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 ( 7805 )
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For the Historical Record: Herbert Simon on Literary Criticism
Some time ago I was cruising through the blogosphere and came across a post at Mixing Memory entitled Cognitive Science and Literary Criticism (from 2004! almos... Read more
Posted on 24 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of Drugs and Medicine: When Magic Became Science
Benjamin Breen writing in Aeon: When I began my graduate studies in history, I decided to focus on the period when magic and alchemy morphed into modern science. Read more
Posted on 24 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gradisil, SF, and Sacred Hunger
Since I've begun re=thinking space travel I think it's time to dust off this old review of Adam Roberts' Gradisil. I published it in The Valve on July 11, 2006... Read more
Posted on 23 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Extended Cognition and the Collective Mind
Consider this to be an addendum to yesterdays' post What is Culture that it can Evolve? The Mesh, from Individuals to the Group. Read more
Posted on 23 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is Culture That It Can Evolve? The Mesh, from Individuals to the Group
Things are complicated, and there’s a sense in which I’ve jumped the gun in some of my earlier posts in this current series, which I’ve provisionally titled... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How the Victorians Invented the Future
Writing in Aeon Iwan Rhys Morus explains how our Victorian forebears invented the future: Before the beginning of the 19th century, the future was only rarely... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
One Tourist in Three is a Pilgrim, 330M Annually
"Pilgrimage is not merely ancillary to the modern spiritual existence," writes Bruce Feiler in The New York Times: In an age of doubt and shifting beliefs,... Read more
Posted on 21 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sampling the Space
This is a more or less neutral version of what came out of the camera. Since it's one of my shaky-cam photos there's no point in trying to develop the photo so... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Christmas Music
There is the bag of music that exists in my mind as Christmas Music. All the turns run together, some more frequently than others, in a big lump, like a ball... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Evolution in the Universe: It's Physics
In Quanta: From the standpoint of physics, there is one essential difference between living things and inanimate clumps of carbon atoms: The former tend to be... Read more
Posted on 19 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Night Watch
Posted on 19 December 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Jeff Bezos – Man in Space
Henry Blodget interviews Jeff Bezos for Business Insider: HB: In addition to everything else we’ve talked about, you make rockets. You want to go into space. Read more
Posted on 18 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rereading Goethe’s Faust 4: Going Through My Notes
As the subtitle suggests, this doesn’t have much of anything to do with Faust, but I’m throwing it here anyhow. On the one hand, it has to do with thinking abou... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Four-Fold Way Through an Undergraduate Education
From my notes about a decade ago: Though I haven’t really thought it through, it seems to me that a proper undergraduate education ought to give equal emphasis... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Scapegoating the American Way
I’ve got a new post up at 3 Quarks Daily, Free-Floating Anxiety, Teens, and Security Theatre. It continues with the same theme I explored in my previous 3QD... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pedagogical Styles 4: Cognitive Demands and Interpersonal Dynamics
I figure this will be my last post before wrapping the series, writing an introduction, and putting them all together in a PDF. The important point is that... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Beings, the Ontology of Culture, and a Return to Books and Blues
I haven't forgotten my on-going series of posts on the direction of cultural evolution; you know, the one that started with Matt Jockers' Macroanalysis? But I'v... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Men at Work: ZAR, ICHI
Posted on 15 December 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Rereading Goethe’s Faust 3: Echoes of Fantasia and Mysteries of the Cosmos
What is this knowledge that Faust seeks? Still on reset. The quick read-through that I decided upon last post has yet to happen, though I’ve gotten a bit furthe... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: New Graffiti Beyond the Arches
I don't know just when this graffiti went up, but it wasn't there when I went through the Bergen Arches on July 1, 2014. I took these photos earlier this week,... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
