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 ( 7812 )
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McWhorter on Wolf on Chomsky and Everett: What Color Are the Thoughts of a...
Dan Everett says that John McWhorter's review of Tom Wolf's The Kingdom of Speech is the best review of the book to date. I'll take Dan's word for it. Read more
Posted on 15 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sound Symbolism is REAL, Folks
We've known about this for some time, but the idea hasn't gotten through. Will it do so this time? From Sci-News: A careful statistical examination of words fro... Read more
Posted on 14 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Communication Stripped to the Barest Minimum?
Hays, D. G. (1973). "Language and Interpersonal Relationships." Daedalus 102(3): 203-216. The following passage is from pp. 204-205: The experiment strips... Read more
Posted on 14 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Baby Let Me Shake Your Tree
The late Rahsaan Roland Kirk is one of my favorite musicians. I’ve never seen a more dynamic performer; I describe one of his performances in “Ecstasy at the... Read more
Posted on 12 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Academic Literary Criticism Uniquely Self-critical Among Academic Disciplines?
Is the Pope Jewish? When I first encountered literary criticism as an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins in the late 1960s the discipline was reflecting on the... Read more
Posted on 12 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Demise of Deconstruction
Sometime back in 1969 or 1970 I was auditing a graduate seminar taught by J. Hillis Miller, who was still at Johns Hopkins. Somehow the Modern Language... Read more
Posted on 11 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Yellow Pagodas / Goldenrod
Posted on 09 September 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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My Early Jazz Education 5: Al Hirt and (again) Maynard
It’s back to my early jazz education. For one thing I just got a new pair of speakers for my computer and I want to listen to them. Read more
Posted on 09 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Could the Dali Lama Reincarnate in a Computer?
The following exchange is quoted from the book GENTLE BRIDGES: Conversations with the Dalai Lama on the Sciences of Mind by Jeremy Hayward and Francisco Varela... Read more
Posted on 07 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Psychology of Ring-Composition
Actually, there are two psychologies: that of the reader (or listener) and that of the writer (or speaker). They are different, but note that the writer is... Read more
Posted on 07 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Should Literary Critics Learn “hard-core” Computational Linguistics Or...
I have, in a number of posts, explained that learning computational semantics was a tremendous intellectual experience for me. That was during graduate school i... Read more
Posted on 06 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Computational Envelope of Language
Let me review. In Words, Binding, and Conversation as Computation I argued that a signifier has no meaning until it is bound to one in a linguistic act. Read more
Posted on 05 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How the Brain Tells Time
The Scientist has a profile of Dean Buonomano, who investigates how the brain encodes time. One choice bit: Two views of time. “In the field of timing, there ar... Read more
Posted on 05 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The September 1 Issue of The Scientist Has a Set of Artic...
The September 1 issue of The Scientist has a set of articles on sensory perception in humans and animals. The editorial, A Cornucopia of Sensory Perception,... Read more
Posted on 05 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rant: Theory of Mind, NOT!
I posted this back in 2010, but I'm thinking about these things these days, so I thought I'd bump it to the top of the queue. Here's a companion piece from... Read more
Posted on 03 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY -
Friday Fotos: Hidden Persuaders Under the Bergen Arches
Since I've got the Bergen Arches on my mind, I've decided to do another set of photos. These are all from my first one or two trips through the Arches in the... Read more
Posted on 02 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Description
Sharon Marcus, Heather Love, and Stephen Best, “Building a Better Description,” Representations 135, Summer 2016, pp. 1-21. In particular, p. 2:We believe that... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coltrane’s Addendum to “Why Ethical Criticism?”
I truly admire Scott Newstok's open letter to students on humanities liberal arts: "How to Think Like Shakespeare" https://t. Read more
Posted on 01 September 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Description, Interpretation, and Explanation in the Case of Obama’s Eulogy for...
I want to continue the discussion in my previous two posts, Yet Another Brief for Description (and Form), and, Why Ethical Criticism? or: The Fate of... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Ethical Criticism, Or: The Fate of Interpretation in an Age of Computation
Why is it that I am so insistent that interpretation be kept separate from reading? Why is it that I think that the profession’s desire to elide the difference... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
