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 ( 7623 )
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Privilege is Toxic: What About This Trump Guy?
David Remnick (The New Yorker) writes about Obama coming to grips with a Trump presidency. It's a long and interesting article. Read more
Posted on 20 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The End of Identity Politics?
Mark Lilla, The NYTimes: But how should this diversity shape our politics? The standard liberal answer for nearly a generation now has been that we should becom... Read more
Posted on 20 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seth Kaufman Needs Your Help
Seth used to blog at Acephalous and The Valve (where I first met him). Then there's Lawyers, Guns Money and Salon. He's suffering from multiple organ failure... Read more
Posted on 19 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Obama Vs. Trumpism
David Remnick, Obama Reckons with a Trump Presidency, The New Yorker, 28 November 2016. Here's one passage: Air Force One landed at Fort Bragg and the... Read more
Posted on 19 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
86 Billion Neurons
Steven Mitten reviews The Human Advantage: A New Understanding of How Our Brain Became Remarkable by Suzana Herculano-Houzel, MIT Press, 256 pp., $29.95. Read more
Posted on 19 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Several Distant Views of the Statue of Liberty
Posted on 18 November 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How Synchrony and Asynchrony Co-exist
https://t.co/SNfVWgIi59 — Science (@scienmag) November 18, 2016 From the news article: The team built a system of three coupled platforms, each supporting up... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rich Statistical Parsing and Literary Language, PhD Thesis by A.W. Van...
Great PhD thesis by Andreas van Cranenburgh, nearly solves the Riddle of Literary Quality: https://t.co/ihT0UqKfux @Ted_Underwood @alanyliu — rens bod (@rensbod... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Larry Summers Worries About Trump's Bigotry
Larry Summers in The Washington Post: Black students, gay students, Hispanic students, Muslim students, disabled students, female students – all of them now fea... Read more
Posted on 17 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Will Trump Transform the Nature of Corruption in America and Amplify Its...
Dem leaders are thinking of Trump's lack of principles as an opportunity but it's a threat https://t.co/bgm3XmZr9F pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 17 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jonathan Haidt on the Trials of Multiculturalism in Contemporary America
Sean Illing interviews Haidt in Vox: Sean Illing What you’re describing sounds like an expansion of the culture war. Is it your view that culture wars have... Read more
Posted on 17 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's the Economy Stupid
From Jed Kolko, FiveThirtyEight: Donald Trump performed best on Tuesday in places where the economy is in worse shape, and especially in places where jobs are... Read more
Posted on 16 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Flash of Light
What you see is a bunch of fuzzy light. Does it matter that this is a photograph? If I didn't tell you that, would you know, would you care? And, since it is a... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Crown and the Presidency, 2016
I’ve been watching The Crown on Netflix. It’s about the accession of Elizabeth II to the British crown. It started streaming quite recently, perhaps no earlier... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Prospect Theory, on Why Take a Risk on Trump Instead of Going for Sure-thing...
Christopher Heintz has a post at Cognition Culture that speaks to this: Does Prospect Theory explain Trump and Brexit votes? So: Prospect Theory is a major... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Vengeance is Mine, Sayeth The Donald
You may remember Omarosa as a serial contestant in Trump’s Apprentice franchise. More recently she was in charge of African-American outreach for his... Read more
Posted on 14 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dan Everett’s Dark Matter @ 3QD
Consider these three words: gavagai, gabagaí, gabagool. If you’ve been binge watching episodes in the Star Trek franchise you might suspect them to be the... Read more
Posted on 14 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Being White in America Has Changed and Trump Has Changed It
Nell Irvin Painter in the NYTimes, "What Whiteness Means in the Trump Era". Whiteness is now (just) another racial category rather than being the default. Read more
Posted on 13 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Handing out Blame for the 2016 Presidential Election
Alex Pareene is ranting. Here's a couple paragraphs: Blame nearly every single person with any power in the Democratic Party, who were gifted a large and growin... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The President-Elect: Homebody in Chief
I want to be alone. The NYTimes: Mr. Trump, who was shocked when he won the election, might spend most of the week in Washington, much like members of... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
