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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Fantasia Redux?
From today's NYTimes, the "paper of record": “It’s a continuation of the spirit of ‘Fantasia’ in a different medium,” Mr. Battilana said. Read more
Posted on 20 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Genes and Culture: Black Death, Pogroms, Slavery and Trust
From the NYTimes review of Christine Kenneally, The Invisible History of the Human Race: Kenneally describes a study by the economists Nico Voigtländer and... Read more
Posted on 18 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Does Heart of Darkness Engage with Africa?
I’ve been thinking about an essay Gregory Jusdanis recently posted at Arcade, Looking at Africa, Looking at Ourselves. He frames it with Chinua Achebe’s... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos; A Confluence of Light
Posted on 17 October 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Scholarpedia – Another Online Reference Work
I just discovered the Scholarpedia ("the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia, where knowledge is curated by communities of experts") through an article by... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“I Have a Dream” – Remembrance of “Nuggets” Past
The phrase “I have a dream” is, of course, the refrain from Martin Luther King’s best known speech. “Nugget” is a term of art in the Connected Courses world tha... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Byrne on Contemporary Visual Art
From his blog: The market and the disparity of wealth taints everything. The art world has increasingly become like one of those party magazines: you flip thoug... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
2-dimensional Interaction of 1-dimensional Objects in an Implied Space of 3...
Posted on 16 October 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Disaster Narrowly Escaped, Or Why Computers Suck and Worries About...
Not too long ago I wrote a long-form post in which I argued that we are in no danger of having a superintelligent computer mysteriously emerge from the... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Separate Spheres: Motherhood and Raising Children || Sexuality
From Pacific Standard: In the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces of China lives a small ethnic group called the Mosuo. Among the Mosuo, romantic and family life are... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Interesting Example of Vocal Coaching
As you watch, think about what the coach is telling the student and how she responds. When he tells her to sing from her toes, think about that, and empathize.... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sex, Teleology, Cultural Evolution, and the Novel
After a couple of posts on music as a force in history it’s time to return to the main line, literature, in this current series on direction in cultural... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Authority, Trust, and Responsibility in Education
I suspect if some of my younger friends were to see some of the videos and chats coming out of Connected Courses – I’m thinking of the ones that talk about... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computational Linguistics and Discourse Analysis
Abstract: The profound use of the computer in discourse analysis must employ a theory of discourse comprehension and production with which to conduct the... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
German Doubts About Cowboy Tactics of High-tech Corporate Behemoths
Anna Sauerbrey, an editor of the daily, Der Tagesspiegel, in today's NY Times:How can Germany be both afraid of and in love with technology, and the companies... Read more
Posted on 12 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the Origin of the Universe as We Know But the Birth of Time?
That’s what I asked myself sometime within the last 10 or 15 minutes. As I’m not even a physicist, nor anything close to it, I’m not in a position to hazard an... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Academia: The Future Rising
Rise of the Rest: The Growing Impact of Non-Elite Journals Anurag Acharya, Alex Verstak, Helder Suzuki, Sean Henderson, Mikhail Iakhiaev, Cliff Chiung Yu Lin,... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Wonderland by Night
Posted on 10 October 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Virginia Postrel on How to Create a Sense of Optimism About the Future
Writing in Bloomberg View: The reason mid-20th-century Americans were optimistic about the future wasn’t that science-fiction writers told cool stories about... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rethinking Evolutionary Theory
Kevin Laland, Tobias Uller, Marc Feldman, Kim Sterelny, Gerd B. Müller, Armin Moczek, Eva Jablonka, John Odling-Smee, Does evolutionary theory need a rethink?... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
