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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Three Surprise Hits from Late 2013 [2496]
One of the oldest posts on New Savanna, Sex, Power, and Purity in Kawajiri’s Ninja Scroll, is approaching 40,000 hits after almost four years; but many posts,... Read more
Posted on 09 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Patterns as Epistemological Objects [2495]
When I posted From Quantification to Patterns in Digital Criticism I was thinking out loud. I’ve been thinking about patterns for years, and about... Read more
Posted on 08 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
White and Tan: Variationis on a Minimal Theme
Posted on 07 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Real Crisis in the Humanities, Or at Any Rate, Literary Criticism
Yes, there’s been talk of diminished enrollments, loss of funding, and respect lost, all of which are real in some measure. But that’s not what I’m talking... Read more
Posted on 07 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
RIP: The Urban Design Center is Gone [2492*]
I spotted it in the summer of 2011 and first photographed it on July 25, 2011. The building, as you can see in the photo above, was in sad shape, with part of... Read more
Posted on 06 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Horizon on the Hudson, an Exercise in Minimalism
Posted on 05 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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"Pattern" as a Term of Art
In continuing to think about pattern I remembered some old notes I’d made about the concept of a biological niche. I’d decided that a niche was a pattern that... Read more
Posted on 05 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“Hyperobject” as Concept and as Rhetorical Device
When I first started reading Tim Morton’s posts on hyperobjects, I found the concept rather puzzling. For that matter, I found his usage of “object” puzzling... Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hoboken Fragments, an Ontology of Space
Posted on 04 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Is the Lyric Essay Undergoing an Cyberspace Renaissance?
In a long-form piece in The New Inquiry, Sarah Menkedick stacks up fragments of varying length to argue that it is. The lyric essay is all-telling, all the time. Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of White Fetishists of Black Blues
Barry Mazor reviews a number of recent books about white collectors of the 'deep true authentic' blues, a mid-20th Century crew the dug up a lot of history and... Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Are Musical Genres Real and Constraining Or Are They Mixing Together...
Monica Lee (doctoral candidate at U Chicago) and Dan Silver (sociology, U Toronto) have a fascinating "big data" post on musical genres. Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some of the Old Organic Graffiti
Posted on 03 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Hyperobjects and the Thinking of Timothy Morton
Ursula Heise has a critical review of Morton’s Hyperobjects in, well, Critical Inquiry. But I’m ahead of myself, just a bit. I first met Morton at Stanford’s... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Something Big This Way Comes, Redux
I’ve lived my entire adult life reading assertions that something really big is happening in the world. Certainly intellectually. New ideas and modes of thought... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural and Social Evolution on a Global Scale?
John Hagel on the disruption debate that's come in the wake of Jill Lepore's article in the New Yorker: But, for the moment, these two forces – exponentially... Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Duchamp's Fountain is Leaking All Over the Web
Back in 1917 Marcel Duchamp scandalized the art world by entering an ordinary urinal into an art exhibit under the title of "Fountain. Read more
Posted on 02 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Charlie Ahearn Succeeded Where Spike Lee Failed and Gave Us an Artist Hero Who...
When Spike Lee set out to do Mo’ Better Blues he set out to explicitly counter what he saw as White myths about jazz musicians: "We didn't want to focus on the... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Me and the Villain, Down by the Arches
So, yesterday I’m hanging out, cruising the web, when a call comes through on the green phone. The Green Villain’s restless, wants to do something. “Waddaya hav... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computing as Model for Mind, Games, and the Digital Humanities
Just a quick note here, on my hobby horse about the stark neglect of computer as model for the mind in digital criticism, a hobbyhorse I’ve ridden in this... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
