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 ( 7809 )
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Literary Criticism and Spiritual Crisis (?)
One of the things I keep thinking about is the sense of professional narcissism that had academic literary critics writing as though their activity were... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Wind Rises: Marriage in the Shadow of the State
01:45:17 The marriage between Naoko Satomi and Jiro Horikoshi is notable on several counts. In the first place, marriage is a major life event and a large numbe... Read more
Posted on 01 December 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
John Collins to Judge 6TH Annual 3QD Philosophy Prize
We are very honored and pleased to announce that John Collins has agreed to be the final judge for our 6th annual prize for the best blog and online-only writin... Read more
Posted on 30 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Form is Hard to See, Even in Sentences*
Though, unfortunately, it is easy to blather about. And that’s what literary critics mostly do, talk around it, but never actually examine it. Read more
Posted on 29 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Upon Reflection
Posted on 28 November 2015
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How Caproni is Staged in The Wind Rises
After my first time through The Wind Rises I had the impression that it alternated between dream sequences and live-action sequences. Read more
Posted on 27 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Administering Torture to Others Does "moral Injury" to the Torturer
From the concluding paragraphs of Shane O'Mara, The interrogator's soul, Aeon:And significantly, the most empathic interrogators are also the most vulnerable... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
High Castle and Inner Truth
With The Man in the High Castle streaming on Amazon Prime I figure it’s time to repost another piece from The Valve. This one appeared on March 6, 2008, and... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Friends: Wordsworth and Coleridge
Vivian Gornick reviews three books about friendship among poets. These opening paragraphs are about friendship in general: In the centuries when most marriages... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How NOT to Run a Major Software Project
The Atlantic has an interesting article about signals and control in NYC's labyrinthine subway system. Well into the article we find these paragraphs about a... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Commensurability, Meaning, and Digital Criticism
What do I mean by “commensurate”? Well…psychoanalytic theory is not commensurate with language. Neither is semiotics. Nor is deconstruction. But digital... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Personal Observations on Entering an Age of Computing Machines
Another working paper, link, abstract, and introduction below. Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 22 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Identity, Terrorism, and the Nation State
I’ve got one thought about terrorism, and it has to do with identity. If you live in a nation-state, such as the United States, such as the states that have... Read more
Posted on 21 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Singing and Social Bonding
Daniel Weinstein, Jacques Launay, Eiluned Pearce, Robin I.M. Dunbar, Lauren Stewart. Singing and social bonding: changes in connectivity and pain threshold as... Read more
Posted on 21 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bruce Jackson on Authenticity
Bruce Jackson does a number of things. for the purpose of this post let's say he's a folklorist and a photographer. I studied with him at SUNY Buffalo. Read more
Posted on 21 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Evolution: Pop Music in America 1960-2010
Matthias Mauch, Robert M. MacCallum, Mark Levy, Armand M. Leroi. The evolution of popular music: USA 1960–2010. Royal Society Open Science. 2015 2 150081; DOI:... Read more
Posted on 20 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Thursday Morning
I had breakfast yesterday at my favorite diner, the Malibu, on 14th street in Hoboken. Here I'm sitting in my booth looking out at an apartment complex. Read more
Posted on 20 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Problematic Identifications: The Wind Rises as a Japanese Film
When we say that a film is Japanese, what do we mean? First of all, and most fundamentally, we mean that it is made by Japanese artisans in Japan. In that... Read more
Posted on 20 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Piaget, Reflective Abstraction and the Evolution of Literary Criticism
While Piaget is best known for investigating conceptual development in children, he also looked at conceptual development on the historical time scale. Read more
Posted on 19 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Wind Rises: A Note About Failure, Human and Natural
Horikoshi interacts with Gianni Caproni, the Italian aircraft designer, three times in the film. The first, third, and fourth times seem to involve dream... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
