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
-
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 ( 7626 )
-
An Open Letter to Dan Everett About Literary Criticism (PDF at Academia.edu)
I’ve finally PDF’ed my Open Letter to Dan Everett and uploaded it to Academia,edu:... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wonder Woman: A Quick Take
After reading the rapturous reviews and reading about young girls exiting the theaters pulling swords from their dresses and spinning lariats of glowing gold I... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Extra! Computational Criticism Breaks with Tradition! Sky Remains Overhead
Andrew Goldstone has decided that perhaps so-called distant reading is not reading at all. The document is relatively short, “The Doxa of Reading” (PDF), and... Read more
Posted on 19 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Does "distant Reading" Presage a Return to Poetics?
By all means, read the piece Goldstone links to in the first tweet,"The Doxa of Reading" (accepted for publication in PMLA). Here’s a preprint of “The Doxa of... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Hoboken Arts & Music Festival, June 2017
Posted on 16 June 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Kenan Malik Asks Some Questions About Culture and Cultural Appropriation
One of the more endearing traits of cultural appropriation warriors is their belief that only they have read and thought about the issue. Read more
Posted on 16 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jomny Sun – OOO Tweeter
look. life is bad. evryones sad. we're all gona die. but i alredy bought this inflatable boumcy castle so r u gona take ur shoes off or wat — jomny sun... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Timothy Morton in the Guardian – "the Philosopher Prophet of the Anthropocene"
Alex Blasdel writes in The Guardian. Morton in the art world: Over the past decade, Morton’s ideas have been spilling into the mainstream. Read more
Posted on 15 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Shelley’s Frankenstein a Ring-Form Text?
I’ve not read Frankenstein, or The Modern Prometheus, but I’m told that it has a complex narrative structure. Dorothea Wolschak explains: In the core of the... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Frederick Douglass Was the Most Photographed Man in 19th Century America
Tyler Cowen was a wide-ranging interview with Jill Lepore, Harvard historian and writer for The New Yorker. The whole thing is worth reading, but I was... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Kenan Malik Defends "cultural Appropriation"
Writing in the NYTimes: Campaigns against cultural appropriation reveal the changing meaning of what it is to challenge racism. Once, it was a demand for equal... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Long Before We See the Cabinet Members Kissing the Presidential Ring?
Trump went around table listening to his Cabinet praise him Reince: “We thank you for the opportunity the blessing…to serve your agenda” pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 12 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Let's Further Blur the Line Between the Presidency and DJT
Brilliant. There's a new Twitter bot that turns Trump's tweets into official White House statements. https://t.co/1wV6McVqZW — Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1)... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump, the Person (DJT) Versus the Role (POTUS)
Lawfare’s Quinta Jurecic has a new post up, A New Jurisprudence for an Oathless Presidency, in which she considers, as she has in earlier posts, the judicial... Read more
Posted on 03 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Synchronization Through Coupled Oscillation
I've put coupled oscillation at the center of my thinking about music, mind, and human sociality. One reason for that is that it is a phenomenon that can... Read more
Posted on 31 May 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Nation State as an Agent of War
Tyler Cowen has a recent post consisting of the abstract to a working paper by Alberto Alesina, Bryony Reich, Alessandro Riboni, "Nation-Building, Nationalism... Read more
Posted on 29 May 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Five Epochs of Energy and Evolution
Olivia P. Judson, The energy expansions of evolution, Nature Ecology Evolution 1, Article number: 0138 (2017)doi:10.1038/s41559-017-0138Abstract: The history... Read more
Posted on 25 May 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sapolsky on Good and Evil (sorta’)
Robert Sapolsky is a Stanford biologist who’s just published an 800-page book, Behave: The Biology of Humans at Our Best and Worst. Sean Illing interviews him i... Read more
Posted on 25 May 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The True Nature of Reality is Strange
I’m a regular reader of Tyler Cowen’s blog, Marginal Revolution (which he runs along with Alex Tabarrok). As some of you know, Cowen is a libertarian economist... Read more
Posted on 25 May 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can't We All Get Along? Russia and the USofA
Bottom Line: Perhaps we should reset our relationship with Russia. Alas, 45 and company are more interested in oil money than peace and they're incompetent at... Read more
Posted on 18 May 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
