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 ( 7105 )
-
Are Musical Genres Real and Constraining Or Are They Mixing Together...
Monica Lee (doctoral candidate at U Chicago) and Dan Silver (sociology, U Toronto) have a fascinating "big data" post on musical genres. Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some of the Old Organic Graffiti
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
-
Hyperobjects and the Thinking of Timothy Morton
Ursula Heise has a critical review of Morton’s Hyperobjects in, well, Critical Inquiry. But I’m ahead of myself, just a bit. I first met Morton at Stanford’s... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Something Big This Way Comes, Redux
I’ve lived my entire adult life reading assertions that something really big is happening in the world. Certainly intellectually. New ideas and modes of thought... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural and Social Evolution on a Global Scale?
John Hagel on the disruption debate that's come in the wake of Jill Lepore's article in the New Yorker: But, for the moment, these two forces – exponentially... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Duchamp's Fountain is Leaking All Over the Web
Back in 1917 Marcel Duchamp scandalized the art world by entering an ordinary urinal into an art exhibit under the title of "Fountain. Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Charlie Ahearn Succeeded Where Spike Lee Failed and Gave Us an Artist Hero Who...
When Spike Lee set out to do Mo’ Better Blues he set out to explicitly counter what he saw as White myths about jazz musicians: "We didn't want to focus on the... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Me and the Villain, Down by the Arches
So, yesterday I’m hanging out, cruising the web, when a call comes through on the green phone. The Green Villain’s restless, wants to do something. “Waddaya hav... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computing as Model for Mind, Games, and the Digital Humanities
Just a quick note here, on my hobby horse about the stark neglect of computer as model for the mind in digital criticism, a hobbyhorse I’ve ridden in this... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Green Villain 002 on 3 Quarks Daily
My latest essay for 3 Quarks Daily is now up: Graffiti is the most important art form of the last half-century... It features photos of a production in Jersey... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Children in Search of the Dance
I first published this two years ago, but it's worth thinking about again. An Informal Ethnographic Portrait Last Thursday evening I went to a concert by the... Read more
Posted on 28 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The New Inquiry on Gojira, Almost Gets It
Patrick Harrison has an essay about the original Gojira in The New Inquiry. He almost gets it. Yes, he notices that the film is very good, that the spare score... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Those Were the Days, Analogue Photography
An interesting article about black and white film photography. A bit nostalgic, I think, but interesting nonetheless. It's about a particular kind of film that... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Philosophical Arguments About the Computational Mind Don’t Interest Me
And yet the idea of the computational mind does. Philosophers have generated piles of arguments about whether or not or what way the mind is computational.... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Computational Mind Creeps Up on the Digital Humanities
The following white paper discusses a wide range of technologies. I include some excerpts that speak to one of my current hobby horses, that computational is a... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Epiphenomena? Ramsay on Patterns, Again
About a month ago I posted on Ramsay’s article about patterns in the scene structure of Shakespeare’s plays. Now I’m looking at a more recent piece, The... Read more
Posted on 25 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Boat, Some Rocks, the Shore
This is another of those "ordinary" shots I've come to like so much. Nothing flashy. It's just there. The boat's the focal point of the shot, and it's skewed... Read more
Posted on 24 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pluralism and an Epistemology of Building
Prompted by a post of Stephen Ramsay's (Postfoundationalism for Life) I've been reading I've been reading James Smythies, Digital Humanities,... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Critic's Will to Meaning Over the Resistance of the Text
I take as my point of reference the line that Geoffrey Hartman drew between critical reading, on the one hand, and technical structuralism and linguistics, on... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
More Flowers – Shooting Blind
In two recent photo-posts I've presented "ordinary" shots – nothing fancy, no spectacular colors, strange objects, or self-conscious composition: a friend in hi... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY