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 ( 6524 )
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The Imitation Game, a Trolley Problem [Media Notes 71]
Watched The Imitation Game (2014), which is about Alan Turing. The title has a double reference, of course. It refers both to the game that a homosexual had to... Read more
Posted on 22 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
You Didn't Think I'd Run out of Forsythia, Did You?
Posted on 21 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tell Me About the Blues: Count Basie, Duke Ellington
Now that we’ve seen some very different kinds of blues in jazz idioms – more or less traditional and more modern – let’s look at blues in Swing Era big band... Read more
Posted on 21 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lillian Friedman Astor – First Woman Animator in a Major American Studio [Nina...
Here are her offer letters from Fleischer from 1933. pic.twitter.com/uUTWcSSPr0— Aaron Astor (@AstorAaron) April 20, 2022 And here's a sample of her work: "Bett... Read more
Posted on 21 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Beyond Cortico-centric Accounts of the Brain
2) Hopefully it will help eliminate the misplaced idea of "linear" brain evolution (Fig 2): pic.twitter.com/erb6IedfuH— Luiz Pessoa (@PessoaBrain) April 19, 202... Read more
Posted on 20 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Apocalypse, Now – If Not, When? [Ramblin’]
I’ve just run-up a post in which some denizens of Silicon Valley lose sleep worrying that the AI Apocalypse is advancing on us. And it is doing so through... Read more
Posted on 20 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Syntax and the Free-energy Principle
We use Turing–Chomsky Compression to align concerns of linguists with the normative account of self-organization furnished by the FEP, by marshalling evidence... Read more
Posted on 19 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Vision of the End [innocent Screams]
Posted on 19 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the World Coming to an End in 2033? That’s What the (AI) Crowd Says.
Not by nuclear fire, or an asteroid collision, or maybe another pandemic caused by a really deadly organism, but by a rogue AI. There are, however, some people... Read more
Posted on 19 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tell Me About the Blues: Did They Originate in New Orleans?
In a recent post Ted Gioia considers the possibility that the blues originated in New Orleans. After considerable discussion: All this is significant and... Read more
Posted on 18 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Cascade of Cherry Blossoms
Posted on 18 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tell Me About the Blues: All Blues, Footprints, Simone
Now that we’ve listened to a bit of Bessie Smith, Louis Armstrong, and Reds Allen, it would seem logical to move ahead in time, just a bit. That is, to take a... Read more
Posted on 17 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Have We Reached a Tipping Point? Which One? [AI, GPT-3]
Steven Johnson has an interesting article in The New York Times Magazine: A.I. Is Mastering Language. Should We Trust What It Says? (April 15, 2022). He starts... Read more
Posted on 16 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Learning Tunes – "they're All Kinda the Same"
Ron Carter says something like, "Tell me the key and the first chord of the bridge and I've got it." He has that confidence because the tunes are all kinda the... Read more
Posted on 16 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Forsythia in Make-up [YOWL!!]
Posted on 16 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Thoughts About Artificial Intelligence: Blossoming, Simulation, Embodiment...
First, I talk about the human metaphor at the heart of AI: How do we get beyond it, around it? Then I talk about the difference between a real phenomenon and a... Read more
Posted on 16 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Keepin' It Real at Mickey D's [the Hallucinated City]
Posted on 16 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI's Protein-folding Revolution [Better Than AGI. Why? Because It's Real.]
Ewen Callaway, What's next for AlphaFold and the AI protein-folding revolution, Nature 604, 13 April 2022, 234-238, doi: https://doi.org/10. Read more
Posted on 16 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hipster and Monk at Nica's
Allen Ginsberg and Thelonious Monk at Barroness Pannonica de Koenigswarter's apartment, New York City, 1961. pic.twitter.com/Q4FZtCCpLi— The Music Board... Read more
Posted on 16 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: A Festival of Cherry Blossoms
Posted on 15 April 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY