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 ( 7640 )
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GPT-3 Meets “Kubla Khan” and the Results Are Interesting, but Not Encouraging fo...
I experimented a bit with GPT-3 and poetry in conjunction with my interview with Hollis Robbins. As you recall, she had written a book about the African-America... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Washington Street at Night [Hoboken]
Posted on 01 September 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Elon Musk Understands the Technical Challenges of Going to Mars, but He’s in...
For reasons I’m about to explain, I’m pretty sure about that. What I’m wondering is how Musk himself compares the two. He has declared publicly that he’s going... Read more
Posted on 01 September 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Will the Regulation of Big Tech Backfire
Cory Doctorow Twitter thread that starts here: I'm all for regulating Big Tech, but not all regulation is created equal. Some regulation can dampen the power... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Henry Rawlinson and the Reorganization Our Understanding of Historical Time
Ali Minai, Henry Rawlinson and the Transformation of History, 3 Quarks Daily, August 31, 2020. Rawlinson was a British civil servant who served in the Middle... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Distributed 'intelligence' of Fungi
Ashutosh Jogalekar, Life. Distributed. 3 Quarks Daily, August 31, 2020: ...perhaps the most interesting quality of fungi lies not in what we can see but what... Read more
Posted on 31 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jurassic Park [Media Notes 44]
I suppose I’ve seen Jurassic Park four times, once in theaters when it came out (I think) back in the 1990s and then two, three, times on the small screen,... Read more
Posted on 30 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Meet Jibo, Your Robot Companion
JIBO: The World's First Social Robot for the Home Meet Jibo, The World’s First Social Robot for the Home Friendly, helpful and intelligent. He can sense and... Read more
Posted on 30 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Wiring the Brain from the Inside [fantasies in Direct Brain-to-brain...
Move over, Elon Musk and Christof Koch, Rodolfo Llinás was first to enter the magical brain-to-brain communication sweepstakes. Read more
Posted on 29 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How to Build a State
That's the title of a useful article by Anton Howes appearing in Works in Progress, 28 August 2020. The opening paragraphs: It’s easy to imagine that government... Read more
Posted on 29 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fight to the Death
Posted on 28 August 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Friday Fotos: More SK8-boarding
Posted on 28 August 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Some Varieties of Culture and Identity [in the Shadow of the “West”]
I’ve been interested in cultural identity for a long time. I have written 60 (now 61) posts around and about it since April, 2010, when I posted about... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Complexity of Erectus Craftsmanship
Slide showing the complexity of an erectus tool. Planning, imagination, and almost certainly language required in crucial points (as with most hunter-gatherer... Read more
Posted on 28 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Barge Coming Down the Hudson [early Morning]
Posted on 27 August 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Comparison of Cultural and Biological Evolution
We discuss differences regarding the storage, acquisition, transmission, sorting and generation of traits, and possible implications especially for theoretical... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Frameworks for Identity [in America]
This is from my book on music, Beethoven’s Anvil: Music in Mind and Culture (2001), pp. 269-273. I’m working a new post on identity and this will be useful... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Does Islamic Inheritance Law Have to Do with Algebra?
Her question is very good, and the answer might surprise some of you: in Al-Khwarizmi’s classic book (often regarded as the first algebra textbook), the main... Read more
Posted on 27 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Multi-modal Transformer Architecture
"Spatially Aware Multimodal Transformers for TextVQA" poster #3236 on Aug. 27!Yash Kant (@yash2kant), Dhruv Batra (@DhruvBatraDB), Peter Anderson... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Great Stagnation, Another Voice Heard From, Jason Furman
Tyler Cowen interviews Jason Furman on a variety of things. On productivity: COWEN: If investment is important, does that make you an economic pessimist, given... Read more
Posted on 26 August 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
