right? My teacher, Glenn Brought painted that. How do I know? The brush... Read more
Posted on 07 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cities Are Breaking Free ... on Climate Change (I Hope)
From the Stanley Foundation: "I was elected to represent the citizens of Pittsburgh, not Paris,” President Donald Trump declared at the White House in... Read more
Posted on 07 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wild Dogs Sneeze to Arrive at a Group Decision About Hunting
From The New York Times: When they want to move as a group, meerkats call to each other. Capuchin monkeys trill. Gorillas grunt. Honeybees make what is called... Read more
Posted on 06 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
After the Thrill is gone...A Cognitive/computational Understanding of the Text,...
In a previous post in this series I criticized the vague spatial metaphors literary critics use to understand the text and nature of critical inquiry. Read more
Posted on 06 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Once More, with Feeling: Computation, Criticism, and the Way Forward
And I mean computation, not as a tool to crunch data or process words, but as a way of thinking about literary structure and process. Read more
Posted on 04 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The General, the President, and NCIS
I have already noted that NCIS is popular among Trump supporters. Trump is strong on authority, his in particular, and NCIS, after all, centers around the... Read more
Posted on 02 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Online "community" Displacing Real Face-to-face Community in a Way That...
Justin Hendrix, at Medium, Bike lanes and World War II The Facebook Manifesto in a Time of Crisis: The average American consumer spends nearly an hour on... Read more
Posted on 02 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Boundaries and Knowing
The relationship between mother and infant has come up in a discussion over at Crooked Timber, so I decided to boost this 2011 post to the top of the queue.... Read more
Posted on 02 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Some Varieties of Water
Posted on 01 September 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How Mainstream Literary Criticism Hobbles Thinkers Seeking to Understand Literar...
By insisting on purely discursive methods, that’s how. I’ve said this before, in various ways. But I now see it in a different light. Let me explain. Read more
Posted on 01 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Urban Pastoral
April 1, 2011: Another piece from the old days at The Valve. I figure if we're going to transform our urban environments, we've got to take ownership of them. Read more
Posted on 31 August 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Twitter is Taking Potshots at the NYTimes Op-Ed Page
This tweet's from political scientist, Dan Drezner: Hey @nytimes if you'll run this Erik Prince advertorial I got a killer "Why Profs Should Be Worshipped Like... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Keeping Track of Myself – Lit Crit, #DH, Prospero, Metagramming, Cultural...
I’ve completed to of the items that entered my to-do list last week: Virtual reading as a path through a multidimensional-dimensional semantic space: This is a... Read more
Posted on 30 August 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computer-generated Stories in the 1960s [#DH]
James Ryan, Grimes' Fairy Tales: A 1960s Story Generator, Expressive Intelligence Studio, University of California, Santa Cruz, [email protected] Abstract. Read more
Posted on 30 August 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
LARB Interviews Alejandro Jodorowsky: "The Work is to Live All Our Years at...
I saw Jodorowsky's El Topo when it first toured the States, back in the early 1970s. It blew my mind. I had to see it again, and I did. Maybe even a third... Read more
Posted on 30 August 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Biologist Talks About Race
Greg Meyer over at Why Evolution is True: To begin with, race is not a technical term in biology—it is used loosely for any differentiated subdivision of a... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
