Bbenzon
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 ( 6430 )
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City in the Distance
Posted on 24 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DeepMind's MuZero
MuZero, which was first introduced in a preliminary paper in 2019, masters Go, chess, shogi and Atari without needing to be told the rules, thanks to its abilit... Read more
Posted on 24 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mapping Characters in the Gospels [digital Humanities]
These visualizations have been lying around on my hard drive for over 7 years, what better time than Christmas to share them? 🎅 They come from a 2013... Read more
Posted on 24 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seinfeld Likes the Marx Brothers [so Do I]
The NYTimes just ran a piece where Jerry Seinfeld talks about his current reading: “So the book that’s on my stand right now that I’m really, really enjoying... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Heron, Reflections, Shadings
Posted on 14 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jerry Seinfield on His Career and Craft [Progress in Harnessing the Mind]
Skip the first 7:35; the host, Tim Ferriss, reads advertisements for his sponsors. The rest (except for another commercial interruption at about 30:50) is a... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Politics and Matter [Media Notes 52]
I’ve watched all of the Star Trek franchise except for the animated series and for the most recent ones: Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, and Lower Decks. Read more
Posted on 13 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The End of the Music Business [as We Know It]
Here's my interpretation of the reasons for the sudden flurry of sales of song publishing rights—and my predictions about how it will play out. It's not a prett... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To the Moon! Jacob Collier @3QD
Several times during my undergraduate years I had experienced something you might call “the true thought is the afterthought”: I would write a paper, turn it in... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Glenn Loury & James Heckman Discuss Parenting, Schooling, Race, and Inequality
As you may know, Glenn Loury is an economist at Brown. Heckman is a Nobel Laureate in economics at the University of Chicago. The first 19 minutes consists of... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Cultural Contrast Between Computer Science and the Humanities, and Why...
Smart analysis of the cultural contrast between CS and the humanities,—including a reason (drawn from experience) why undergrads with interests in both may get... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"My Favorite Things", from Broadway Hit to Jazz Classic [in a Revolutionary New...
This is an excellent video that follows "My Favorite Things" from its origins in a mid-century Broadway musical, The Sound of Music, to a hit album by John... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jacob Collier Working out an Arrangement of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"
I've now turned this into a PDF file which you can download here: https://www.academia.edu/37815917/Mind-Culture_Coevolution_Major_Trans... In the early 1970s... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Medieval Depictons of the Moon
Early medieval intermediality: an enamel roundel depicting the Moon on a chariot, holding torches, made c. 870 in Southern France and the Moon from a... Read more
Posted on 01 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Will Jacob Collier Win the Grammy for Best Album? [Oh Those Kids]
I surely don’t know. He’s already won four Grammies, all for arranging (Wikipedia). Here’s what he has to say about the nomination, from his Facebook page: The... Read more
Posted on 29 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Dissolution of a Comprehensive Epistemic Regime in America and the World [th...
David Brooks has an interesting opinion piece, The Rotting of the Republican Mind, NYTimes, Nov. 26, 20. He declines to blame the internet, for "Why would the... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tribalism in the Current AI Wars, a Tweet Stream
I've been witnessing the "battles" both around advancements in #AI and of the #AI silos since I entered into the field more than 30 years ago.It has never been... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Population, Pandemics, Malthus, and Progress
Roser points out and documents something I've often said, but with much less data: Malthus was right! That is, until roughly a century before he wrote, the... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Has European Politics Been Asleep at the Wheel Since WWII?
Leopost Aschenbrenner, Europe's Political Stupor, For Our Posterity, 23 Nov. 2020:After WWII, the political was banished from the European Continent. It had... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The End of Physics as We Have Come to Know? [And the New Physics?]
Posted at Not Even Wrong, Nov. 24, 2020:In a remarkable article entitled Contemplating the End of Physics posted today at Quanta magazine, Robbert Dijkgraaf (th... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY