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 ( 7356 )
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Evolution in the Universe: It's Physics
In Quanta: From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be... Read more
Posted on 19 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Night Watch
Posted on 19 December 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Jeff Bezos – Man in Space
Henry Blodget interviews Jeff Bezos for Business Insider: HB: In addition to everything else we’ve talked about, you make rockets. You want to go into space. Read more
Posted on 18 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rereading Goethe’s Faust 4: Going Through My Notes
As the subtitle suggests, this doesn’t have much of anything to do with Faust, but I’m throwing it here anyhow. On the one hand, it has to do with thinking abou... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Four-Fold Way Through an Undergraduate Education
From my notes about a decade ago: Though I haven’t really thought it through, it seems to me that a proper undergraduate education ought to give equal emphasis... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Scapegoating the American Way
I’ve got a new post up at 3 Quarks Daily, Free-Floating Anxiety, Teens, and Security Theatre. It continues with the same theme I explored in my previous 3QD... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pedagogical Styles 4: Cognitive Demands and Interpersonal Dynamics
I figure this will be my last post before wrapping the series, writing an introduction, and putting them all together in a PDF. The important point is that... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Beings, the Ontology of Culture, and a Return to Books and Blues
I haven't forgotten my on-going series of posts on the direction of cultural evolution; you know, the one that started with Matt Jockers' Macroanalysis? But I'v... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Men at Work: ZAR, ICHI
Posted on 15 December 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Rereading Goethe’s Faust 3: Echoes of Fantasia and Mysteries of the Cosmos
What is this knowledge that Faust seeks? Still on reset. The quick read-through that I decided upon last post has yet to happen, though I’ve gotten a bit furthe... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: New Graffiti Beyond the Arches
I don't know just when this graffiti went up, but it wasn't there when I went through the Bergen Arches on July 1, 2014. I took these photos earlier this week,... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It’s Complicated 3: Social Manipulation in a Culture of Fear
danah boyd. It’s Complicated: The Social Lives of Networked Teens (Yale UP 2014). Let’s start with a footnote to Chapter 4, “Danger: Are Sexual Predators Lurkin... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ancient Graffiti
Found Amid the Crumbling Infrastructure of Jersey City, NJ Emily Gowers reviews Kristina Milnor, Graffiti and the Literary Landscape in Roman Pompeii (Oxford UP... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Culture of Enhancement
The adoption by journalist to the phrase "EIT" is the clearest evidence of bullshit objectivity. — Ta-Nehisi Coates (@tanehisicoates) December 11, 2014 Is it... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Natural Causes of Language: Frames, Biases, and Cultural Transmission
From the blurb: Because bits of language are always parts of systems, we also need to show how it is that items of knowledge and behavior become structured... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Latour: Assembling the Society of Graffiti
No scholar should find humiliating the task of description. This is, on the contrary, the highest and rarest achievement. —Bruno Latour Bruno Latour.... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It’s Complicated 2: Graffiti and Public Space
You are looking at two of the handful of arches known in Jersey City collectively as the Bergen Arches. In my experience, while many people have heard of “the... Read more
Posted on 09 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It’s Complicated 1: Escaping on a Raft in Cyberspace
Farewell to freedom on the Adriatic and to days of wild abandon. – Hayao Miazaki Are we heading toward a world in which our activities in the physical world... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Beyond Interdisciplinarity #2: The Seven Liberal Arts Aren't Disciplines Either
For reasons I can’t quite articulate, I remain convinced that INTERDISCIPLINARITY is a lost cause. It’s the utopian desire of disciplinarity, whatever that is,... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Connected from Birth: You, Your Double, and Cyberspace
Unit 6 – Class 2: Connecting to the IndieWeb Movement This session will explore the IndieWeb movement as a people-centered response to the corporate web. Read more
Posted on 06 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
