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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Alignment in “The Road Not Taken”
One of the things that interests me about poetry is alignment, or, perhaps more accurately, (deliberate) misalignment. Thus, while Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ring-Composition @3QD: “The Road Not Taken”
It’s time for my once-every-four-weeks piece in 3 Quarks Daily. This time it’s a bit of descriptive poetics, about Robert Frost’s “The Road Not Taken. Read more
Posted on 21 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rita Felski Calls for Latourian Humanities
She points out (Doing the Humanities with Bruno Latour) that critique is over-rated: Helen Small writes: “the work of the humanities is frequently descriptive,... Read more
Posted on 21 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
RGB on a Facade in Hoboken, at Night
Which one did I really see and which ones were photoshopped into existence? You should be able to tell. There's a clue in the photos. Read more
Posted on 20 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Literary Form, the Mind, and Computation: A Brief Note (Boiling It Down)
They’re intimately related. To a first approximation, the form of a literary work reflects the full economy of mental faculties working together, cooperatively... Read more
Posted on 20 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Poverty of Literary Darwinism
Since I've just spent a fair amount of time criticising cognitive criticism, it seemed only fair that I turn my attention to literary Darwinism, or, as Brian... Read more
Posted on 18 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Interdisciplinary Research
Nature has a special set of articles devoted to interdisciplinarity (16 Septermber 2015). Ii've offer excerpts and comments on two of the articles. Read more
Posted on 18 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Revolution in the Auto Industry?
From the Frankfurt motor show (NYTimes): The main risk for carmakers is probably not so much that an Apple car would destroy Mercedes-Benz or BMW the way the... Read more
Posted on 18 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Negotiating Meaning in Conversation
Some years ago reading William Croft (Explaining Language Change) convinced me that we negotiate meaning in ordinary conversation. Read more
Posted on 17 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Graeber on Super Heroes
In The New Inquiry: The plot is almost always some approximation of the following: a bad guy, maybe a crime boss, more often a powerful supervillain, embarks... Read more
Posted on 17 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Meaning, Theory, and the Disciplines of Criticism
In the fifth post, It’s Time to Leave the Sandbox, in my series on the poverty of cognitive criticism I managed to rough out a sketch of academic literary... Read more
Posted on 16 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Breakthrough in Machine Chess
Keeping in mind that my technical knowledge of computer chess is thin, this is impressive stuff (reported in MIT Tech Review): While Deep Blue was searching som... Read more
Posted on 15 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wuthering Heights, Vampires, Handbooks, and Citizen Science
Heathcliff as vampire wannabe? Why didn't I think of that? Fortunately others have. Over at The Literature Network, kev67 asked (in Nov 2012): I was just... Read more
Posted on 15 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
There's a Parable Here
You figure it out. Or it it just cause and effect? Read more
Posted on 15 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Graffiti Aesthetics • Some Notes
Another working paper, title above, link, abstract, and introduction below. This image asks a question (notice where the arrow points): I answer it at the very... Read more
Posted on 14 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lectures Vs. Active Learning
From today's NYTimes: poor and minority students are disproportionately likely to have attended low-performing schools and to have missed out on the rich... Read more
Posted on 13 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Technology Readiness Scale
The NYTimes has an interesting article about private industry buying high-tech expertise en masse from universities. Thus Uber recently decided to invest in... Read more
Posted on 13 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Anxiety and Nationalism in Russia
There's a lot of anxiety sloshing around in Russian these days, and much of it is directed against America, reports Sabrina Tavernise in The NYTimes: "[…]... Read more
Posted on 13 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Critical Method: the Four-Fold Way, from Then to Now
While I’m in the business of thinking about the profession, here’s a short post about and old heuristic device, Richard Macksey’s graphic expression of an idea... Read more
Posted on 12 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Writing is a Way to Gather Your Mind
Ron Capps was in the military and in the State Department. He served in Rwanda, Darfur, Eastern Congo, Afghanistan, and Iraq. What he saw, what he was unable... Read more
Posted on 10 September 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
