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 ( 6822 )
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The Demolition of St. Francis Hospital in Jersey City
I'd been living in Hamilton Park for several years when St. Francis hospital was demolished, much of it thought not all, to make way for new condos. Read more
Posted on 08 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seeds of Recursion in the Child's Mind
Though it has roots in 19th Century mathematics, the idea of recursion owes most of its development 20th Century work in mathematics, logic, and computing, wher... Read more
Posted on 08 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Japanese Wedding c. 1995
From the New York Times, Feb. 26 1995:The wedding, last month, took place in a Western-style building that resembles a castle and towers over this town northeas... Read more
Posted on 08 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Five Themo Pieces
The first three are inside one of the Bergen Arches in Jersey City, NJ. The fourth is outside, but still down in the Arches. The fifth is at the UMMI Living... Read more
Posted on 08 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Walker Evans' American Photographs
At NYTimes Lens photoblog.In case casual readers thought they could flit randomly among the images in Walker Evans’s “American Photographs,” Lincoln Kirstein... Read more
Posted on 08 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Evolution, Memes, and the Trouble with Dan Dennett
This is the final post in my current series on memes, cultural evolution, and the thought of Daniel Dennett. You can download a PDF of the whole series HERE. Th... Read more
Posted on 07 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Are We There Yet? (The Future)
Tyler Cowen now has a post where he observes that this sale is a step along a road he'd pointed out in a post from Nov 2012 which closed with the observation:... Read more
Posted on 06 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jersey City: a Second Photo Essay
How do you select the shots for a photo essay, in this case, a photo essay of Jersey City? That depends, in part, but only in part, on what you want to “say”... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Citizen Science Alert: Study the Brain
MIT's Sebastian Seung invites you to study how the brain is wired-up. Wired Differently is "A “citizen science” community to test the hypothesis that the... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Turtles All the Way Down: How Dennett Thinks
An Essay in Cognitive RhetoricI want to step back from the main thread of discussion and look at something else: the discussion itself. Or, at any rate, at... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Nature is No Longer an Exotic Foreign Land, out There Somewhere (over the...
"The old museum genre has been turned on its head: this is not a narrative of an all-seeing culture evolving out of the wilds of nature, but of a culture... Read more
Posted on 04 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Come Saturday...
I had plans for this morning, this Saturday morning. I’ve been blogging a major intellectual project these last couple of months, one on cultural evolution,... Read more
Posted on 03 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Funky Friday: Titanic
Damn! I forgot this was here. I shoulda' pulled it out after Sandy. And if you're curious about the roots of hip-hop, here they are. Some of them. Read more
Posted on 02 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chilltown 2.0: Is Jersey City Ready for the World Stage?
For one thing, with immigrants from the Caribbean, Latin America, the Middle East, Asia, and the Pacific, Jersey City is already ON the world stage. But is it... Read more
Posted on 02 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
We Just Lost 14 Billion Neurons
For years the standard line had been that the human brain contains 100 billion (10^11) neurons. But when a Brazilian neuroscientist, Dr Suzana... Read more
Posted on 02 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jersey City, a Photo Essay
If you had to portray Jersey City in only a dozen photographs, what photos would you choose? I took a crack at that this morning and failed. It took me sixteen... Read more
Posted on 01 August 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cities on the Backs of Hermit Crabs
At Wired:Ducks, eagles, and dolphins have all been the beneficiaries of 3-D printed prostheses, and now Japanese artist Aki Inomata is using the power of rapid... Read more
Posted on 31 July 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Evolution, So What?
I’d like this to be the last post in this series except, of course, for an introduction to the whole series, from Cultural Evolution by the Word on through to... Read more
Posted on 30 July 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Abu Simbel: Two Modes of Thought
These days I've got two things on my mind: 1) my current series of posts on cultural evolution, memes, and the thought of Dan Dennett, and 2) murals, Mana... Read more
Posted on 29 July 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Mind is What the Brain Does, and Very Strange
Having now clearly established memes as properties of objects and events in the external world, properties that provide crucial data for the operation of... Read more
Posted on 28 July 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY