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 ( 7846 )
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A Park in Maplewood, New Jersey
Posted on 14 February 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Literature as Affective Technology
I was hanging out in the Twitterverse last week and became drawn into a discussion, as sometimes happens. The discussion was about computers and narrative... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Miles, Cannonball, Trane
Miles Davis ,Julian Edwin "Cannonball" Adderley and John Coltrane #jazz#jazzgiants #trumpet #altosax #tenorsax pic.twitter.com/oHxJSrgdjx—... Read more
Posted on 13 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Of Factish Gods and Modes of Existence
Angus Fletcher's odd argumentation on computers and reading (see my recent post, Can computers do narrative?) has gotten me thinking about Latour's notion of... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Iris Variations in a Narrow Range
Posted on 12 February 2022
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Quint and Ahab, Jaws and Moby Dick – Getting ‘religious’
I have decided to revise my Jaws essay for republication in 3 Quarks Daily. As I won’t be publishing it for two more weeks or so, the rewrite isn’t urgent.... Read more
Posted on 12 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can Computers Do Narrative?
The question has been debated in three recent articles in Narrative: Angus Fletcher, Why Computers Will Never Read (or Write) Literature: A Logical Proof and a... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
God, the Devil, and Evolution in the 1975 Jaws Trailer
Here’s the opening voice-over on the trailer: There is a creature alive today, who has survived millions of years of evolution, without change, without... Read more
Posted on 10 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music as a Domain of Cumulative Cultural Evolution
🎶🤔🐋 We bring together perspectives from philosophy, musicology and biology. @_SMRU_ @CentreBioDiv @RCStweets @SchoolofBiology... Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Crisis in Shark City: A Girardian Reading of Steven Spielberg’s Jaws
Though I am hardly a Girardian, I recently found myself exploring Girardian themes, mimetic crisis and sacrifice, in Steven Spielberg’s 1975 Jaws [1]. Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Classical Music Goes to the Movies: John Williams at 90
Javier C. Hernández, John Williams, Hollywood’s Maestro, Looks Beyond the Movies, NYTimes, Feb. 8, 2022. The pandemic gave him relief from film composing,... Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Debate on Whether Or Not the Brain is a Computer is "just a Semantic...
1/ A new paper on the “brain-computer metaphor debate” by myself and Tim Lillicrap is now out in Frontiers in Computer Science:https://t. Read more
Posted on 09 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Representational Transformations Linked to Adaptive Behavior
Lab’s latest at Nature Communications: "Constructing neural network models from brain data reveals representational transformations linked to adaptive behavior"... Read more
Posted on 05 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Skeptical Review of Chalmers’ Reality+
David Bentley Hart, Reality Minus, The New Atlantis, February 4, 2022. Hart’s central move: But the real problem is that the book breaks down into two broad... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Quick Reaction: David Chalmers Talks About His New Book, Reality+
Here’s an online talk Chalmers gave for the NYC Media Lab. 1. I believe Chalmers made his name for posing the so-called hard problem of consciousness. Read more
Posted on 02 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Top Films and Top Directors Assigned in Colleges and Universities
The top of the top 1200 movies assigned in colleges and universities. https://t.co/AJEH2Gkpng pic.twitter.com/mQ8QTbPBOV— Open Syllabus (@opensyllabus)... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
NCIS New Orleans, a Quick Note on the Configuration [Media Notes 66]
NCIS: New Orleans is a spinoff from NCIS. As its name indicates, it’s set in New Orleans whereas NCIS is set in Washington, N.C. This post is about the... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Intimate Enemies: What’s Opera, Doc?
Since I've recently been discussing the fate of classical music (see this post, and this one too) I've decided to jump this post from March of 2012 to the top o... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
I Discuss the Decline of Classical Music @ 3QD
I've got a new post at 3 Quarks Daily: Roll over Beethoven: Where’d classical music go? Classical music is still with us, of course, but it no longer has the... Read more
Posted on 01 February 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neuroscience and Control Theory
I am really digging this mashup of network neuroscience and control theory https://t.co/d60Ly8cizC— Patrick Mineault (@patrickmineault) January 30, 2022 Here's ... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2022 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
