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 ( 6429 )
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Robo Pets for the Elderly [in a Time of Pandemic]
Paula Span, In Isolating Times, Can Robo-Pets Provide Comfort? NYTimes, Sept 26, 2020. “She’s more isolated in her room now,” Dr. Spangler said. “And she... Read more
Posted on 26 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Phases of the Moon [Photoshop]
Posted on 26 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Business Management from the School of Rock
The Beatles split up after a mere seven years at the top, while the Rolling Stones are still going. One startup flashed brightly and burned out; the other... Read more
Posted on 26 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ripples, Ducks, a Mast, Buildings
Posted on 25 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gwern on the Implications of GPT-3 ["no Coherent Model of Why GPT-3 Was...
I'm not a regular follower of Gwern, though I did check out what he has to say about GPT-3 and poetry, so I only just now noticed this statement: ... Read more
Posted on 25 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can the Study of Cultural Evolution Be Successfully Assimilated to a Framework...
New pre-print out now: Review and discussion of differences between cultural and biological evolution that are underrepresented in existing literature. Read more
Posted on 25 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Electric Empire [shaky-cam]
Posted on 25 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
TikTok and the Problems of Social Media in a Global Information Economy
John Herrman, What Happens When Americans Join the Global Internet, NYTimes, Sept. 22, 2020. In contrast to mounting political criticisms of, say, Facebook and... Read more
Posted on 24 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Prodigal Tech-bro in Search of Redemption
Maria Farrell, The Prodigal Techbro, The Conversationalist, march 5, 2020: This could almost be a response to The Social Dilemma, and maybe it is, though it... Read more
Posted on 24 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can You Spot the Empire State Building? (It's Small, but Easy to Find.)
Posted on 24 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Toothlessness of Wokism
Arnold Kling, The movie Stay Woke, Sept. 23, 2020. Our synagogue had a virtual showing of the movie Stay Woke, a documentary made in 2016 about the Black Lives... Read more
Posted on 23 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
American Spends More on Fossil Fuels Than on Defense
Tim Dickinson, Study: U.S. Fossil Fuel Subsidies Exceed Pentagon Spending, Rolling Stone, May 8, 2019. The United States has spent more subsidizing fossil... Read more
Posted on 23 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Golded Hogwash on Corporate Responsibility
I was skeptical. I didn’t think voluntary virtue would save us. I figured the plutes would just plute. pic.twitter.com/cs3W94pObs — Anand Giridharadas... Read more
Posted on 23 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Lampshades and a Mirror, a Study in Variation
Posted on 23 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Are the Chances That Facebook Will Pull out of Europe?
Alex Hern, Facebook says it may quit Europe over ban on sharing data with US, The Guardian, Sept 22, 2020. Facebook has warned that it may pull out of Europe... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why, in the Course of an Intellectual Life, Can It Take Years to See the Obvious?
I’m thinking of my own intellectual life, of course. And I have two examples in mind, 1) my realization that literary form was at the center of my interest in... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why We Have Four Limbs and Five Digits on Each
20 years ago I published research on why animals have as many limbs and digits as they do. I posited a Limb Law governing # limbs and limb length across a wide... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some of the Locals Know This Area as Narnia [graffiti]
Posted on 21 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Measuring Culture Worldwide with a Sample of Two Billion Humans Using Data from...
Nick Obradovich, Ömer Özak, Ignacio Martín, et al., Expanding the Measurement of Culture with a Sample of Two Billion Humans, NBER Working Paper No. 27827,... Read more
Posted on 21 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hardware Path Dependence and the Future of AI
Sara Hooker, The Hardware Lottery, arXiv:2009.06489v1 [cs.CY] 14 Sep 2020 Abstract: Hardware, systems and algorithms research communities have historically had... Read more
Posted on 20 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY