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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Documentary About Lee Morgan
I CALLED HIM MORGAN (Trailer) from filmswelike on Vimeo. Lee Morgan is one of my favorite trumpet players. When he was in his early thirties he was shot by his... Read more
Posted on 25 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Department of WTF! Mysteries of Memetics Edition
Yesterday, with 5,725 vies, this was the most viewed photo at my Flickr site: I'd uploaded it on August 18, 2012, so it's been online for 4 and a half years,... Read more
Posted on 23 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Working for 45
Jack Goldsmith has an interesting article at Lawfare: How Hard Is It to Work for President Trump? The problem arises, of course, because Trump spews forth an... Read more
Posted on 22 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Nature of Biology as an Intellectual Enterprise
Ashutosh Jogalekar, Why Technology Won't Save Biology, over at 3 Quarks Daily: There have been roughly six revolutions in biology during the last five hundred... Read more
Posted on 20 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Numbers as Cultural Tools
Craig Fahman over at FiveThirtyEight has an interview with Caleb Everett, author of Numbers and the Making of Us: Counting and the Course of Human Cultures. Read more
Posted on 17 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Role of Navajo Women in the Early Semiconductor Industry
Lisa Nakamura: I learned that from 1965-1975 the Fairchild Corporation’s Semiconductor Division operated a large integrated circuit manufacturing plant in... Read more
Posted on 11 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump: The Man, the Oath, the Presidency
In the course of a discussion over at Marginal Revolution, prior_test2 linked to a most interesting post at Lawfare by Benjamin Wittes and Quinta Jurecic... Read more
Posted on 06 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Theft! A History of Music
From Duke University's Center for the Study of the Public Domain: We are proud to announce the publication of Theft! A History of Music, a graphic novel laying... Read more
Posted on 06 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Once Again, Language Universals
Cathleen O'Grady on Ars Technia: Language takes an astonishing variety of forms across the world—to such a huge extent that a long-standing debate rages around... Read more
Posted on 04 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What About All Those AI Assistants Kids Interact with These Days?
Michael S. Rosenwald in The Washington Post: “How they react and treat this nonhuman entity is, to me, the biggest question,” said Sandra Calvert, a Georgetown... Read more
Posted on 03 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Physicality of Computing
Intuitions are very important; they are the foundations of our thinking. But explaining or even merely “grasping” our intuitions is difficult. This is a story... Read more
Posted on 02 March 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rejected! @ New Literary History, with Observations About the Discipline
I've now taken my posts on being turned down at NLH and uploaded them as a working paper: Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Will the Real Rachel Dolezal Stand Up?
Do you remember Rachel Dolezal, the white woman and black activist who was outed two years ago for passing as black? The Guardian has a fascinating article abou... Read more
Posted on 27 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Numerosity Areas in the Brain
A network of topographic numerosity maps in human association cortex, Ben M. Harvey Serge O. Dumoulin Nature Human Behaviour 1, Article number: 0036 (2017)... Read more
Posted on 25 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Networks and Cumulative Culture Among Hunter-gatherers
Characterization of hunter-gatherer networks and implications for cumulative culture, A. B. Migliano, A. E. Page, J. Gómez-Gardeñes, G. D. Salali, S.... Read more
Posted on 25 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Did Interpretive Criticism Take Hold?
The question doesn’t exist for most academic literary critics because that’s just what we do. Some may know that it’s relatively recent, but that history is... Read more
Posted on 24 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bourdain Talks at Google, New York
Looks like I've got a Jones for Anthony Bourdain. I've been watching mostly Parts Unknown, but also A Cook's Tour, and I've even gone scouting for stuff about... Read more
Posted on 23 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Who's Who in Lit Crit Over the Last Half Century, the View from Google Ngram
I decided to do some Ngram searches on the names of important literary critics. Let's start with Northrup Frye: He published The Anatomy of Criticism in 1957 an... Read more
Posted on 22 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ezra Klein Interviews Elizabeth Drew About Trump
This is a superb interview. Well worth listening two, all 73 minutes of it. Elizabeth Drew is the author of Washington Journal, one of my favorite books about... Read more
Posted on 21 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Shakespeare and His Collaborators?
From The New Yorker: In 1989, a young professor named Gary Taylor published “Reinventing Shakespeare,” in which he argued that Shakespeare’s unrivalled... Read more
Posted on 21 February 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
