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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Growing Minds: You Can’t Get There from Here, Anymore
It’s just occurred to me that something’s happened to me like what happened with Coleridge (aka STC: Samuel Taylor Coleridge) and “Kubla Khan. Read more
Posted on 30 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jersey City Future 2: One Jersey City
I’m going to start with the Bergen Arches, move to Buckminster Fuller and his plan for the industrialization of Brazil, and end with a monument in Journal... Read more
Posted on 29 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Kisses Tell
From the NYTimes:The participants generally rated kissing in casual relationships as most important before sex, less important during sex, even less important... Read more
Posted on 29 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On Street Art: A Note to Mayors Everywhere
Patrick Verel just sent me a link to his Fordham thesis about graffiti:Verel, Patrick, "New York City Graffiti Murals: Signs of Hope, Marks of Distinction"... Read more
Posted on 29 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Child of the Space Age
One evening in the fall of 1957 my father took me outside. He pointed up to the sky and said “That’s Sputnik.” I’m not sure I saw the (moving) speck of light... Read more
Posted on 28 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Malcolm Gladwell: Does He Know What He's Talking About?
I've not read his latest book, David and Goliath (I've only read several chapters of The Tipping Point and a New Yorker article or three). Read more
Posted on 28 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
John Wilkins on Biological Species
The concept of a species in biology is tricky and controversial. John Wilkins is an expert on the controversies surrounding the term and he rejects the notion... Read more
Posted on 27 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Leak in Cool Reason 2: Pattern Matching
I would like to clarify my earlier critique of Lakoff and Turner on “To a Solitary Disciple” (from the third chapter of More Than Cool Reason) by offering a... Read more
Posted on 27 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music and Roller Coasters
I’d originally posted these notes to a private online forum back in 2002. This is their first walk out in public. What I say about music pertains to the other... Read more
Posted on 27 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jersey City on New Savanna
I've posted quite a bit about Jersey City here on (the) New Savanna. You can find general Jersey City posts by clicking on the Jersey City tag, either directly... Read more
Posted on 26 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Miami Device: Paradise Regained?
On the one hand I've been working my way through back episodes of Miami Vice, which I'd also watched when it originally aired on network TV. Read more
Posted on 26 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Autonomous Aesthetic: A Graduate Syllabus in Naturalist Literary Criticism
I'd originally posted this at The Valve in July of 2007 under a slightly different title: The Autonomous Aesthetic: A Graduate Syllabus in Literary Theory. Read more
Posted on 26 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jersey City Future: the Twilight Zone
I’ve been feeling that there’s something afoot in Jersey City, but I don’t know quite what. For example, here’s an empty block in Lafayette as it was two years... Read more
Posted on 25 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Brain "Decoding"
There's an interesting piece in Nature about how neuroscientists are learning to "decode" brain activity, that is, to identify, e.g. what a person is looking... Read more
Posted on 25 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The New Interdependence
Henry Farrell and Abraham Newman, Domestic Institutions Beyond the Nation State: Charting the New Interdependence Approach (PDF) Tim Büthe and Walter Mattli. Read more
Posted on 24 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Narrative and Abstraction: Some Problems with Cognitive Metaphor
I’ve had problems with cognitive metaphor theory (CMT) since Lakoff and Johnson published Metaphors We Live By (1981) – well, not since then, because I didn’t... Read more
Posted on 24 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Description 2: The Primacy of the Text
I've uploaded another working paper to my SSRN site. As this post's title indicates, it's about description. Here's the link. I've appended the abstract and... Read more
Posted on 23 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Organic in Black and White
Posted on 23 October 2013
CULTURE,
PHOTOGRAPHY
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A Leak in Cool Reason
The cool reason I have in mind is George Lakoff and Mark, More than Cool Reason (1989), one of the founding texts of cognitive poetics. Read more
Posted on 23 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jabba the Hutt, Or How We Communicate
They're having an interesting discussion of conversational turn-taking over at Language Log (see the comment HERE). So I thought I'd dig out this three year... Read more
Posted on 23 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
