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 ( 6831 )
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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 -
Reading Macroanalysis 7: Influence, Or the Evolving Dynamic Integrity of the...
While I do intend to write two more posts (at least) on thematic analysis, yesterday’s effort burned me out temporarily. So today’s post is a somewhat shorter... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 6.1: Theme–Dogs, Gold, Slavery, and Awakening
Chapter 8 of Macroanalysis is about “Theme.” Jockers uses topic analysis to investigate the occurrence of 500 ‘themes’ in a corpus of 3,346 19th-century British... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hi Ho! Hi Ho! Luminous Beings Off to Work They Go
Posted on 19 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jersey City: Past, Present, Future
This photograph represents a bit of Jersey City as it is now. Well, not exactly now, the moment you’re viewing it. But, loosly speaking, the present time. The... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Descriptive Analysis of “The Cat and the Moon”
Working Paper online at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2481876. A New Dance Turn: “The Cat and the Moon” All up in One Another Abstract: The semantic structure of... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Rhetoric of Climate Change
Charles Mann in The Atlantic: Rhetorical overreach, moral miscalculation, shouting at cross-purposes: this toxic blend is particularly evident when activists,... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
After Nature: After Speculative Realism: On Online Philosophy, a...
: Bill Benzon at New Savanna blog has a write up HERE on how he perceives the academy to be changing - specifically the academy understood a… And Leon goes on... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chiasmus and Ring-Forms in Antiquity
My friend Charles Cameron just told me about an undated online book on chiasmus and and ring-composition: Chiasmus in Antiquity: Structures, Analyses, Exegesis... Read more
Posted on 17 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wither Academia: Is a New Academy Being Born?
This is slightly revised from some remarks I made at Howard Rheingold’s Brainstorms community. An observation. A thousand years ago the Christian church was... Read more
Posted on 17 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is New York City Planing to Be Flooded?
Ted Steinberg, Dissent Magazine: Nevertheless, Douglas Hill, an engineer affiliated with the Stony Brook Storm Surge Research Group, remains frustrated. Read more
Posted on 16 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Everyone Poops: Graffiti on the Psychoanalytic Tip
Take a quick look at this photo and then close your eyes and think about it a bit: I’m guessing that your overall impression is that it’s a mess, just a lot of... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Shaky Cam Comparison: Light Vs. Paint
For this shot the shaky cam was deliberately pointed at lights in the sky: In this shot, the camera was pointed at paint on a wall and it shook of its own... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Crazy-ass World of Bad Debt
From the NYTimes: The notion that a portfolio of debt could be stolen may seem improbable, but plenty of debt brokers are all too willing to sell “bad paper. Read more
Posted on 15 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Five Friday Fotos: Shaky Cam 2
Shaky Cam 1 HERE. Read more
Posted on 15 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 5: An Interlude on Scale: Micro, Meso, and Macro
Before moving on to the last two major chapters, “Theme” (8), and “Influence” (9), I want to pause a bit and think about scale as I discussed it Toward a... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY