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 ( 6446 )
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Breakfast Elements
Posted on 07 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT Outlines a Sequel to Unfrosted [Media Notes 119 C]
When I’d posted my remarks on Seinfeld’s Unfrosted, I figured that was pretty much it. But I kept on thinking about it: Seinfeld’s a stone-cold comic genius,... Read more
Posted on 07 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Brancing out in Hoboken
Posted on 06 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jerry Seinfeld on Club Random with Bill Maher – Pop Tarts! [Media Notes 119 B]
From the YouTube page: Bill Maher and Jerry Seinfeld on the gift Bill gave Jerry, Jerry’s attention to detail, the car Jerry picked up Bill in for Comedians in... Read more
Posted on 06 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tulip Extravaganza
Posted on 05 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Evolution: A Review of Theoretical Challenges [& a Note on Language]
Nichols R, Charbonneau M, Chellappoo A, et al. Cultural evolution: A review of theoretical challenges. Evolutionary Human Sciences. 2024;6:e12.... Read more
Posted on 05 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A View from the Table
Posted on 05 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Intelligence, A.I. and Analogy: Jaws & Girard, Kumquats & MiGs, Double-entry...
Think of this post as an adjunct to my series on A.I., chess, and language, which is about the structure of computation in relation to difficult problems. Read more
Posted on 05 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Unfrosted: The Pop-Tarts Story [Media Notes 119]
Was it funny? Yes. Worth watching? I suppose. But it wasn’t the laugh-out-loud hilarity fest I was hoping for. It wasn’t Duck Soup for the 21st century. I like... Read more
Posted on 04 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Evidence of Predictive Coding Hierarchy in the Human Brain Listening to Speech
Charlotte Caucheteux, Alexandre Gramfort, Jean-Rémi King, Evidence of a predictive coding hierarchy in the human brain listening to speech, Nature Human... Read more
Posted on 04 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Self-medicating Orangutans, and Others
Douglas Main, Orangutan, Heal Thyself, NYTimes, May 2, 2024. Scientists observed a wild male orangutan repeatedly rubbing chewed-up leaves of a medicinal plant... Read more
Posted on 03 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Morning Commute [follow the Windsock]
Posted on 03 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Divestment is Futile, Shift the Debate & "turn the Encampments into Open Air...
The NYTimes has an article on protestor's demands that university endowments: Santul Nerkar, Rob Copeland and Maureen Farrell, Calls to Divest From Israel Put... Read more
Posted on 03 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why We Started to Fear Extinction
| John McWhorter Tyler Austin Harper | The Glenn Show Everyone has a theory about how the world will end, but how did the end of the world begin? Read more
Posted on 02 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A fFrench Toast Story
Posted on 02 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tyler Cowen Talks with Coleman Hughes [trombone Technique and the Nature of...
Coleman Hughes on Colorblindness, Jazz, and Identity (Ep. 211), May, 2024. The scope of the conversation: Coleman Hughes believes we should strive to ignore rac... Read more
Posted on 02 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
IP in the Content Biz: Squeezing the Writers [Media Notes 118]
Daniel Bessner has an interesting piece in the current Harper’s Magazine: The Life and Death of Hollywood. It covers both the movie and TV side of the business... Read more
Posted on 01 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Foggy Day in mid-April
Posted on 01 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
ChatGPT on the Ontology Trail: Elara, Z78-ß∆-9.06Q, and the Candied Kumquat
My first major insight into what’s going on inside ChatGPT came from a simple protocol: Give it a (simple) story along with an instruction to derive a new... Read more
Posted on 01 May 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two More Guerilla Libraries in Hoboken, NJ
This is a follow-up to my Saturday post on guerilla libraries. Here’s the Little Free Library located at 935 Bloomfield Ave. At that part of town Bloomfield is... Read more
Posted on 30 April 2024 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY