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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Why Chomsky’s Ideas Were So Popular
I am in the process of revising my post, Golumbia Fails to Understand Chomsky, Computation, and Computational Linguistics, and reposting it as a downloadable... Read more
Posted on 29 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reply to Lindley Darden on Abstraction
Back in 1987 Lindley Darden published “Viewing the History of Science as Compiled Abstraction,” AI Magazine, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1987. Read more
Posted on 28 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Review of Rita Felski, The Limits of Criticique
Under review: Rita Felski. The Limits of Critique. University of Chicago Press, 2015. Dan Weiskopf in ArtsATL, July 5, 2016: Felski documents extensively how... Read more
Posted on 27 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Potential of the World's Tribes, Big, Small, and New
Sitting in Sri Lanka, recently at war with itself, Ram Manikkalingam contemplates Europe and the rest of the world in 3 Quarks Daily: Meanwhile, (with perhaps... Read more
Posted on 26 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ralph Nader Endorses We Need a Department of Peace
Photo courtesy of The Lakeville Journal. Meanwhile, in the Twitterersphere: @hipbonegamer @bbenzon @zenpundit I like what George Will said about this years... Read more
Posted on 26 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Peace Now! War is Not a Natural Disaster
Over at 3 Quarks Daily my current post reproduces a section of a slender book I’ve put together with the help of Charlie Keil and Becky Liebman. Read more
Posted on 25 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Google in the Cloud, is the Tethersphere Humanity's Future?
Amazon is 1st in cloud services, microsoft is second, and Google is playing catch-up ball, according to the NYTimes. So Google is ramping up. How will that go? Read more
Posted on 25 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos, Sunday Edition: GVX 2016
Posted on 24 July 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Dana Boyd at Davos: We Have Met the Enemy and He R Us?
Dana Boyd, reporting from Davos earlier this year: Yet, what I struggled with the most wasn’t the sheer excess of Silicon Valley in showcasing its value but... Read more
Posted on 23 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To Russia, with Love
I've just been looking at my stats and notice that, for some reason, I've recently been getting a lot of view from Russia. Here's the breakdown: Russia USA Mont... Read more
Posted on 22 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Character Change in the Hollywood Film
Rory Kelly has an interesting guest post at David Bordwell's Observations on film art. It's called "Rethinking the character arc. Read more
Posted on 21 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tequila Sunrise in the Library: Another Take on "digital Humanities"
As I noted in an earlier post, Who put “The Terminator” in “Digital Humanities”?, it seems to me that in its very construction the phrase digital humanities... Read more
Posted on 21 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pokémon Go and the Citizen Scientist
An editorial in Nature, Gotta name them all: how Pokémon can transform taxonomy: Millions of people have spent the past week walking around. Read more
Posted on 20 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Miyazaki’s Metaphysics: Some Observations on The Wind Rises
Another working paper. Title above, abstract, TOC and introduction below. Download at: Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 20 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Analog Vs. Digital: How General is the Contrast?
The distinction between analog and digital computers and, more generally, between analog and digital phenomena, has been an important one in contemporary... Read more
Posted on 19 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Golumbia Fails to Understand Chomsky, Computation, and Computational Linguistics
As many of you know, David Golumbia is one of three authors of a recent article that that offered a critique of the digital humanities (DH), Neoliberal Tools... Read more
Posted on 15 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ricky Smiley: Black Vs. White Marching Bands
I remember back in the mid-1960s when my high school marching band – the Marching Rams from Richland Township High School in western Pennsylvania – went to the... Read more
Posted on 15 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DH Facing the Public, Sharon M. Leon in LARB
As far as I can tell, most of the debates at digital humanities – what is it? is it complicit in neoliberalism? – are about the position of digital humanities... Read more
Posted on 12 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pāṇini Was Illiterate! How Marvelous!
I have long known that the first grammarian was a 4th century BCE Indian named Pāṇini. I'd tacitly assumed that he was literate and that,... Read more
Posted on 11 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Humanities? What’s That? (w/ a Look at Pamela Fletcher in LARB)
I don’t know when I first heard about “the humanities,” perhaps college, but maybe before. But if before, well, the phrase wasn’t meaningful until college, and... Read more
Posted on 11 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
