Bbenzon
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 ( 6406 )
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Friday Fotos: Sparkychan and Gojochan Retrospective!
Back in 2006, when I first started photography graffiti, I thought it would be interesting to get some kid's toys and photograph them amid the gritty territory ... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Universality, Alive and Well?
Joseph Luzzi in The New Yorker: This contrast, between a celebrated and largely unread classic [Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, 1827] and an enduringly... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To Leave Or Not to Leave, That is the Audience's Right
These days most of us will sit through the end of a show even if it bores us to tears. It wasn't always thus, writes William Grimes in The NYTimes: In the Unite... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 7.2: Hyperobjects and Large Finitude
As a way of transitioning to a concluding post in which I will recast Jockers’ work in evolutionary terms, I want to look at a passage from Tim Morton’s... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Students Build Better Apps
From today's NYTimes we learn that "students are showing up the universities that trained them by producing faster, easier-to-navigate, more informative and... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 6.4: Themes and How They Evolve Over Time
Note: This may be the most important post in the series. But it’s a long way through, 6000 words or so. Fortunately, there are a lot of illustrations, and much... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sam Clemens at the Cotton Club: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I originally published this at the end of April, 2010. I'm bumping this to the top of the stack as it is directly relevant to my current work on Matt Jockers'... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Time to Change the World, at 3Quarks Daily
My monthly column is online over there at 3 Quarks Daily. Here's the opening paragraphs: Adolescents seem gifted in the belief that, if only the adults would ge... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Post-Graffiti?
At Graffuturism, "A Look at Graffiti’s Evolution and Progression 2011 in the Artists own words. Part 1" (from 2011). The Question, from GF: Coming back from... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Japanese Bath Houses
Japanese public bathhouses, also called sento. From the outside, some of them look like Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples. Inside, they have many features... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Academy of the Wall: Transnational Culture in the 21st Century
What are the prospects of using graffiti as the foundation of a transnational cultural academy? By graffiti I don’t mean just anything inscribed on walls. Read more
Posted on 24 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Washington St on a Saturday Night in Hoboken
Posted on 24 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 6.3: DOGS and BIRDS, Or, the Hermeneutics of Screwing...
I started exploring Jockers’ 500 themes in earnest after I’d spotted this graph, which depicts the occurrence of the DOGS topic by gender over time: I saw that... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
EKG @ Graffuturism: Degree Oblivion (an Autobiographic Theoretical Essay)...
EKG states the case: the passion drive output strategy and remnants of an artist’s street actions schematize, render and broadcast a portrait of the artist’s... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Map of Musical Genres
Find it HERE. Click on links to listen to examples. This is an ongoing attempt at an algorithmically-generated, readability-adjusted scatter-plot of the... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: GV002
Posted on 22 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Minerva Project: The Unbundling Continues
Can Minerva college unbundle (see this post) an elite undergraduate education from the matrix of facilities and services that currently makes it so expensive? Read more
Posted on 22 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 7.1: Visualizing the Geist of 19th Century Anglo-American...
Last year Alan Liu published a remarkable essay, “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities” (PMLA 128, 2013, 409-423), in which he argued that the most recent... Read more
Posted on 22 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 6.2: Theme, Moby Dick in the Context of Literary Culture
In this post, which is a long one, I use two books to investigate Jockers’ themes, and vice versa. One of the books is a classic of fairly traditional, at... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Little Red Riding Hood" Evolves
Tehrani JJ (2013) The Phylogeny of Little Red Riding Hood. PLoS ONE 8(11): e78871. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0078871 Abstract: Researchers have long been... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY