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 ( 7105 )
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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
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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 -
Taking AI to the Next Level?
Viv is from the creators of Siri. Siri can't learn, Viv can:As Viv’s knowledge grows, so will its understanding; its creators have designed it based on three... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Connected Courses
Here's what they say about themselves: Mission Connected Courses is a collaborative network of faculty in higher education developing online, open courses that... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Self-Organizing Robot Swarm
M. Rubenstein, A. Cornejo, R. Nagpal, Programmable self-assembly in a thousand-robot swarm, Science, 2014, DOI: 10.1126/science. Read more
Posted on 15 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Evolution in Action in Our Time
From the NYTimes: Evolutionarily speaking, coyotes diverged from gray wolves one million to two million years ago, and dogs from wolves roughly 15,000 years ago. Read more
Posted on 14 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 4: On the Matter of “the”
Chapter 7, “Nationality” is pretty straightforward. I don’t have much to say about it except for a puzzle that Jockers presents at the beginning. Read more
Posted on 13 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Abstracts & Links: Cultural Evolution and Complexity
Sociality influences cultural complexity Michael Muthukrishna1, Ben W. Shulman, Vlad Vasilescu1 and Joseph Henrich1 Proc. R. Soc. B 7 January 2014 vol. 281 no.... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY