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 ( 7808 )
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Which of Your Languages Do You Use for What Purpose?
Victor Mair has an interesting post at Language Log: ...a loyal Language Log reader sent in the following observation this morning: While in high school in... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Demolition Exhibition @ #GVM004: Graffiti at the Transition from Industrial to...
While the human act of marking walls goes back 10s of thousands of years, aerosol graffiti is quite recent and, in its current form, is often propagated around... Read more
Posted on 22 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Salvation, Legitimacy, and Democratic Government
I've got a long-standing interest in the question of why, given that American culture has been so heavily European, Americans are more religious than... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Synchronized Movement Promotes Cooperation
Paul Reddish, Ronald Fischer, Joseph Bulbulia. Let’s Dance Together: Synchrony, Shared Intentionality and Cooperation. PLoS ONE. 8(8) August 7, 2013. DOI:... Read more
Posted on 20 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pixar’s Inside Out is Confused, Alas, But Who Knows What the Future May Bring
A new Pixar film is an event, like it or not. Some are better (e.g. Ratatouille) than others. Advance word suggested Inside Out was one of the better ones, the... Read more
Posted on 19 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Laudato Si, Pond Scum
In honor of the Pope Francis' environmental encyclical I give you photos of phosphate run-off at work. The green is pretty, no? We have to own it before we can... Read more
Posted on 19 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Post WWII Japanese Literature Mostly Brainless Crap?
That seems to be what Minae Mizumura thinks. Her book, The Fall of Language in the Age of English, is reviewed by Jay Rubin, emeritus at Harvard, in The Times... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pope Francis on the Environmental Crisis
An article in the NYTimes opens: Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Underwood and Sellers 2015: Beyond Narrative We Have Simulation
It is one thing to use computers to crunch data. It’s something else to use computers to simulate a phenomenon. Simulation is common in many disciplines,... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Death of Fine Art in the West Over the Last Century
Writing in The Smart Set, Michael Lind observes: "As far as I can tell, very few college-educated people under the age of 50 pay any attention to the old fine... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sky is Falling in Computer Land!
Every once in awhile I read something that demonstrates, at some length, how crazy and dysfunctional the world of computer software is. Not hardware, but... Read more
Posted on 12 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computing with Magnetized Water Droplets
Engineers at Stanford have figured out how to compute with water droplets containing magnetized nanoparticles. Because of its universal nature, the droplet... Read more
Posted on 11 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ideas Rule the World, Not Kings Or Corporations
This is a Big Think video by Lawrence Summers, economist and former President of Harvard and Secretary of the Treasury. The first 20 minutes or so is an... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Noël Carroll on Arthur Danto
Carroll is doing the 5 Books thing about visual aesthetics. His fifth book is Arthur Danto's After the end of Art. Danto is remembered for one big idea which... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Brain is a Prediction Machine
Interoceptive predictions in the brain Lisa Feldman Barrett W. Kyle Simmons Nature Reviews Neuroscience (2015) doi:10.1038/nrn3950 Published online: 28 May... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dennett's Astonishing Hypothesis: We're Symbionts! – Apes with Infected Brains
It's hard to know the proper attitude to take toward this idea. Daniel Dennett, after all, is a brilliant and much honored thinker. But I can't take the idea... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Study in Pink and Silver: Why Not Call It an Installation? [#GVM004]
What, pray tell, is this? It’s two bottles on a shelf or something. Well, yeah, that’s obvious. But what kind of bottles... look like beer bottles, maybe but... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Good Grief! War Boys in the Promised Land [#GVM004]
One could, of course, dismiss it because it’s comic strip imagery, and therefore Not Serious. One could also dismiss it as graffiti, and therefore Not Serious. Read more
Posted on 06 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
War Boys in Tomorrowland 2: The Graffiti Connection
Ad astra per aspera. In a previous post I argued that the War Boys of George Miller’s Mad Max: Fury Road would be among the first to be recruited to the... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Sky
I've decided to follow last week's minimalist focus on surfaces with more minimalism: sky. Sky of course is ubiquitous in the external world and so I've got... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
