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 ( 6827 )
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"Life" is a Concept, but We Wary of Thinking That Such a Thing as LIFE Exists
Science writer Ferris Jabr in the NYTimes:You might think botanists have a precise unfailing definition of a tree — they don’t. Read more
Posted on 13 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Repetition Makes Music?
From Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, One more time, in Aeon. She presents the so-called speech to song illusion: The illusion begins with an ordinary spoken... Read more
Posted on 11 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ecstasy and Voudun – on Being Mounted and Ridden (possessed) by a Horse
Maya Deren, an experimental film-maker, went to Haiti in the early 1950s where she studied Voudoun, and participated in rituals. Read more
Posted on 11 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In Conversation With… Steven Pinker
I've been following Steve Pinker since the later 1990s, when I read How the Mind Works as background for my book on music, Beethoven's Anvil. Read more
Posted on 09 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Could Vermont Really Secede from the Union?
A year an a half ago I went to a meeting in Vermont where people talked seriously about seceding from the Union. But I don't recall any discussion of what that... Read more
Posted on 09 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Graeber on Fun at the Heart of Being
David Graeber, most widely known as the author of Debt: The First 5000 Years and a theorist of the Occupy movement, as an article in The Baffler arguing that... Read more
Posted on 08 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sound of Many Hands Clapping: Group Intentionality
In my earlier post on the busy bee brain I quoted some passages from Beethoven’s Anvil in which I discussed synchronized flashing among fireflies. Read more
Posted on 06 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tim Perper: Polymath, Friend, and Colleague
My friend Tim Perper died unexpectedly on January 21 of this year. An obituary was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This post contains some more... Read more
Posted on 03 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Plucky Heroines from Haggard to Hikaru and Buffy
This is a guest post by Timothy Perper, PhD and Martha Cornog, MA, MS, who served as Book Review editors for Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga, and... Read more
Posted on 01 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Complexity for Dummies
You can download the following paper at my Academia.edu page.A Primer on Self-Organization:With some tabletop physics you can do at homeContents:Entropy and... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Thinking About the Cosmos is Strange
I’ve recently gotten in touch with David Porush, a friend from graduate school back in the Jurassic era, and have been reading some of his thoughts about the... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Are We There Yet? David Porush on Virtual Futures, from 1995
My old graduate school buddy speaking at the University of Warwick: Virtual Futures 1995 - David Porush from Virtual Futures on Vimeo. Read more
Posted on 25 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Spatial/dimensional Sense of Temporal Pronouns
Language Log has an interesting post on the metaphorical underpinnings of pronoun usage for time. Mark Liberman sets it up:Last night at dinner, several... Read more
Posted on 25 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gojira, What's Hidden from the Audience, and Why
Note: This post assumes some familiarity with Gojira. If you aren’t familiar with the film, this post should give you the necessary background.For every story... Read more
Posted on 24 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Journey to 3Tops: Indiana SLuGS and the Land That Time Forgot
Here's a piece from several years ago. The graffiti 'landscape" has changed since then, and I've made some notations about that. Read more
Posted on 22 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Living Handbook of Narratology
Published on line by the Hamburg University Press, HERE.The living handbook of narratology (LHN) is based on the Handbook of Narratology, first published by... Read more
Posted on 22 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This is Your Brain on Jazz
Science Daily: from Johns Hopkins School of Medicine, the laboratory of Charles Limb:The brains of jazz musicians engrossed in spontaneous, improvisational... Read more
Posted on 20 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fortress America
A NYTimes op-ed points out that a substantial part of the American economy is devoted to guard labor:The share of our labor force devoted to guard labor has... Read more
Posted on 17 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Marriage in America, 3 Phases
Eli J. Finkel, writing in the NYTimes:Throughout America’s history, its populace has experienced three distinct models of marriage, as scholars like the... Read more
Posted on 16 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Big Banks Going Bonkers, Aiming for World Domination?
Matt Tabbi in the Rolling Stone:But banks aren't just buying stuff, they're buying whole industrial processes. They're buying oil that's still in the ground, th... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY