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 )
-
Walter Murch on Collective Creativity
Two summers ago I was working on a series of posts about Apocalypse Now. One day I got an email from one Walter Murch, a man I did not know. But I knew the... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Accounting for the Great Divergence Between Europe and Asia
Stephen Broadberry (h/t Tyler Cowen):...the Great Divergence of living standards between Europe and Asia had late medieval origins and was already well under wa... Read more
Posted on 16 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Living Fossiles
Jared Diamond (The World until Yesterday), and others as well, have argued as though current hunter-gatherer societies are all but direct examples of how our... Read more
Posted on 16 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Disney Goes Meta: Why the Jam Session in Fantasia?
The film takes place in two worlds: the Real World and the Rest. The Deems Taylor interstitials represent the Real World, while all the individual episodes... Read more
Posted on 16 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Photo Ontology 1
Five photos, each distinctly different from the others, together they suggest a world. Read more
Posted on 16 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music: Ride the Lizard, Valkyrie, Ride It!
Years ago, when I was working as a program assistant in the Chaplain’s Office at Johns Hopkins, we got word that a new gospel singer was in town. Would we... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Homes by the Homeless (& the Power of Pictures)
When I first spotted the site in the above photo it was by accident. I was walking under the 14th Street viaduct and noticed some furniture and stacked boxes.... Read more
Posted on 15 November 2013 CULTURE, PHOTOGRAPHY, SOCIETY -
Description Redux, Again: On the Methodological Centrality of Diagrams
Broadly considered, description is how phenomena are brought into intellectual discourse. Such discourse is thereby bounded by the scope of the descriptive... Read more
Posted on 14 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ecstasy at the Left Bank
Duke Ellington was one of the great musicians of the last century, and his band was one of the great bands. But the fact is, touring is rough, and there were... Read more
Posted on 13 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Five Extraordinarily Creative Communities, But Maybe Six
Shakespeare, Ellington, Disney, Apocalypse Now, English at SUNY Buffalo, Mana Contemporary (?)I was thinking about Apocalypse Now, an extraordinary film, as I... Read more
Posted on 12 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Freud Does Disney
I've now created a working paper out of two long posts offering psychoanalytic instights into Fantasia and Dumbo. The SSRN link is here. Abstract and... Read more
Posted on 11 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flowers from Someone Who Lives Here
I post a number of photos at a private website. This one seems to be a particular favorites:The folks at that website DO like photos for their formal... Read more
Posted on 11 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
STC, Poetic Form, and a Glimpse of the Mind
In which it is argued that we are in a position to glimpse, and only glimpse, a new vision of the human mind and of literary form.I've created a working paper... Read more
Posted on 10 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Illuminati: Leapin' Lizards!
Free the reptile within!From the Wikipedia:The Illuminati (plural of Latin illuminatus, "enlightened") is a name given to several groups, both real and... Read more
Posted on 10 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Prospero Project
I've uploated a thought experiment to Scribd. It's about a computer that can read literature and talk about it. It's called, naturally, Prospero. An abstract's... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To a Fellow Critic, on Cognitivism and Literary Form
I recently got a note from a fellow critic in which he talked about having had an Eminent Cognitivist visit his class. He said the fellow was bright, engaging,... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Genius Chronicles: Going Boldly Where None Have Gone Before?
I've now assembled my posts on the MacArthur Fellows Program into a single document under the above title. You can download it at my Scribd page. Abstract and... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Kubla Khan" and "This Lime-Tree Bower" Compared
On "Kubla Khan"; on "This Lime-Tree Bower".“Kubla Khan” (KK) and “This Lime-Tree Bower My Prison” (LTB) are very different poems, so different that if we... Read more
Posted on 08 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sensory Word of Plants
Did you ever wonder how it is that flowers sense the morning sun and, in response, open their petals? And then they track the sun as it moves across the sky.... Read more
Posted on 08 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Small World Connections, a Few – From Britain to the New World
I was an undergraduate at Johns Hopkins from the fall of 1965 through the spring of 1969. During that same time David Hays, who would become my teacher at SUNY... Read more
Posted on 08 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
