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
-
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 ( 6824 )
-
Ontology in Play
Levi Bryant has a recent post in which he acknowledges two senses of “ontology.” Thus “On the one hand, an ontology is a group or persons set of beliefs as to... Read more
Posted on 29 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Notes: Godzilla, King of the Monsters
Godzilla, King of the Monsters is the 1956 American version of Gojira (1954). It’s quite different from the Japanese original. The love story has been greatly... Read more
Posted on 27 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Legacy of Martin Luther King
What Martin Luther King did: he ended "200 years of racial terrorism, by getting black people to confront their fears."(Of all the other civil rights leaders wh... Read more
Posted on 21 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Art Industry
Holland Carter in the NYTimes:Outside auctions, the marketing mechanics buzz on. Roughly since the end of the multicultural, postmodern 1990s, we’ve watched... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Materials for an Allegory
You supply the storyand the meaning.If any, whatever. Read more
Posted on 19 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
3quarksdaily: Charlie Keil: Groovologist
Here's the opening paragraph of a post about my friend and colleague, Charlie Keil:Tracing things back to the beginning is always a bit arbitrary. There is... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rings in Harry Potter?
Just after Christmas I was contacted by John Granger, who has written a number of books on the Harry Potter series – FWIW, I've not read any of the books but... Read more
Posted on 10 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Deep Leaning on the Rise?
Deep learning is certainly part of the formula for a robust AI, but it's probably not the whole deal. Nature has a useful non-techical article. Read more
Posted on 09 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lanier on Getting Paid in a Networked World
Joe Nocera on Jaron Lanier:Which leads nicely to Lanier’s final big point: that the value of these new companies comes from us. Read more
Posted on 07 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Netflix World
What does Netfliz know about the cultural ecology of movies and television programs? After all, they can and do track the viewing preferences of all their... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Faculty of Language: Minds Without Brains: What's up with Plants
: Here's a report by Michael Pollan, he of Omnivor's Dilemma fame, reporting on some recent work on plant "neurobiology." ...In which we find out that plants ca... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Evolution Links
The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks has an interesting post, The Music Genome Project is no such thing.The Music Genome Project is a database in... Read more
Posted on 02 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is Nature? John Wilkins Says...
John Wilkins has a typically lucid post addressed to the question: What is nature? He's not himself trying to come up with an answer, but rather is interested i... Read more
Posted on 02 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some "old" Photos of JC - Not That Old, and with a Touch of Red
Posted on 02 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Getting Around in the World
It seems that both humans and animals forage like this:What they have found is that when moving with a purpose such as foraging for food, many creatures follow ... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An All-night Prayer Service in Ghana
T. M. Luhrmann in the NYTimes:The Apostle Paul, arriving at an island on his journey to share the Gospel, picked up some brushwood for a fire, and a startled... Read more
Posted on 31 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rings in the Qur’an
Carl Ernst at the University of North Carolina has written on a book about the Qur’an: How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide, with Select Translations.... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rings in Disney's Fantasia
While I'm still buried in Gojira, I think it's useful to remember that there are a number of ring forms in Disney's Fantasia. Both (The Nutcracker Suite, and Th... Read more
Posted on 26 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Human Difference? It's in the Wiring Pattern
The most obvious difference between the human brain and those of our nearest relatively is simple size: Our brain is different? But how can that account for... Read more
Posted on 26 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Marriage in Japan (Gojira)
I’ve been doing a bit of checking on Japanese marriage customs in order to get a better sense of how the Japanese audience for Gojira would have perceived the... Read more
Posted on 25 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY