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
-
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 ( 6484 )
-
Advice from Thelonious Monk
Thelonious Monk’s 25 Tips for Musicians (1960)."What you don’t play can be more important than what you do play."https://t.co/0nTrdpeCx3 pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 24 April 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Importance of Description (in Science)
The extraordinary effort to successfully take a picture of a black hole is only the latest example of something too many social researchers fail to... Read more
Posted on 20 April 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Happens to the Human Body in Space?
Carl Zimmer, "Scott Kelly Spent a Year in Orbit. His Body Is Not Quite the Same." The NYtimes, April 11, 2019. Scott Kelly spent 340 days on the International... Read more
Posted on 12 April 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tyler Cowen is Not in Despair Over Brexit – "I Don’t Yet See That Anything Has...
I must have read two hundred tweets about how dysfunctional the British government is, or what a bad leader Teresa May has been. Really? That has yet to be... Read more
Posted on 30 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Randomness and Determinism in Dynamical Systems
This is kind of incredible. A proof that all dynamical systems (within a large class of such systems) are a blend of randomness and nearly pure determinism. My... Read more
Posted on 28 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Armstrong, Early Jazz and Barbershop Harmony
Steve Provizer reviews Vic Hobson, Creating the Jazz Solo: Louis Armstrong and Barbershop Harmony, University Press of Mississippi. Read more
Posted on 22 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Religion Evolves After Large-scale Societies Do
In @nature today, Harvey Whitehouse, @pieterwfrancois, @Peter_Turchin, 9 other coauthors and I analyze 414 societies across 10,000 years of world history to sho... Read more
Posted on 20 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Do We Know About the Possibility of Human Survival on a Mars Mission?...
Mohamed Kashkoush, Slow Down, Space X, The Scientist, Mar. 15, 2019. For starters, NASA does not know why or to what extent spaceflight increases the incidence... Read more
Posted on 18 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Zero
The invention of zero – how ancient Mesopotamia invented the mathematical concept of nought and ancient India gave it symbolic form https://t.co/tSNrG22yHM... Read more
Posted on 16 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Born to Groove
Music belongs to everybody, not just celebrities on stage (from https://t.co/WeGlGbnFbf). pic.twitter.com/MnAn9WbFqx — Ted Gioia (@tedgioia) March 15, Read more
Posted on 16 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Commerce Corrupting Graffiti and Street Art?
Christine MacDonald, Street Art Used To Be the Voice of the People. Now It’s the Voice of Advertisers. In These Times. March 11, 2019. Read more
Posted on 15 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Theory and Plato’s Mistake
This is an old post, from December 2012, but the subject's been on my mind recently, so I'm boosting it to the top of the queue. (3.11. Read more
Posted on 11 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Biography of Osamu Tezuka
Brad Hawley, The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Must-Read for Manga Fans, Fantasy Literature, March 9, 2019. A review of: The Osamu Tezuka Story: A Life in Manga and... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Turn-taking in Mouse Vocalization
Carl Zimmer, These Mice sing to One Another – Politely, NYTimes, Feb 28, 2019. It was once believed that monkeys and apes were not able to exert voluntary... Read more
Posted on 06 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Onna-Bugeisha: Japanese Women Warriors
Christobel Hastings, How Onna-Bugeisha, Feudal Japan's Women Samurai, Were Erased From History, Broadly, Sept. 24, 2018. Throughout history, most Japanese... Read more
Posted on 06 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Happens with the Cloud Cover Burns Off? [Temperature Goes WAY Up?]
Natalie Wolchover, A World Without Clouds, Quanta Magazine, February 25, 2019. Until quite recently the weather models used to predict the climate evolution wer... Read more
Posted on 02 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Forms Don't Die So Much as They Dimish and Decay
Oleg Sobchuk, The (slow) dying of cultural forms, Medium, Feb 26, 2019.The set-up:Several years ago, sipping coffee at the sunny campus of Stanford, J.D. Read more
Posted on 02 March 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Goodwill Runs the World's 2nd Largest MOOC
Brandon Busteed, Why Goodwill (Not Udacity, EdX Or Coursera) May Be The World's Biggest MOOC, Forbes, 26 Feb, 2019:In 2018, more than 31 million people took... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Moby Dick, the Oil Industry, and America
That’s right, Moby Dick, the 19th century novel by Herman Melville, one of the great novels. Of course we’re beyond it, it was published in 1851. Read more
Posted on 24 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Structural Inequality in the Wikimedia Universe
Jinhyuk Yun, Sang Hoon Lee Hawoong Jeong, Early onset of structural inequality in the formation of collaborative knowledge in all Wikimedia projects, Nature... Read more
Posted on 22 February 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY