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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Video of Parachute Jump from NYC Freedom Tower
Jump happened at at 3 a.m. on September 30, 2013. Four men were involved; three jumped (Mr. Rossig, James Brady, Marco Markovich) and one remained on the... Read more
Posted on 25 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Godzilla, Doctor Who, and Star Trek: the Big Three?
This post is very tentative. I’m thinking out-loud, playing around. As the title suggests, I’m wondering if these three franchises, Godzilla, Doctor Who, and... Read more
Posted on 24 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Weaving Fiction on the Web
Serializing fiction online brings readers in touch with writers (like the old days of oral story telling?). NYTimes tells all:Wattpad is a leader in this new... Read more
Posted on 24 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Salvation Mountain, Photographed by Eric Muzzlehatch
Posted on 23 March 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Bookclubs R Us
James Atlas on book clubs, which claim some five million Americans:But the most prevalent way of conducting a book club is still in someone’s living room. Read more
Posted on 22 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computer as Symbol and Model: On Reading Alan Liu
I’ve now had a chance to read Ala Liu’s essay, “The Meaning of the Digital Humanities” (PMLA 128, 2013, 409-423) and have some thoughts about the way he stages... Read more
Posted on 21 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sean O'Sullivan: Carma and Ridesharing
Some years ago, in the previous century, I worked for Sean O'Sullivan when he was president of MapInfo. He's since gone on to do this and that. Read more
Posted on 21 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Meaning of the Digital Humanities - Alan Liu
Delivered May 1, 2013 at NYU. Starting around 50 minutes in, Liu has some interesting observations on the appearance of abstract and concrete terms. Read more
Posted on 18 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Miles Davis at Harvard: “the Shit Sounded Good as a Mother-fucker”
Miles Davis didn’t speak those words at Harvard. To my knowledge, he never set foot on the Harvard campus, though it is of course possible that he did so on som... Read more
Posted on 15 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Life" is a Concept, but We Wary of Thinking That Such a Thing as LIFE Exists
Science writer Ferris Jabr in the NYTimes:You might think botanists have a precise unfailing definition of a tree — they don’t. Read more
Posted on 13 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Repetition Makes Music?
From Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis, One more time, in Aeon. She presents the so-called speech to song illusion: The illusion begins with an ordinary spoken... Read more
Posted on 11 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ecstasy and Voudun – on Being Mounted and Ridden (possessed) by a Horse
Maya Deren, an experimental film-maker, went to Haiti in the early 1950s where she studied Voudoun, and participated in rituals. Read more
Posted on 11 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In Conversation With… Steven Pinker
I've been following Steve Pinker since the later 1990s, when I read How the Mind Works as background for my book on music, Beethoven's Anvil. Read more
Posted on 09 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Could Vermont Really Secede from the Union?
A year an a half ago I went to a meeting in Vermont where people talked seriously about seceding from the Union. But I don't recall any discussion of what that... Read more
Posted on 09 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Graeber on Fun at the Heart of Being
David Graeber, most widely known as the author of Debt: The First 5000 Years and a theorist of the Occupy movement, as an article in The Baffler arguing that... Read more
Posted on 08 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sound of Many Hands Clapping: Group Intentionality
In my earlier post on the busy bee brain I quoted some passages from Beethoven’s Anvil in which I discussed synchronized flashing among fireflies. Read more
Posted on 06 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tim Perper: Polymath, Friend, and Colleague
My friend Tim Perper died unexpectedly on January 21 of this year. An obituary was published in the Philadelphia Inquirer. This post contains some more... Read more
Posted on 03 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Plucky Heroines from Haggard to Hikaru and Buffy
This is a guest post by Timothy Perper, PhD and Martha Cornog, MA, MS, who served as Book Review editors for Mechademia: An Annual Forum for Anime, Manga, and... Read more
Posted on 01 March 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Complexity for Dummies
You can download the following paper at my Academia.edu page.A Primer on Self-Organization:With some tabletop physics you can do at homeContents:Entropy and... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Thinking About the Cosmos is Strange
I’ve recently gotten in touch with David Porush, a friend from graduate school back in the Jurassic era, and have been reading some of his thoughts about the... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
