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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Lanier on Getting Paid in a Networked World
Joe Nocera on Jaron Lanier:Which leads nicely to Lanier’s final big point: that the value of these new companies comes from us. Read more
Posted on 07 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Netflix World
What does Netfliz know about the cultural ecology of movies and television programs? After all, they can and do track the viewing preferences of all their... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Faculty of Language: Minds Without Brains: What's up with Plants
: Here's a report by Michael Pollan, he of Omnivor's Dilemma fame, reporting on some recent work on plant "neurobiology." ...In which we find out that plants ca... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Evolution Links
The Genealogical World of Phylogenetic Networks has an interesting post, The Music Genome Project is no such thing.The Music Genome Project is a database in... Read more
Posted on 02 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is Nature? John Wilkins Says...
John Wilkins has a typically lucid post addressed to the question: What is nature? He's not himself trying to come up with an answer, but rather is interested i... Read more
Posted on 02 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some "old" Photos of JC - Not That Old, and with a Touch of Red
Posted on 02 January 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Getting Around in the World
It seems that both humans and animals forage like this:What they have found is that when moving with a purpose such as foraging for food, many creatures follow ... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An All-night Prayer Service in Ghana
T. M. Luhrmann in the NYTimes:The Apostle Paul, arriving at an island on his journey to share the Gospel, picked up some brushwood for a fire, and a startled... Read more
Posted on 31 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rings in the Qur’an
Carl Ernst at the University of North Carolina has written on a book about the Qur’an: How to Read the Qur’an: A New Guide, with Select Translations.... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rings in Disney's Fantasia
While I'm still buried in Gojira, I think it's useful to remember that there are a number of ring forms in Disney's Fantasia. Both (The Nutcracker Suite, and Th... Read more
Posted on 26 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Human Difference? It's in the Wiring Pattern
The most obvious difference between the human brain and those of our nearest relatively is simple size: Our brain is different? But how can that account for... Read more
Posted on 26 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Marriage in Japan (Gojira)
I’ve been doing a bit of checking on Japanese marriage customs in order to get a better sense of how the Japanese audience for Gojira would have perceived the... Read more
Posted on 25 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Little Known Fact: Santa's Reindeer Are All Female
From Language Log, of all places:According to the Alaska Department of Fish and Game, while both male and female deer grow antlers in the summer each year,... Read more
Posted on 24 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Do Literary Texts Count as Strong Evidence About the Human Mind?
Once again, I'm reposting this. My concern, as before, is with taking literary texts seriously, as primary evidence. Just how do we do that? Read more
Posted on 24 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Monster Plot in Gojira and the Trolley Problem
The Trolley Problem is a peculiar thought experiment that philosophers have invented to explore certain aspects of moral reasoning. Read more
Posted on 23 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reeds, Focal Plane, Foto
I love shots like this:The visual material is simple, a bunch of reeds, all running more or less vertically. What I like to do is play around with the focal... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
If Reality is Social, Then Where's Reality?
From a NYTimes article about an online game, Clash of the Clans, and a young man who was once the best in the world, George Yao:To those of us raised in the... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Informal Thoughts About Romance, Monsters, and Myth Logic in Gojira
This is a long note I sent to my friend and colleague, Tim Perper, who brough Gojira to my attention a few years ago.* * * * *I’ve now been thinking through... Read more
Posted on 21 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Intersection of the Worlds Realized in Two Media
This is a slightly off-angle photograph of a painting I did in the summer of 1981:When I started it I had a simple formal problem in mind, to do a painting... Read more
Posted on 21 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Warhol Variations 2
There's an obvious similarity between these images and the earlier Warhol Variations I'd posted. They are derived from the same source material. Read more
Posted on 20 December 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
