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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Tremors [Media Notes 35]
I saw the film on TV years ago and have been looking for it ever since. It’s now on Netflix. It’s as (weirdly) good as I remember. Not GREAT I suppose, but... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Space Travel and American Myth – "Whitey on the Moon”
Marina Koren, The False Hope of an American Rocket Launch, The Atlantic, June 3, 2020 Over the weekend, SpaceX flew two astronauts to the International Space... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Physicists Are Still Lost in Math
What's up in the foundations of physics? As some of you may know, Sabine Hossenfelder published Lost in Math in which she argued that the foundations of... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Space Force, WTF?! [Media Notes 34]
To paraphrase a cliché about Los Angeles, Space Force is a bunch of gags and other incidents in search of a story. Here’s how Wikipedia introduces it: Space... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Josephine Baker Born on 3 June 1906
The amazing Josephine Baker was BOTD in 1906. For her courageous efforts against Nazi fascism she earned the rank of lieutenant in the Free French Air Force. Read more
Posted on 03 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Collective Effervescence – Bonding, Loud Music, Party Girls, and the Club...
Tyler Cowen interviews Ashley Mears, a former fashion model turned academic sociologist, author of Very Important People: Status and Beauty in the Global Party... Read more
Posted on 03 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Irises
Posted on 03 June 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Showdown at the AI Corral, Or: What Kinds of Mental Structures Are...
There’s a big conversation going on in the AI world these days about appropriate architectures: Can new-style machine-learning/neural-net methods take us all th... Read more
Posted on 03 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How SpaceX Lands Those Boosters [REMARKABLE!]
I've seen videos, but I still don't believe it, NOT! Is this is as remarkable as anything AI has so far accomplished? I'd like to think so but, truth be told,... Read more
Posted on 02 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Did Buddy Bolden Die from Pellagra?
Previously unpublished research on Buddy Bolden, the earliest known jazz musician, offers a persuasive new theory on his mental illness and institutionalization... Read more
Posted on 01 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Artificial Turf, Plastic Grass
Posted on 01 June 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Science in Science Fiction 1: The Stargate World [Media Notes 33]
It’s an issue I think about from time to time, the science in science fiction. What’s it doing there? Think of Clarke’s (in)famous Third Law: Any sufficiently... Read more
Posted on 01 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bird Speech – a Five-minute Radio Interviw with Charlie Parker
The Leigh Kamman Legacy Project Leigh interviewed Charlie Parker when he was working at WOV in New York City in 1954. Bird talks about new young jazz musicians... Read more
Posted on 01 June 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Posts That I Like – Yet Another Guide to What’s Here at New Savanna...
I’ve started hanging out at the Progress Studies Slack where, in association with the NASA/SpaceX launch, I posted a link to a post that gave some of my... Read more
Posted on 31 May 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Roger Ebert on "2001: A Space Odyssey"
A review from 1997: I attended the Los Angeles premiere of the film, in 1968, at the Pantages Theater. It is impossible to describe the anticipation in the... Read more
Posted on 30 May 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Are Farmers Destroying Crops and Dumping Milk When Supermarket Shelves Are...
Michael Pollan, The Sickness in Our Food Supply, The New York Review of Books, June 11, 2020. The juxtaposition of images in the news of farmers destroying crop... Read more
Posted on 30 May 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"The Real Folk Blues" Benefit for COVID-19
Funimation Anime gives back! In collaboration with Sunrise and Mason Lieberman, we are thrilled to share this star-studded tribute to the gorgeous music of... Read more
Posted on 30 May 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Classification of Songs in Disney Feature Animated Films
nobody:me: in the history of disney animated movies there have been exactly 18 types of songs, and i'm going to tell you about each of them — Justin McElroy... Read more
Posted on 29 May 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cumulative Cultural Learning Among Children
Reindl, E., Gwilliams, A.L., Dean, L.G. et al. Skills and motivations underlying children’s cumulative cultural learning: case not closed. Palgrave Commun 6, 10... Read more
Posted on 29 May 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the Law Blind, Or Biased? Special Prosecutors Edition: the Cases of Clinton...
Starting at roughly 32:50 we have a fascinating discussion involving matters of law, character, personal judgement, and politics. The arena is that of... Read more
Posted on 28 May 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
