Bbenzon
Description
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 ( 7356 )
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Gamers, Breakers, and Lies [about the Violence of Jan 6]
From Timothy Snyder, "The American Abyss", NYTimes, Jan 9, 2021: In this sense, the responsibility for Trump’s push to overturn an election must be shared by a... Read more
Posted on 10 January 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Are Song Lyrics Becoming Simpler?
Interesting! We did a much simpler analysis (we just checked for the types/tokens ration - it was not our main point) but we did not find this effect.... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hey Kids! Let's Put on a Show! [The Day the Capitol Was Captured by Must-see TV]
Politics is always performative, but the nature of the performance has changed dramatically in just a few years. What we saw today was the sudden, violent... Read more
Posted on 07 January 2021 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ray Bradbury and the Emergence of Science Fiction in Mid-century America
Sam Weller and Dana Gioia discuss the impact of Ray Bradbury in the Los Angeles Review of Books.Weller: Is there any way to measure Ray’s impact on popular... Read more
Posted on 29 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
City Lights on the Sly, Round and Round [blue Sky Night]
Posted on 28 December 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What's up with GPT-3, Neural Nets, and Machine Learning?
This is a long rambling discussion, over three hours. But useful. Pro, con, down the middle, you name it. Dip in an out as you see fit. Connor Leahy, for... Read more
Posted on 25 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
City in the Distance
Posted on 24 December 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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DeepMind's MuZero
MuZero, which was first introduced in a preliminary paper in 2019, masters Go, chess, shogi and Atari without needing to be told the rules, thanks to its abilit... Read more
Posted on 24 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mapping Characters in the Gospels [digital Humanities]
These visualizations have been lying around on my hard drive for over 7 years, what better time than Christmas to share them? 🎅 They come from a 2013... Read more
Posted on 24 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seinfeld Likes the Marx Brothers [so Do I]
The NYTimes just ran a piece where Jerry Seinfeld talks about his current reading: “So the book that’s on my stand right now that I’m really, really enjoying... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Heron, Reflections, Shadings
Posted on 14 December 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Jerry Seinfield on His Career and Craft [Progress in Harnessing the Mind]
Skip the first 7:35; the host, Tim Ferriss, reads advertisements for his sponsors. The rest (except for another commercial interruption at about 30:50) is a... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Star Trek Deep Space Nine, Politics and Matter [Media Notes 52]
I’ve watched all of the Star Trek franchise except for the animated series and for the most recent ones: Discovery, Short Treks, Picard, and Lower Decks. Read more
Posted on 13 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The End of the Music Business [as We Know It]
Here's my interpretation of the reasons for the sudden flurry of sales of song publishing rights—and my predictions about how it will play out. It's not a prett... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To the Moon! Jacob Collier @3QD
Several times during my undergraduate years I had experienced something you might call “the true thought is the afterthought”: I would write a paper, turn it in... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Glenn Loury & James Heckman Discuss Parenting, Schooling, Race, and Inequality
As you may know, Glenn Loury is an economist at Brown. Heckman is a Nobel Laureate in economics at the University of Chicago. The first 19 minutes consists of... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Cultural Contrast Between Computer Science and the Humanities, and Why...
Smart analysis of the cultural contrast between CS and the humanities,—including a reason (drawn from experience) why undergrads with interests in both may get... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"My Favorite Things", from Broadway Hit to Jazz Classic [in a Revolutionary New...
This is an excellent video that follows "My Favorite Things" from its origins in a mid-century Broadway musical, The Sound of Music, to a hit album by John... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jacob Collier Working out an Arrangement of "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Star"
I've now turned this into a PDF file which you can download here: https://www.academia.edu/37815917/Mind-Culture_Coevolution_Major_Trans... In the early 1970s... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Medieval Depictons of the Moon
Early medieval intermediality: an enamel roundel depicting the Moon on a chariot, holding torches, made c. 870 in Southern France and the Moon from a... Read more
Posted on 01 December 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
