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 ( 6413 )
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Computation in Language 3: Myths, Stories, and Writing
I’ve been arguing that speech communication, in effect, is a computational input/output device for symbols. Its computational power is necessarily quite limited... Read more
Posted on 11 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Perpetual Church Service to Protect 5 Immigrants from the Dutch Police
Patrick Kingsley, The New York Times, 12.10.18: Under an obscure Dutch law, the police may not disrupt a church service to make an arrest. Read more
Posted on 10 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Was Post-war Anti-communism Ginned up as a Device to Support "We're Number One"...
FP=foreign policy. ... partially as a means to justify primacy, and this culture, in turn, helped shape the ideology of generations of Americans. — Daniel... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Israel Kamakawiwo'ole on 3 Quarks Daily, Plus More IZ
A new piece up at 3QD: Wonderful Rainbow Aesthetics: The Song of Israel Kamakawiwo'ole. Here’s some more IZ: Here he is in a Hawaiian nationalist mode, “Hawaii... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jubilee! Bronze Age Economics (perhaps We Should Give It a Go, No?)
Michael Hudson, "How Bronze Age Rulers Simply Canceled Debts", Evonomics: ... the Bronze Age and early Western civilization was shaped so differently from what... Read more
Posted on 10 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Versions of Weeds
Posted on 08 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Angels Hide and Entrepreneurs Seek [TALENT SERCH]
Merwan H. Engineer, Paul Schure, Dan H. Vo, Hide and seek search: Why angels hide and entrepreneurs seek, Journal of Economic Behavior Organization,... Read more
Posted on 08 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Seven for My Birthday (one Per Decade)
I've decided to re-render some photos from 2006. This was an important photo for me. I liked the composition and the energy, but it as marked by motion blur.... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computation in Language, Turing Machine Edition
Continuing on.... So, I’m exploring the idea that language is the simplest thing humans do that involves computation. Thus, in my current view, whatever it is... Read more
Posted on 07 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Four Ways of Managing a Rock and Roll Band
Ian Leslie, A rocker’s guide to management, The Economist, December/January 2019. An interesting article. In part because: If rock groups are businesses,... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sequence Detection in the Cerebellum as a Driver in the Rise of Homo Sapiens
Larry Vandervert, How Prediction Based on Sequence Detection in the Cerebellum Led to the Origins of Stone Tools, Language, and Culture and, Thereby, to the Ris... Read more
Posted on 06 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Note on the Measurement of Socio-cultural Complexity and Rankshift
There is a sophisticated literature on the measurement of socio-cultural complexity that dates mostly to the third quarter of the previous century. Raoul... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computation in Language
For some time now I’ve been pursuing the idea that language is the basic locus of computation in the human mind and, correlatively, that it is grounded in... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Could Mainland China Force Itself on Taiwan Through Military Power? Perhaps Not.
Tanner Greer, Taiwan Can Win a War With China, Foreign Policy, September 25, 2018: China has already ratcheted up economic and diplomatic pressure on the... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Notes Toward a Theory of the Corpus, Part 2: Mind [#DH]
Way back at the end of September I posted the first of a two, possibly three, post series: Notes toward a theory of the corpus, Part 1: History. Read more
Posted on 03 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Before the World of Macro Objects There Was What? Quantum Chaos? [Tweet of the...
Yes, I agree with that. When an irreversible 'event' occurs and a wave that is spread out, it only shows up once in one place. Read more
Posted on 03 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Psycho-cultural Distance as Indicated by a Newly Calculated Measure
This graph, for example, shows how the various populations score in relation to the United States and to China. X-axis=distance from U.S. Read more
Posted on 02 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Strange Illumination
Posted on 02 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Vector Semantics, You Know: King - Man + Woman = Queen...
From MIT Technology Review, 2015: The easiest way to think about words and how they can be added and subtracted like vectors is with an example. The most... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
We Came, We Saw, We Conquered. [Tweet of the Day]
In six words or fewer, write a story about this photo... #amwriting #amreading #sixwordstory pic.twitter.com/GGikOoJLwR — Lacey London (@thelaceylondon) Novembe... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY