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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Green Villain 002 on 3 Quarks Daily
My latest essay for 3 Quarks Daily is now up: Graffiti is the most important art form of the last half-century... It features photos of a production in Jersey... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Children in Search of the Dance
I first published this two years ago, but it's worth thinking about again. An Informal Ethnographic Portrait Last Thursday evening I went to a concert by the... Read more
Posted on 28 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The New Inquiry on Gojira, Almost Gets It
Patrick Harrison has an essay about the original Gojira in The New Inquiry. He almost gets it. Yes, he notices that the film is very good, that the spare score... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Those Were the Days, Analogue Photography
An interesting article about black and white film photography. A bit nostalgic, I think, but interesting nonetheless. It's about a particular kind of film that... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Philosophical Arguments About the Computational Mind Don’t Interest Me
And yet the idea of the computational mind does. Philosophers have generated piles of arguments about whether or not or what way the mind is computational.... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Computational Mind Creeps Up on the Digital Humanities
The following white paper discusses a wide range of technologies. I include some excerpts that speak to one of my current hobby horses, that computational is a... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Epiphenomena? Ramsay on Patterns, Again
About a month ago I posted on Ramsay’s article about patterns in the scene structure of Shakespeare’s plays. Now I’m looking at a more recent piece, The... Read more
Posted on 25 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Boat, Some Rocks, the Shore
This is another of those "ordinary" shots I've come to like so much. Nothing flashy. It's just there. The boat's the focal point of the shot, and it's skewed... Read more
Posted on 24 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pluralism and an Epistemology of Building
Prompted by a post of Stephen Ramsay's (Postfoundationalism for Life) I've been reading I've been reading James Smythies, Digital Humanities,... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Critic's Will to Meaning Over the Resistance of the Text
I take as my point of reference the line that Geoffrey Hartman drew between critical reading, on the one hand, and technical structuralism and linguistics, on... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
More Flowers – Shooting Blind
In two recent photo-posts I've presented "ordinary" shots – nothing fancy, no spectacular colors, strange objects, or self-conscious composition: a friend in hi... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Remix: This is How Culture Changes, East Asian Edition
Language Log's Victor Mair has recently been to Macau and Hong Kong, both multi-lingual treasure troves. An example from Hong Kong: Pui Ling then showed me... Read more
Posted on 22 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flowers – Shooting Blind
It's fun to just point the camera and shoot, without looking through the view finder. That's how I got these shots. I wanted to shoot the flowers from below, an... Read more
Posted on 22 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DH: Computing the Literary Mind – Look at This!
One of the things that’s struck me as I’ve looked into (the so-called) digital humanities in the last year or two – most intensely in the last six months – is... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Drunken Monkey – That's Us
Robert Dudley, in The Scientist: When we think about the origins of agriculture and crop domestication, alcohol isn’t necessarily the first thing that comes to... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Ordinary Views from Yesterday's Shoot
I like to shoot ordinary views. Nothing flashy, no tricky composition. Just the world, at least a little piece of it, front and center. Like this tree: The... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Mind-reading" Unravelled?
The notion of "mind-reading" has been bugging me since, I guess, some time in the last decade of the previous century. This is the idea that we humans have a... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Simple Domestic Scene
I liked this shot as soon as it came from the camera. Others have liked to as well. It's simple and direct, nothing flash, no self-aware composition: We're... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ten Russian Cantors Walked into a Bar...
Well, it wasn’t a bar; it was a synagogue. And the synagogue wasn’t in Russia; it was in New Jersey. But there were ten of them; they are Russian, and they are... Read more
Posted on 19 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Avatar: 20 More Years?
The New York Times: Billions of dollars are riding on the effort. The effects-heavy sequels will be expensive: Mr. Cameron has vaguely said their combined... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
