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 ( 7356 )
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Facebook Announces New 'values'
Evelyn Douek, Why Facebook’s 'Values' Update Matters, Lawfare, Sept. 16, 2019: Mark Zuckerberg, Facebook’s founder and CEO, has released periodic “manifestos” i... Read more
Posted on 19 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rote Learning, an Extreme Example
William Langewiesche has a long article in the NYTimes Magazine about the malfunctions in the Boeing 737. It contains an example of rote learning that I'm... Read more
Posted on 18 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Non-state Actors and the Implications of the Recent Attack on Saudi Oil...
Tyler Rogoway, The Strike On Saudi Oil Facilities Was Unprecedented And It Underscores Far Greater Issues, The Drive, Sept. 19, 2019: That brings us to my next... Read more
Posted on 18 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Segmenting the Language Stream [words Are Tricky]
It is sometimes useful to reflect of the fact that, aurally, the speech stream is continuous, not segmented. The segmentation is something we impose on the... Read more
Posted on 18 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Climate Change is Urgent, but It is a Mistake to Us War-fighting Rhetoric to Urg...
Roy Scranton, Climate Change Is Not World War, NYTimes, Sept. 18, 2019. When Representative Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez of New York and Senator Edward Markey of... Read more
Posted on 18 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Emergent Ventures Has an Unconference
Tyler Cowen's Emergent Ventures recently had an Unconference to celebrate its one-year anni versary. Craig Palsson attended and then went immediately to a... Read more
Posted on 17 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How the Current Situation in Hong Kong Came About
Richard C. Bush, How Hong Kong Got to This Point, Lawfare, September 17, 2019. An Imperfect, But Workable, Hybrid To understand the current situation, it’s... Read more
Posted on 17 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Japan × 5
"Five Japans" from 1936 is another masterpiece by one of the greatest cartographers of the 20th century, Richard Edes Harrison. Source: https://t.co/EFKzmF94OA... Read more
Posted on 17 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Houston, We Have a Problem – Reproducibility in Neural Net Research
Gregory Barber, Artificial Intelligence Confronts a 'Reproducibility' Crisis, Wired, 9.16.19: When Facebook attempted to replicate AlphaGo, the system... Read more
Posted on 17 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Does Evolution Have to Teach Us About Shakespeare’s Reputation? [founder...
For some decades now I’ve been a bit puzzled by Shakespeare’s status. I don’t doubt that he’s good, but THAT good? Really? I mean, apparently he’s so good that... Read more
Posted on 16 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Let's Eat
Posted on 16 September 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Sabine Hosenfelder Debunks "tech-bro Monotheism"
Sabine Hossenfelder, Mind the Gap Between Science and Religion, Nautilus, Sept. 16, 2019. Have you heard that we may be living in a computer simulation? Read more
Posted on 16 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Music Works, Hiromi Edition
Do you want to know how music works? Watch this clip of Hiromi Uehara taking a piano lesson. Here's some quick and crude observations from an email I just sent... Read more
Posted on 16 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What the Electoral College Hath Wrought, 4 "inversions" 1839-2016
In U.S. Presidential races, the popular-vote winner will lose 40% of elections decided by 2 million votes or less. Electoral College "inversions" have been... Read more
Posted on 16 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Soaring Brass [Mnozil Rocks Out] and Dignified Kids [Nakagurose Elementary...
I love these guys, and I love this particular clip, crude, rude, loud, and bombastic though it is. And funny too. But I particularly like the passage that start... Read more
Posted on 15 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Way to Peace is for American to Give up the Role of Global Bully
Stephen Wertheim, The Only Way to End ‘Endless War’, NYTimes, Sept. 14, 2019: Promises, promises: Four years ago, President Barack Obama denounced “the idea of... Read more
Posted on 15 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s Foreign About SF from Another Culture? Is SF Inherently Cosmopolitan?...
I’m an American so by another culture I mean, well... I wouldn’t consider Adam Roberts foreign, though he’s British. I know there are some (relatively minor)... Read more
Posted on 14 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Ultra-nationalism Can Distort Your View of the World [China]
Language Log has an interesting post that contains most of a recent article from The Taiwan News (8.31.2019): "World Civilization Research Association" Read more
Posted on 14 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Used to Be Offensively Called the "Third World" Now Produces More Total...
What used to be offensively called the "Third World" (Africa/Asia/Latin America) now produces more total GDP than the "First World" (Western Europe/ US/... Read more
Posted on 13 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Direction of Neural Flow While Recalling Music is the Reverse of the Neural...
Yue Ding, Yang Zhang, Wenjing Zhou, Zhipei Ling, Juan Huang, Bo Hong and Xiaoqin Wang, Neural Correlates of Music Listening and Recall in the Human Brain,... Read more
Posted on 13 September 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
