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 ( 7802 )
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The Sky is Falling: The Apocalypse and the Anthropocene from a Traditional...
The Falling Sky: Words of a Yanomami Shaman. Davi Kopenawa and Bruce Albert. Harvard University Press. November 2013. Tyler Cowen: "For those who are willing... Read more
Posted on 15 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How I Became Interested in Graffiti
This post is old, probably from 2007, I forget exactly, and the original is no longer on the web, so I can't snag the date from there. I am an independent... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
2500 Posts: What Have I Been Doing at New Savanna?
The oldest post on New Savanna is dated April 14, 2010, though it consists only of a broken link to a Nina Paley cartoon. I have this vague sense, however,... Read more
Posted on 14 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jersey City and Mana Contemporary: A Dynamic Duo, Maybe [2499]
Consider this post an update and amendment to my report, Jersey City: From a Skate Park to the World, and embedded below. With the emergence of Mana... Read more
Posted on 12 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Group Dynamics: Jamming Jazz [2498]
About a decade ago I jammed with a bunch of guys – yes, guys – on Manhattan’s upper West Side. None of us were or had been professional musicians, as that term... Read more
Posted on 11 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flowers up from Below [2497]
* * * * * I'm counting down to post #2500. Three more to go. Read more
Posted on 10 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Three Surprise Hits from Late 2013 [2496]
One of the oldest posts on New Savanna, Sex, Power, and Purity in Kawajiri’s Ninja Scroll, is approaching 40,000 hits after almost four years; but many posts,... Read more
Posted on 09 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Patterns as Epistemological Objects [2495]
When I posted From Quantification to Patterns in Digital Criticism I was thinking out loud. I’ve been thinking about patterns for years, and about... Read more
Posted on 08 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
White and Tan: Variationis on a Minimal Theme
Posted on 07 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Real Crisis in the Humanities, Or at Any Rate, Literary Criticism
Yes, there’s been talk of diminished enrollments, loss of funding, and respect lost, all of which are real in some measure. But that’s not what I’m talking... Read more
Posted on 07 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
RIP: The Urban Design Center is Gone [2492*]
I spotted it in the summer of 2011 and first photographed it on July 25, 2011. The building, as you can see in the photo above, was in sad shape, with part of... Read more
Posted on 06 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Horizon on the Hudson, an Exercise in Minimalism
Posted on 05 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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"Pattern" as a Term of Art
In continuing to think about pattern I remembered some old notes I’d made about the concept of a biological niche. I’d decided that a niche was a pattern that... Read more
Posted on 05 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
“Hyperobject” as Concept and as Rhetorical Device
When I first started reading Tim Morton’s posts on hyperobjects, I found the concept rather puzzling. For that matter, I found his usage of “object” puzzling... Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hoboken Fragments, an Ontology of Space
Posted on 04 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Is the Lyric Essay Undergoing an Cyberspace Renaissance?
In a long-form piece in The New Inquiry, Sarah Menkedick stacks up fragments of varying length to argue that it is. The lyric essay is all-telling, all the time. Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of White Fetishists of Black Blues
Barry Mazor reviews a number of recent books about white collectors of the 'deep true authentic' blues, a mid-20th Century crew the dug up a lot of history and... Read more
Posted on 04 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Are Musical Genres Real and Constraining Or Are They Mixing Together...
Monica Lee (doctoral candidate at U Chicago) and Dan Silver (sociology, U Toronto) have a fascinating "big data" post on musical genres. Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some of the Old Organic Graffiti
Posted on 03 July 2014
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Hyperobjects and the Thinking of Timothy Morton
Ursula Heise has a critical review of Morton’s Hyperobjects in, well, Critical Inquiry. But I’m ahead of myself, just a bit. I first met Morton at Stanford’s... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2014 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
