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 ( 7805 )
-
Learning/Teaching Styles: Connected Courses Exemplars
When I signed up with the course I did so without much investigation or thought. To be sure, I’ve been online and active for two decades and know the web... Read more
Posted on 22 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why I’d Abandoned Chomskian Linguistics Before I Got to Graduate School and Wher...
It wasn’t a matter of deep and well-thought princple. It was simpler than that. Chomsky's approach to linguistics didn’t have the tools I was looking for. Let m... Read more
Posted on 22 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sad Music, Why We Listen to It
Liila Taruffi, Stefan Koelsch. The Paradox of Music-Evoked Sadness: An Online Survey. PLOS One. Published: October 20, 2014 DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone. Read more
Posted on 21 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sex, Talk, and the Future
Sex has bedeviled humankind ever since there WAS humankind, and perhaps a bit before. Who knows? California has just passed a new law governing sexual conduct... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cataphiles: The Cave People of Paris
From the NYTimes: PARIS — On a recent evening, a 31-year-old street artist led a small group through a dark tunnel off a disused train track in the south of... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Separating Culture and Identity from One Another
This post is the introduction to a set of five posts I've collected as a working paper: Culture, Plurality, and Identity in the 21st Century, which you may... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Death of the Firstborn Egyptians: Nina Paley Takes It up a Notch
Here's a kick-ass scene from Nina Paley's work-in-progress, Seder-Masochism: Death of the Firstborn Egyptians from Nina Paley on Vimeo. I think her artistry's... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Theory of Cultural Ranks at 3QD
Posted at 3 Quarks Daily: Evolving to the Future, the Web of Culture Europeans had been trading with Asian peoples since ancient times. Read more
Posted on 20 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Recaps – How Do People Use Them?
Note to self: What about all these recaps? Are they as old as the web? When did the NYTimes start publishing recaps? – I just noticed a Boardwalk Empire recap... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fantasia Redux?
From today's NYTimes, the "paper of record": “It’s a continuation of the spirit of ‘Fantasia’ in a different medium,” Mr. Battilana said. Read more
Posted on 20 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Genes and Culture: Black Death, Pogroms, Slavery and Trust
From the NYTimes review of Christine Kenneally, The Invisible History of the Human Race: Kenneally describes a study by the economists Nico Voigtländer and... Read more
Posted on 18 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Does Heart of Darkness Engage with Africa?
I’ve been thinking about an essay Gregory Jusdanis recently posted at Arcade, Looking at Africa, Looking at Ourselves. He frames it with Chinua Achebe’s... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos; A Confluence of Light
Posted on 17 October 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Scholarpedia – Another Online Reference Work
I just discovered the Scholarpedia ("the peer-reviewed open-access encyclopedia, where knowledge is curated by communities of experts") through an article by... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“I Have a Dream” – Remembrance of “Nuggets” Past
The phrase “I have a dream” is, of course, the refrain from Martin Luther King’s best known speech. “Nugget” is a term of art in the Connected Courses world tha... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
David Byrne on Contemporary Visual Art
From his blog: The market and the disparity of wealth taints everything. The art world has increasingly become like one of those party magazines: you flip thoug... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
2-dimensional Interaction of 1-dimensional Objects in an Implied Space of 3...
Posted on 16 October 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Disaster Narrowly Escaped, Or Why Computers Suck and Worries About...
Not too long ago I wrote a long-form post in which I argued that we are in no danger of having a superintelligent computer mysteriously emerge from the... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Separate Spheres: Motherhood and Raising Children || Sexuality
From Pacific Standard: In the Yunnan and Sichuan provinces of China lives a small ethnic group called the Mosuo. Among the Mosuo, romantic and family life are... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Interesting Example of Vocal Coaching
As you watch, think about what the coach is telling the student and how she responds. When he tells her to sing from her toes, think about that, and empathize.... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
