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
-
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 )
-
Geoffrey Hartman on Reading
While I’m working on a long post on reading, theory, and the machinic critic I thought I’d post some passages from Geoffrey Hartman’s 1975 – those were they... Read more
Posted on 09 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Famous Artists in the Home: Picasso, O'Keeffe, Chagall
There at the lower left, his signature: Picasso. At the lower right, a pair of light switches; notice the glow on the right hand switch. Read more
Posted on 09 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Hothouse Manifesto: Does Stephen Ramsay Sell Literary Criticism Short?
I think so.I first learned of Ramsay’s work from a Stanley Fish blog post back in 2012: Mind Your P’s and B’s: The Digital Humanities and Interpretation. Read more
Posted on 08 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Indirection, Reflection, and Inbetween
When I was a kid I was attracted to those puzzles where you were presented with an odd photo or three and asked to identify it. Read more
Posted on 08 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blue Philosophy
It is obvious that these three photographs share the color blue, blue sky in two cases, blue shirt in the third. What is not at all obvious is that these... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of Bundling, Love, and Farmers' Daughters
3 Quarks Daily has just posted my Bundling, Dream Space, Love, and the Farmer’s Daughter, which is revised from something I'd posted a few years ago at New... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Science of Godzilla
That’s the title of a post at Darren Nash’s Tetrapods blog (which, as a point of information, has relocated to Scientific American’s blogoverse). Read more
Posted on 07 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
One Person's Mystical Experience in 1959
Barbara Ehrenreich in the NYTimes:There were no visions, no prophetic voices or visits by totemic animals, just this blazing everywhere. Something poured into m... Read more
Posted on 05 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Have the Oligarchs and Plutocrats Won?
Just watched Alex Gibney's powerful documentary Park Avenue: Money, Power and the American Dream (you can stream it on Netflix). Read more
Posted on 04 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It's a Juggler's World, the Arts of Performing
From a long-form profile on Anthony Gatto, a master juggler, perhaps TEH master juggler:The fact that juggling audiences can’t tell the difference between hard... Read more
Posted on 03 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cleaning Coal: An Informal Study of Ecological Design
Slightly revised from My Father Cleaned Coal for a Living, originally published for the Truth and Traditions Party.My father was trained as a chemical engineer. Read more
Posted on 02 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
One Artist's Public Art Project in Sweden
My friend Charles Cameron sent me a link to this page by a Swedish artists, Peter John Tucker. He describes his campaign to beautify ugly signal boxes:I... Read more
Posted on 01 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
From Crowdsourcing to Machine Learning: And Then There Were None (human Workers)
From the New York Times:But even more troubling is the fact that crowdsourcing platforms are hurrying along the automation of more and more of these tasks. Read more
Posted on 01 April 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Perils of Big Data
The Financial Times has an interesting article on Big Data. Yes, it's all over the place, and, yes, it allows us to do things we couldn't before. Read more
Posted on 31 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
MOOCs and Liberal Education: for the Autodidact in All of Us
John Holbo is discussing MOOCs at Crooked Timber. Part 1, Reason and Persuasion On Coursera – or – Look, Ma, I’m a MOOC; part 2, The Game of Wrong, and Moral... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ring Composition in Alan Liu’s Essay, “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities”
I would like to conclude Alan Liu week at New Savanna by returning to the point where I began, his essay, “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities” (PMLA 128,... Read more
Posted on 29 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Humans in the Americas for 22K Years Rather Than Only 13K
Whoops! The past has done it again: tossed up a fact that upended decades of conventional wisdom. NYTimes reports:Researchers here say they have unearthed... Read more
Posted on 29 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Interesting Interview with John Searle
In my part of the intellectual woods he's perhaps best known for his Chinese room thought experiment, which has always struck me as being beside the point. Read more
Posted on 28 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Alan Liu: Reengaging the Humanities
Alan Liu week continues at New Savanna. Now I want to look at an interview he gave to Scott Pound at Amodern: Reengaging the Humanities. Read more
Posted on 27 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Thinkable and the Interesting: Katherine Hayles Interviews Alan Liu
Back in October of 2008 Katherine Hayles interviewed Alan Liu about the use of digital technology in the humanities. That interview is one of 20 you can access... Read more
Posted on 26 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
