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 ( 7846 )
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Star Struck and Broken Down 2: Lit Crit Stars, Real Or an Illusion?
Is the fabled lit crit star of the 1980s and 90s a real phenomenon, or just an ordinary celebrity academic of the sort on finds in other disciplines? That... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wayne Shorter
Ethan Iverson writes about “the world’s greatest living jazz composer” Wayne Shorter on his 85th birthday (in the @NewYorker). https://t. Read more
Posted on 25 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Little Women
It is doubtful whether any novel has been more important to America’s female writers than Louisa May Alcott’s “Little Women.” https://t.co/tzLWSVHxcR... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Crazy Shots into the Sun
I love these kind of crazy shots. I mean, no sane person points the camera into the morning sun without filters and expects to get a decent shot. Read more
Posted on 24 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Life on Mars is No Joke, So Says Tyler Cowen
At Marginal Revolution: When I think of settling other planets, my base case is one of extreme scarcity and fragility, at least at first and possibly for a... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Play-car on a Finnish Train
Amazing - I am in #Finland and this is a playground in a train carriage on an inter-city train. Whole lot of books as well. Excellent idea - far nicer for... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gaia Redux, WTF!
Bruno Latour talks with James Lovecock and writes an essay, Bruno Latour Tracks Down Gaia, Los Angeles Review of Books. We cannot hide from the fact that there... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Dumbing Down of Mechanism
Jessica Riskin, Alive and ticking, in Aeon. The model of nature as a complex, clockwork mechanism has been central to modern science ever since the 17th century. Read more
Posted on 21 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Change Seems More Fundamental Than Time
From at interview posted at Backreaction. Tam Hunter interviews Carlo Rovelli about the nature of time: TH: In the quote from your book I mentioned above, what... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Would You Jump from an Airplane at 25,000 Feet Without a Parachute?
Luke Aikins, the first person to jump out of an airplane without a parachute from a 25,000 feet. Aikins eventually lands in a net. Read more
Posted on 20 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Star Struck and Broken Down: How Did Literary Criticism Come to This Foul Pass?...
Over the weekend the humanities Twitterverse, at least the part of it that I frequent, broke out in a flurry of discussion concerning the Avatal Ronell case.... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another Photo of the Met Life Tower, Plus Link to My 3QD Reflections of New...
See that slender tower in the middle? That's the Met Life tower, which is one of the central actors – yes, that's clearly how KSR conceived it, following... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computation, Semantics, and Meaning: Adding to an Argument by Michael Gavin [#DH]
I've completed a new working paper. Title above. You can download it here: Academic.edu:... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Brain is Driven by a Difference Between Prediction and and Actuality
New research bolsters a controversial theory of how the brain works — from how we see and hear, to how we remember and make decisions.https://t.co/NAftwdr5NL... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Strangers in a Strange Land – More on ‘useless’ Philosophical Arguments About...
I’ve been thinking about those philosophical arguments I find so useless and have an idea about what they might be up to. Let’s look at this statement early in ... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
250 Mile Optical Telegraph in the Byzantine Empire in the 9th Century CE
The Byzantine Empire used a system of beacons (an optical telegraph) to transmit messages across Asia Minor to Constantinople. The main line of beacons stretche... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It Turns out There IS a Quick Way to Find Your Nearest Neighbor
I'm sure this mathematical result is important, I even suspect that it's important to me, that is, that it will be useful in some of the problems I look at. Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Aretha's Jazz Foundations
How Aretha Franklin's jazz beginnings predicted her genre-transcending career (by @natalieweiner in @RollingStone). https://t.co/vciIsMtn2H pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Triangulating the Met Life Tower
As you may know, I'm involved in a group reading New York 2140, which centers on the Met Life Tower in Lower Manhattan.So, I've been taking a particular... Read more
Posted on 17 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gavin 5: Three Modes of Literary Investigation and Two Binary Distinctions [#DH]
Now that we’ve got two modes of semantic investigation on the table, statistical semantics and computational semantics, it’s time to add a third to the group.... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
