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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Why Is “Kubla Khan” Important?
A week ago I’d decided to put an end to my quest to find a poetic grammar centered on Coleridge’s “Kubla Khan”. The intellectual landscape has changed so much... Read more
Posted on 22 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On Describing a Painting
Harvard art historian bills her article thus: The Power of Patience: Teaching students the value of deceleration and immersive attention. OK. Read more
Posted on 21 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Entrainment in Human Conversational Turn-taking
Margaret Wilson has a guest post at Language Log that's questioning a recent article arguing that marmoset vocal interactions have a similar style of... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Problem Solved: A Brief Note About Carman Moore
For the purposes of this post I’ll place Carman Moore in the Western classical tradition, since that’s where his training is (Ohio State and Julliard). But his... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Does Jersey City Have More Creative Potential Than NYC?
Can Mana Contemporary make the transition from NYCArt in Jersey City to scene weaver?It’s time to revisit a question I posed a couple of months ago in the wake... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Civics 101: The Basis of Democracy
We all know these words, from the opening of the second paragraph of the Declaration of Independence:We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Thinkers at the Fringe
There's an article, by Oliver Burkeman in The Guardian, about David Birnbaum, a jeweler to the stars turned metaphysician and has written a Big Book entitled... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Skymusic Soars & Carman Moore is Effin’ Brilliant
Ornette Coleman says that Carman Moore, a recent Guggenheim Fellow, is “the greatest composer...in the whole world”, and who am I to question Mr. Coleman in suc... Read more
Posted on 19 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is This New World, This Pacific of the Mind?
Yesterday, or the day before, I asserted that a lot of new intellectual tools have been created since I first set out to figure out what’s going on in “Kubla... Read more
Posted on 18 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mana Contemporary: Is All the World Its Stage?
Greg and I took another trip out to Mana Contemporary yesterday. There it is, this multi-building complex on the west side of Jersey City, next to the PATH... Read more
Posted on 18 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of Music and Life Stages
From Medical Xpress, contrary to the common belief that musical preferences are fixed in adolescence, Arielle Bonneville-Roussy from Cambridge's Department of... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Me and Music, the First 30 Years
My first memory of music is also my first memory of any kind. It is of listening to Burl Ives sing about a romance between a fly and a bumble bee. Read more
Posted on 17 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In Praise of SUNYB English
In the last installment of my “hunt for genius” series I talked about the English Department at SUNY Buffalo back in the mid-1970s and cited to same. Read more
Posted on 17 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
And the Nut Jobs Shall Lead Them
Over at Media Matters:MADDOW: They have a different sense of what is normal. They have a different sense of what counts as reasonable politics in America --... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“Kubla Khan” and the Quest for Poetic Grammar: A Glimpse of the Pacific?
Earlier this month I asserted that I’d, if not solved, dissolved a problem I’d been working on my entire career: The Fluid Mind and a Problem Dissolved. What... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Virtual Feudalism is Here: the 1% Vs. the 99%
Over at Crooked Timber they’re having a discussion of the software SNAFU that’s occurred in the rollout of Obamacare. As anyone in the software biz knows, that’... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Kowabunga! Kemosabe, How
This wheatpaste is at the corner of Communipaw and Manning:Go up Communipaw and over a block or so to Summit and Grand and you see this:If these two were to... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2013 CULTURE -
The Hunt for Genius, Part 5: Three Elite Schools
I grew up in western Pennsylvania in a suburb of Johnstown, a small steel-making city. My father was from Baltimore and he worked with Bethlehem Mines, the... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"I'm Feeling a Little Fukuppy Today"
Culture is grand, and strange. It seems that "Fukuppy" is the name of a mascot recently devised by the Fukushima Industries Corporation. Read more
Posted on 15 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Culture is Not Biology
But that's a hard lesson to learn, especially in a society where physical differences have been used to enforce cultural difference and thus have come to be an... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
