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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Shooting into the Sun
floods the camera's sensors, almost blinding it. You have to really 'dig' to recover a pleasing image from the captured bits. But digging's fun. The result's... Read more
Posted on 02 September 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dance of the Genes, in Three Species, a Insect, a Worm, and Us
From the NYTimes: For the past five years, hundreds of biologists have been recording DNA activity in flies and worms, and systematically comparing the results... Read more
Posted on 02 September 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
When Penn Met Teller
From The New Yorker, Calvin Trillin in 1989: Running along with the musical numbers in an Othmar Schoeck concert were various “bits of business”— often,... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blind from Birth, but Can Now See
What happens when someone who was blind from birth gains the power of sight? Sinha showed me a video in which a teen-age boy, blind since birth because of opaqu... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
[8] Macroanalysis and Cultural Evolution
The purpose of this post is to recast the work reported in Macroanalysis: Digital Methods Literary History in terms appropriate to cultural evolution. Read more
Posted on 01 September 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Follow the Money, Anti-marijuana Edition
From The Nation: People in the United States, a country in which painkillers are routinely overprescribed, now consume more than 84 percent of the entire... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 7.3: Style, Genre, Time, and Influence
In this post I suggest some studies I’d like to be done. I begin by recalling Moretti’s account of genre succession from Maps, Graphs, Trees in the context of... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Innovation and Hype
Over at The Economist, Babbage has been looking at the hype driving cycles of innovation focuses on work done by the Gartner Group. Read more
Posted on 31 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gone Fishin'
You should too. Lyrics, some spoken, but most sung: Bing Crosby: I'll tell you why I can't find you Every time I go out to your place (singing starts) you've... Read more
Posted on 30 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hello, Connected Courses!
My name’s Bill Benzon and I’m an independent scholar. I’ve decided to get back into teaching with a course/workshop on graffiti which I’m tentatively called... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Sparkychan and Gojochan Retrospective!
Back in 2006, when I first started photography graffiti, I thought it would be interesting to get some kid's toys and photograph them amid the gritty territory ... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Universality, Alive and Well?
Joseph Luzzi in The New Yorker: This contrast, between a celebrated and largely unread classic [Alessandro Manzoni, The Betrothed, 1827] and an enduringly... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To Leave Or Not to Leave, That is the Audience's Right
These days most of us will sit through the end of a show even if it bores us to tears. It wasn't always thus, writes William Grimes in The NYTimes: In the Unite... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 7.2: Hyperobjects and Large Finitude
As a way of transitioning to a concluding post in which I will recast Jockers’ work in evolutionary terms, I want to look at a passage from Tim Morton’s... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Students Build Better Apps
From today's NYTimes we learn that "students are showing up the universities that trained them by producing faster, easier-to-navigate, more informative and... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading Macroanalysis 6.4: Themes and How They Evolve Over Time
Note: This may be the most important post in the series. But it’s a long way through, 6000 words or so. Fortunately, there are a lot of illustrations, and much... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sam Clemens at the Cotton Club: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn
I originally published this at the end of April, 2010. I'm bumping this to the top of the stack as it is directly relevant to my current work on Matt Jockers'... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Time to Change the World, at 3Quarks Daily
My monthly column is online over there at 3 Quarks Daily. Here's the opening paragraphs: Adolescents seem gifted in the belief that, if only the adults would ge... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Post-Graffiti?
At Graffuturism, "A Look at Graffiti’s Evolution and Progression 2011 in the Artists own words. Part 1" (from 2011). The Question, from GF: Coming back from... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Japanese Bath Houses
Japanese public bathhouses, also called sento. From the outside, some of them look like Shinto shrines or Buddhist temples. Inside, they have many features... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
