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 ( 6400 )
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Current AI Speech Understanding Systems Are Brittle
Mark Liberman at Language Log: Following up "Shelties On Alki Story Forest" (11/26/2019) and "The right boot of the warner of the baron" (12/6/2019), here's som... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Those Were the Days, My Friend [Erie-Lawkawana]
Posted on 11 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Crown and The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel [Media Notes 25]
I finished watching season three of The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel over the weekend and season three of The Crown yesterday. I love both shows, and I want to... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Chinese Were Printing with Moveable Type Three Cenbturies Before Gutenberg
The book is The Auspicious Tantra of All-Reaching Union 吉祥遍至口和本續 [shown in Tangut script below]. Read more
Posted on 10 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Algorithmic Bias and Disinformation
Right, and we should definitely find out! But, you know, we also don't really know how fair grading is, and we're already 100% sure college admissions, the... Read more
Posted on 09 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Informal Remarks on Jockers’ 3300 Node Graph: Part 2, Structure and...
My previous note was about time and evolution. This one is about mechanism. And like the previous note, it is also about intuition – though I didn’t frame that... Read more
Posted on 09 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Small Motor Launch and a Small Schooner Tied up at a Dock in Hoboken in the...
Posted on 09 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading the Human Swarm 7: The Book So Far – Nine Things That Are Important
Frankly, I’d hoped to have a full review written by this time, or was that a month ago? But...things...you know. I’ve got a lot on my plate, on the one hand,... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Women's Rights in Yiddish Theatre
Terry Gross interviews pianist, conductor and composer Michael Tilson Thomas. The interview is interesting in various ways – getting advice from Leonard... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Path, Between Hoboken & Jersey City
Posted on 08 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Women Read Fiction: Is It a Women's Domain?
Johanna Thomas-Corr reviews Helen Taylor, Why Women Read Fiction: The Stories of Our Lives, in The Guardian, Sat 7 Dec 2019 . Damian Barr, author and founder... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gullibility and the Willing Suspension of Disbelief [#DH #AI]
Come to think of, moreover, perhaps our gullibility in the face of these very clever machines is one reason visions of AI superintelligence keep dancing in (at... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Varieties of Enlightenment
Posted on 07 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Border Crossings: Om, Eureka, and Beyond [Oh, I Turn 72]
Robert Wright has an interesting discussion about the various kinds of mystical experience with Jay Michaelson. I read quite a bit about mystical experience in... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
People Reason About Probabilities in a All-of-nothing (digital) Manner
Johnson, S. G. B., Merchant, T., Keil, F. C. (2019). Belief digitization: Do we treat uncertainty as probabilities or as bits? Journal of Experimental... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A SK8 Park for Jersey City: How I Wrote a Report as an Investment in the Future
What I was doing when, 12 years ago I, wrote a report, Jersey City: from a Skate Park to the World, showed it to a number of people, including my councilman,... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tools Used in Digital Humanities Research [#DH]
"Which #DigitalHumanities Tools Are Actually Used in Research?" – We got some answers: https://t.co/5Z0PSmFWhe pic.twitter.com/4lak98Wsdg — Frank Fischer... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: City Lights [The Hallucinated City]
Posted on 06 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Informal Remarks on Jockers’ 3300 Node Graph: Part 1, “a Generic Time Trend...
For some time I’ve thought my intellectual mission was to examine “stuff” that has been developed through largely discursive and informal methods and bring it t... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hadar Aviram on Turley's Testimony Before the Judiciary Committee
[This is risible. The reason we are "mad" is precisely BECAUSE we have *overwhelming* evidence that Trump has sold out national security and the safety of our... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY