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 ( 6711 )
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Liberty State Park, a Photo Essay
If you are familiar with Liberty State Park in Jersey City, then you will probably recognize the scene in the above photograph. It’s the walk way along Audrey... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Note on Memes and Historical Linguistics
When I began my most recent series of posts on memes, I did so because I wanted to think specifically about language: Does it make sense to treat words as memes... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tissa David and Garbo Talks
Michael Sporn has posted the title sequence he did with Tissa David for Sidney Lumet's Garbo Talks. Sporn opens:The initial rough/cut screening for Garbo Talks... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From the Building Blocks of Human Relationships to Starving Artists
As I’ve said in a number of posts, I find the idea of a board game such as chess to be a useful way of thinking about the relationship between our biological... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neural Weather, an Informal Defense of Psychoanalytic Ideas
I’ve been wrestling with a post on unity of being, of all things, in two films, Fantasia and Dumbo, of all films, and I round myself thinking psychoanalytic... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Powers on Conflict in Control Systems
One of the most profound books I’ve ever read was written by William Powers: Behavior: The Control of Perception (1973). It received a positive review in... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Breathing, Calligraphy, Graffiti
From an essay by Hassan Massoudy, “Two Daughters of the Same Parents” in Arabic Graffiti (p. 31): The Arabic calligraphy I do literally comes directly from the... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2013 CULTURE -
GPS Erodes Our Wayfinding Skills
Animals have had to negotiate their way in the world (wayfinding) for millions upon millions of years. Our navigational circuitry is both old and sophisticated. Read more
Posted on 22 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Urban Kids Afraid of Nature
From a NYTimes interview with Maria Conroy, founder of the "Rory Meyers Children’s Adventure Garden, an eight-acre, $62 million, mostly open-air learning center... Read more
Posted on 22 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s Popular, and Why 2
The first time I blogged about this topic, back in April of 2011, “Sex, Power, and Purity in Kawajiri's Ninja Scroll” was the most popular post on the blog, wit... Read more
Posted on 22 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Citizen Science, with Teens, Skype, and Elephants
Reported in the NYTimes:The research, which appeared in April in the journal PLoS One, centered on whether elephants understood hand gestures from humans. Read more
Posted on 22 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Art for Change *
, a set by Sterneck on Flickr."Since the start of the Arab uprisings the Middle East has seen an unparalleled explosion of graffiti. Read more
Posted on 21 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Liberty Marina, Fair Weather and Foul: A Photo Essay
In the late 19th Century a canal was cut from the anthracite region in the Lehigh Valley of Pennsylvania across northern New Jersey to New York Bay: the Morris... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Through Duchamp and Beyond: Graffiti in the Promised Land?
Artists have been at odds with the gallery and museum scenes since Impressionism emerged in the late 19th Century. But the aesthetic potshot heard round the... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flexible Hubs and Behavioral Mode
From Medical Xpress:Now, research from Washington University in St. Louis offers new and compelling evidence that a well-connected core brain network based in... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Araki and His Models
Almost two months ago I saw the Nobuyoshi Araki exhibit at Mana Contemporary, in the post-industrial hinterlands of Jersey City (and subsequently blogged about... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Breaking Bad: Breaking Men from the Inside
By now zillions of atoms have be scattered on the internet to the end of explicating Breaking Bad. I've read some of that, but not much. Breaking Bad's Moral... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can the Chilltown Rebels Defeat the Empire So That They May Live Long and...
The photographs I’ve placed in this essay have two things in common: 1) I was standing in Jersey City when I took each of them, and 2) the Empire State Building... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Description as Intellectual Craft in the Study of Literature
Here's another collection of posts, this time on description. You can download the PDF HERE. The abstract and an introduction are below. Read more
Posted on 14 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“The Cat and the Moon” All up in One Another
This is a graduate school exercise that I once tarted up for a special Yeats issue of Some Journal. It was rejected by Some Journal. After which I too rejected... Read more
Posted on 14 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY