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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Horizon on the Hudson, an Exercise in Minimalism
Posted on 05 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Pattern" as a Term of Art
In continuing to think about pattern I remembered some old notes I’d made about the concept of a biological niche. I’d decided that a niche was a pattern that... Read more
Posted on 05 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“Hyperobject” as Concept and as Rhetorical Device
When I first started reading Tim Morton’s posts on hyperobjects, I found the concept rather puzzling. For that matter, I found his usage of “object” puzzling... Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hoboken Fragments, an Ontology of Space
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the Lyric Essay Undergoing an Cyberspace Renaissance?
In a long-form piece in The New Inquiry, Sarah Menkedick stacks up fragments of varying length to argue that it is. The lyric essay is all-telling, all the time. Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of White Fetishists of Black Blues
Barry Mazor reviews a number of recent books about white collectors of the 'deep true authentic' blues, a mid-20th Century crew the dug up a lot of history and... Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Are Musical Genres Real and Constraining Or Are They Mixing Together...
Monica Lee (doctoral candidate at U Chicago) and Dan Silver (sociology, U Toronto) have a fascinating "big data" post on musical genres. Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some of the Old Organic Graffiti
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hyperobjects and the Thinking of Timothy Morton
Ursula Heise has a critical review of Morton’s Hyperobjects in, well, Critical Inquiry. But I’m ahead of myself, just a bit. I first met Morton at Stanford’s... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Something Big This Way Comes, Redux
I’ve lived my entire adult life reading assertions that something really big is happening in the world. Certainly intellectually. New ideas and modes of thought... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural and Social Evolution on a Global Scale?
John Hagel on the disruption debate that's come in the wake of Jill Lepore's article in the New Yorker: But, for the moment, these two forces – exponentially... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Duchamp's Fountain is Leaking All Over the Web
Back in 1917 Marcel Duchamp scandalized the art world by entering an ordinary urinal into an art exhibit under the title of "Fountain. Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Charlie Ahearn Succeeded Where Spike Lee Failed and Gave Us an Artist Hero Who...
When Spike Lee set out to do Mo’ Better Blues he set out to explicitly counter what he saw as White myths about jazz musicians: "We didn't want to focus on the... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Me and the Villain, Down by the Arches
So, yesterday I’m hanging out, cruising the web, when a call comes through on the green phone. The Green Villain’s restless, wants to do something. “Waddaya hav... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computing as Model for Mind, Games, and the Digital Humanities
Just a quick note here, on my hobby horse about the stark neglect of computer as model for the mind in digital criticism, a hobbyhorse I’ve ridden in this... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Green Villain 002 on 3 Quarks Daily
My latest essay for 3 Quarks Daily is now up: Graffiti is the most important art form of the last half-century... It features photos of a production in Jersey... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Children in Search of the Dance
I first published this two years ago, but it's worth thinking about again. An Informal Ethnographic Portrait Last Thursday evening I went to a concert by the... Read more
Posted on 28 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The New Inquiry on Gojira, Almost Gets It
Patrick Harrison has an essay about the original Gojira in The New Inquiry. He almost gets it. Yes, he notices that the film is very good, that the spare score... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Those Were the Days, Analogue Photography
An interesting article about black and white film photography. A bit nostalgic, I think, but interesting nonetheless. It's about a particular kind of film that... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Philosophical Arguments About the Computational Mind Don’t Interest Me
And yet the idea of the computational mind does. Philosophers have generated piles of arguments about whether or not or what way the mind is computational.... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY