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 ( 6433 )
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A Model of the Visual Cortex
The model is comprised of pairs of interacting excitatory inhibitory cells and, depending on the variant of the model in question, each pair has a different... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Anand Giridharadas on the New Feudalism
From YouTube: Are Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos the new feudal elite? Anand Giridharadas talks to INET President Rob Johnson about how the titans of Silicon... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Views of Christ Hospital [but You Have to Look Carefully, Because It's...
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is AI a Feature Or a Platform? [machine Learning, Artificial Neural Nets]
Why You Should Be Optimistic About the Future Andreessen: Is AI a feature or an architecture? He thinks it's the second. https://t. Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Palgrave Series on Cultural Evolution
Jamishid Tehrani edits an interesting series of articles on cultural evolution for Palgrave Communications: Cultural evolution describes how socially learned... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Squatter's Rights [The Hallucinated City]
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Now There's Clickbait for You
What’s the best pizza you’ve ever had? — Far Wide (@FarandWidecom) August 22, 2019 Thats one of those clickbait sites where they post a provocative title on... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Does Deep Learning Work?
Mathematicians have been searching, but the answer lies in physics. https://t.co/orECJbVWVO — MIT Technology Review (@techreview) December 13, 2019 As I... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Governance Breaking Down World-wide?
Martin "Fifth Wave" Gurri is at it again.* His topic this time: 2019: The year revolt went global. So: Politics in the digital age revolve around information. Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stations of [my] Mind in 3QD
My latest at 3 Quarks Daily: Stations of the mind: Om to Eureka and beyond. Back in the 1960s, I suppose, someone coined the term “altered states of... Read more
Posted on 12 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Greta Thunberg, Time Person of the Year
In Greta's case, her relentless reiteration of the facts of #climate change, and the importance of science, has made her a focus of incandescent hatred by the... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
William Robert Fogel on the Future of America [#Progress]
Back in 2000 William Robert Fogel, the great economic historian, published The Fourth Great Awakening and the Future of Egalitarianism. Read more
Posted on 11 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Once Again, What's up with All the Tags/labels?
I'd posted on that topic back on November 7, 2017. I don't know how many tags I had then, but I did a count on December 30, 2016 and there were 481 then. Now, i... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
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