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 ( 6451 )
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John Wick 1, 2, 3 [Media Notes 116]
Out of curiosity, and because Netflix kept telling me the films were about to leave the site, I watched the first three (of four) John Wick films. Read more
Posted on 01 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hoboken Blossoms
Posted on 01 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Peculiar Nature of Literary Criticism and the Case of Harold Bloom
I’ve been spending quite a bit of time thinking about Harold Bloom in the context of my series of posts on the Greatest Of All-Time Literary Critics, which has... Read more
Posted on 01 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Beyoncé Channeling "For What It's Worth" in "American Requiem"?
Though I've been aware of Beyoncé since Destiny's Child, I don't follow her music, or much current music for that matter. But I've been hearing at least one tun... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Strange New Worlds [The Hallucinated City]
Posted on 31 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stupidify This! How Matt Farley Floods the Web with Junk Music and Makes a Decen...
Brett Martin, Why Did This Guy Put a Song About Me on Spotify? NYTimes Magazine, March 31, 2024. The man: [Matt] Farley is 45 and lives with his wife, two sons... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Nick Bostrum Vs. the 300-Ton Hydraulic Press: Take That!
Bostrum ranks high on my list of over-rated intellectual annoyances but, alas, I feel that I have to deal with some of the glittering baubles he has released... Read more
Posted on 30 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hot Pink for a Saturday Morning
Posted on 30 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mechanistic Architecture Design and Scaling Laws
đ˘New research on mechanistic architecture design and scaling laws.- We perform the largest scaling laws analysis (500+ models, up to 7B)... Read more
Posted on 29 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Glorious Forsythia
Posted on 29 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Are the Chances That the Current Boom in AI Will “stupidify” Us Back to...
That’s my intuitive response to an op-ed by Eric Hoel in today’s NYTimes: A.I.-Generated Garbage Is Polluting Our Culture (March 29, 2024). I suppose that... Read more
Posted on 29 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Wall
Posted on 28 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fareed Zakaria on Huntington's "Clash of Civilizations"
Tyler Cowen interviews Fareed Zakaria. Those who know Fareed Zakaria through his weekly column or CNN show may be surprised to learn he considers books the... Read more
Posted on 28 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ramble on ChatGPT; Chess, Language, & AI; and Harold Bloom (Great Lit Critics)
I’m stuck on three substantial projects. Two of them, ChatGPT and Great Literary Critics were supposed to be finished sometime in January. Both were mentioned i... Read more
Posted on 27 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Flowers Against Diverse Backgrounds
Posted on 27 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Further Impressions: Orgasm and Beyond
I'm bumping this to the head of the queue on general principle. This is from the first year of the blog (August 29, 2010). I'd completely forgotten about this.... Read more
Posted on 27 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dream Stars in Hoboken
Posted on 26 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
MacArthur Fellows, 1981-2018: Gender, Race and Educational Attainment
Kaba, A. J. (2020). MacArthur Fellows, 1981-2018: Gender, Race and Educational Attainment. Sociol- ogy Mind, 10, 86-126. https://doi.org/10.4236/sm.2020. Read more
Posted on 26 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dreaming Birds
Maria Popova, Do Birds Dream? NYTimes, March 26, 2024. A study of zebra finches — songbirds whose repertoire is learned, not hard-wired — mapped particular note... Read more
Posted on 26 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Back to Basics
Posted on 25 March 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY