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 ( 6388 )
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Hollis Robbins and Tyler Cowen on Uncle Tom's Cabin
Tyler Cowen interviews Hollis Robbins, who is a dean at Sonoma State University. (She also studied and worked with Dick Macksey at Johns Hopkins). She's an... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Marketplace is Primarily About Cooperation and Only Secondarily About...
Paul Rubin, The Capitalist Paradox: How Cooperation Enables Free Market Competition, Truth on the Market, 21 August 2019. The final point, and what ties it all... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mechanism
Posted on 27 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Into the Future: From Tyler Cowen Through Kim Stanley Robinson to Kisangani 2150
Once I’d finished Tyler Cowen’s The Great Stagnation I decided to take a look at his next book: Tyler Cowen. Average Is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fire in the Amazon, Climate Change, and the Limits of National Sovereignty
Quinta Jurecic, Who Owns the Amazon?, NYTimes, Aug. 27, 2019: The Amazon fires are a test case of sorts for how the climate crisis will strain the usefulness... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Views from the Table Top [Malibu Diner]
Posted on 26 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Who'd Have Thought, Consumer Culture is Killing Us. Time to Reset National and...
Tim Wu, The American Economy Is Creating a National Identity Crisis, NYTimes, Aug. 26, 2019: Since the 1980s, American economic policy has insisted on the... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coal in Asia
Asia digs up and burns three-quarters of the world’s coal. On “The Intelligence” @MSLJeconomist explains what might make the region kick its habit https://t. Read more
Posted on 26 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
World Literature–isn't That What Macksey Taught?
Spence Lee Lenfield, A World of Literature, Harvard Magazine, October 2019. Most scholars define themselves as specialists in one or two centuries of one or... Read more
Posted on 25 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Cold War Politics Forged to the Doctrine of Scientific Neutrality
Michael D. Gordon reviews Audra J. Wolfe, Freedom’s Laboratory: The Cold War Struggle for the Soul of Science, in the Boston Review, August 21, 2019. In her... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Return of Shaky Cam – Livin' for the Night
Posted on 24 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Geography and Psychology, Distance from the Equator
Evert Van de Vliert, Paul A. M. Van Lange. Latitudinal Psychology: An Ecological Perspective on Creativity, Aggression, Happiness, and Beyond. Perspectives on... Read more
Posted on 24 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: A Quick Sample of Things Seen and Flicked at Various Times and...
* * * * * From top to bottom: Ragweed in Liberty State Park, Jersey City, probably early morning Washington St. at 13th, Hoboken 11th Street Flower Garden,... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Communication is Difficult – "all the Lonely People, Where Do They All Come From...
Sabine Hosssenfelder, You will probably not understand this, Backreaction, 22 August 2019: I could tell you many stories of renown physicists who told me, or... Read more
Posted on 23 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Critique of Pure Learning and What Artificial Neural Networks Can Learn from...
"what is sometimes misleadingly called “artificial general intelligence”—is not general at all; it is highly constrained to match human capacities so tightly... Read more
Posted on 22 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cutting the Financial Sector Down to Size (it's in the Air)
Over at Crooked Timber John Quiggin posts: That’s the provisional title I used for my latest piece in Inside Story. Peter Browne, the editor, gave it the... Read more
Posted on 22 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Farhad Manjoo Sees Revolution on the Horizon, Around the Bend, and at the End...
Really? Here's his NYTimes column, "C.E.O.s Should Fear a Recession. It Could Mean Revolution." He's been reflecting on the recent announcement by the Business... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Synaptic Overload, Orthogonal Views Along the Galectic
Posted on 21 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This is Your Brain on Stories – "the Representation of Language Semantics is...
The #brain activity evoked from #reading or listening to a story is almost identical, according to research from @gallantlab at @UCBerkeleyNeuro published in... Read more
Posted on 21 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Those Were the Days, 51 Pacific, Fall 2012
Outside Up Top (w/ flare) (Bayonne in the distance) Inside, Work in Progress (reference material, yes, why not?) Deep Inside, contemplation ("she came in... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY