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 ( 7846 )
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Photos from Twitter 4
It's been one hell of a decade! The places I've been...the things I've seen. I have stories.... Image #1 Snow Geese Blasting Off, Pocosin Lakes NWR, NC, USA,... Read more
Posted on 04 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lost in Space – A Short Note About a Crucial Distinction [Media Notes 29]
I’m now nine episodes (out of ten) into a rewatch of the first season of the 2018 remake of Lost in Space. One distinction that various characters have to make... Read more
Posted on 03 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading the Human Swarm 9: What About the Brain?
There is at least one place where Moffett mentions the brain, in the beginning of Chapter 12, “Sensing Others”, where he mentions the work of Uri Hasson, a... Read more
Posted on 03 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Signs of the Hallucinated City 2
Posted on 03 January 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Does Biological Evolution Operate on Algorithmic Complexity?
Jordana Cepelewicz, Mathematical Simplicity May Drive Evolution’s Speed, Quanta Magazine, November 28, 2019. By way of analogy, consider those infamous... Read more
Posted on 03 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Deep Learning Tools and Architectures
The figure above is an (old) slide I usually show in lectures and talks. Mix and matching those components creates cool architectures such as the one used in... Read more
Posted on 02 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
E. Glen Weyl and Tyler Cowen on the Future
Tyler Cowen, What libertarianism has become and will become — State Capacity Libertarianism, Marginal Revolution, January 1, 2019. Read more
Posted on 02 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Kind of Things Exist in the Biological World?
Lynn Chiu, New Series: blogging about Biological Individuality! Medium, Dec. 31, 2019. Those promoting process biology (e.g. John Dupré), dialectical biology... Read more
Posted on 02 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
First Shots of the New Year: Hoboken at Night
Posted on 02 January 2020
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Innovation and Excellence: Pound’s Typology [& Does It Apply to Chinese Tech?]
I'm in the process of reading Dan Wang's 2019 Letter, which opens with reflections on Chinese tech. Pound offered this classification system for literary... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Lost in Space [Media Notes 28]
I’ve just finished season two of the remake of Lost in Space and, for some reason, am working my way back through season one. I never saw the original, which... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Working Papers on Neurodiversity
I don’t know when I first read the term neurodiversity, but it is likely only within the last decade, or perhaps a bit before. I took a look in Google’s Ngram... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Photos from Twitter 3
#photography#photographer#photographyislife#streetphotography#写真の奏でる私の世界#キリ... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Decade of New Savanna: 2010-2019
I made my first post at New Savanna on April 14, 2010 and have published 6607 posts up through December 31, 2019. This chart shows yearly totals for the... Read more
Posted on 01 January 2020 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Observations About Democracy and the State
This is clipped from the middle of a longish post by E. Glen Wyle, The Political Philosophy of RadicalxChange. It may be a bit obscure without more context (e.g. Read more
Posted on 31 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How Amazon Ships to Places That Lack Street Address and Reliable Mail Service,...
The NYTimes has a fascinating article about a cottage industry in so-called "last-mile" service to such places. The customer doesn't have their items shipped... Read more
Posted on 31 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Humans Are Born Premature Relative to Other Primates
Kimerer LaMothe, The dancing species: how moving together in time helps make us human, Aeon. Further support for this thesis comes from anthropologists and... Read more
Posted on 30 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mental Capacities and Cultural Variation: A Comment on a Recent Post by Tyler...
Tyler Cowen has done a recent review of Charles Murray’s forthcoming, Human Diversity: The Biology of Gender, Race, and Class (January 2020). Read more
Posted on 30 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Story of a Dog and a Man [BAPC Camping]
Posted on 30 December 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Morning Light at My Sister's
Posted on 29 December 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
