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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Boston Legal: Denny Crane, the Self, and Sex [Media Notes 9]
I’m rethinking some earlier remarks on Boston Legal (Boston Legal, tricky loyalties [Media Notes 6]). While I don’t think that, in general, the show is much... Read more
Posted on 12 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Fast Do We Read?
Marc Brysbaert, How many words do we read per minute? A review and meta-analysis of reading rate, Journal of Memory and Language, Volume 109, December 2019,... Read more
Posted on 12 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Documentary About Rahsaan Roland Kirk: The Case of the Three Sided Dream
Michael J. Agovino interviews Adam Kahan, who made it, in Esquire): Kirk was really distinctive, in his approach and his sound, but perhaps he was closest in... Read more
Posted on 11 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What's up with Elites in This Emerging World We're In?
Arnold Kling, at his blog, askblog, talking about, and with, Martin "Fifth Wave" Gurri: 1. As I see it, Martin’s view is that the relationship between the... Read more
Posted on 10 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fairy Tales Are Old
When it comes to the origin of Western fairy tales, the 19th century Brothers Grimm get a lot of the credit. But a new study, which treats these fables like an... Read more
Posted on 10 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chess and History 2
Continuing on (from What about chess? What does it tell us about history? [path dependence]) I note that chess has been of interest to cognitive scientists... Read more
Posted on 10 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Variations on Weeds and Sun
Posted on 09 August 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Kids on Consciousness and Mind
Over at Edge David Chalmers is holding forth on consciousness. I believe he's the one responsible for foisting the notion of a "hard problem" of consciousness o... Read more
Posted on 09 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Game Theory
Posted on 08 August 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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What About Chess? What Does It Tell Us About History? [path Dependence]
The late John McCarthy is said to have remarked once that if geneticists treated drosophila like AI researchers have treated chess, we’d have a lot of very... Read more
Posted on 08 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Night Shift
Posted on 07 August 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Matrix of Abstract Thought
The following paragraphs are from section 4.3 “The child is father to the man” in “The Evolution of Cognition” [1]: In general we assume that the growth of... Read more
Posted on 07 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira [Coordinator]
Downey, G. (2008). Scaffolding Imitation in Capoeira: Physical Education and Enculturation in an Afro-Brazilian Art. American Anthropologist, 110(2), 204–213.... Read more
Posted on 07 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
New Perspectives on Spontaneous Brain Activity: Dynamic Networks and Energy...
Arturo Tozzi1, Marzieh Zare, and April A. Benasich, New Perspectives on Spontaneous Brain Activity: Dynamic Networks and Energy Matter, Front. Hum. Neurosci., 2... Read more
Posted on 07 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Weight-Agnostic Neural Networks
Weight Agnostic Neural Networks 🦎 Inspired by precocial species in biology, we set out to search for neural net architectures that can already (sort... Read more
Posted on 06 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
China in Africa
Adam Swerer, "The Most Dangerous American Idea", The Atlantic, Aug. 5, 2019. The article's lede: "No belief in the history of the United States has been more... Read more
Posted on 06 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Godzilla Movies [Media Notes 8]
I’ve just watched two American Godzilla films: Godzilla (1998, #23 in the franchise), and Godzilla (2014, #30). In terms of special effects and general... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sign Language Emerging on the Fly in Hong Kong Protests
Language development - in this case sign language - happens in real time, as the need arises. To ensure needed supplies reach them quickly, Hong Kong’s... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Design of Design [How Abstract is That?]
Turing and von Neumann both completely understood that the interesting place in computation is how computation becomes physical, how it becomes embodied and... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Boston Legal: Shatner, Mode, Continuity [Media Notes 7]
Shatner I always thought that William Shatner was a bit wooden and clunky in Star Trek, but I really like him in Boston Legal, where he plays Denny Crane, one o... Read more
Posted on 04 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
