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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Three Views of the Same Sunrise in Liberty State Park [with Shadows]
Posted on 17 December 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Is the Nation-state an Obsolete Form of Governance and Social Organization?
I’ve been blogging on the topic for awhile now – see posts collected under the label “nation-state”. It looks like my first post on the topic went up on... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Aesthetic Society Redux? From Tokugawa Japan to the World-wide Web
Lev Manovich, The Aesthetic Society: Instagram as a Life Form, forthcoming in Data Publics, eds. Peter Mörtenboeck and Helge Mooshammer (Routledge, 2020): We... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Physics and AI
Sabine Hossenfelder, What can artificial intelligence do for physics? And what will it do to physics? Backreaction, Nov 22, 2019 But ask a physicist what they... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Was Elisabeth Kübler-Ross Wrong About Dying and Bereavement?
The ‘five stages’ in coping with dying and bereavement, immortalized by Elisabeth Kübler-Ross, has not survived scientific scrutiny. https://t.co/k4gEoGCJQE... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Floating and Twisted [shaky-cam]
Posted on 16 December 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Reading The Human Swarm 8: What About the USA?
Having finished chapter 24, “The Rise of Ethnicities”, I am within two chapters and a conclusion (which I’ve already read) of finishing Mark Moffett’s The... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Parallel Universe of Evangelical Christianity
Adam Kotsko, The Evangelical Mind, n+1, Issue 35, Savior Complex, Fall 2019. We were encouraged to imagine the likely response of some curious soul who... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Some Informal Remarks on Jockers’ 3300 Node Graph: Part 3, Signs and Mechanisms
I want to start at the point where I ended my previous post in this series, Some informal remarks on Jockers’ 3300 node graph: Part 2, structure and... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Yoni Apelbaum, How America Ends, The Atlantic, December 2...
Yoni Apelbaum, How America Ends, The Atlantic, December 2019. Trump says: In October, with the specter of impeachment looming, he fumed on Twitter, “What is... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Views of a Signal Tower [the Over-hanging Tree is a Bonus]
Posted on 14 December 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Is the World Falling Apart, Or at Least the World of Large Nation States with a...
Roger Cohen, Boris Johnson and the Coming Trump Victory in 2020, NYTimes Dec 13, 2019: “Brexit and Trump were inextricably linked in 2016, and they are... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Do Trained Murderers Have a Code of Conduct?
From Azam Ahmed and Paulina Villegas, He Was One of Mexico’s Deadliest Assassins. Then He Turned on His Cartel. The NYTimes, 14 Dec 2019: Murder was rarely for... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Model of the Visual Cortex
The model is comprised of pairs of interacting excitatory inhibitory cells and, depending on the variant of the model in question, each pair has a different... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Anand Giridharadas on the New Feudalism
From YouTube: Are Mark Zuckerberg and Jeff Bezos the new feudal elite? Anand Giridharadas talks to INET President Rob Johnson about how the titans of Silicon... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Views of Christ Hospital [but You Have to Look Carefully, Because It's...
Posted on 13 December 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Is AI a Feature Or a Platform? [machine Learning, Artificial Neural Nets]
Why You Should Be Optimistic About the Future Andreessen: Is AI a feature or an architecture? He thinks it's the second. https://t. Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Palgrave Series on Cultural Evolution
Jamishid Tehrani edits an interesting series of articles on cultural evolution for Palgrave Communications: Cultural evolution describes how socially learned... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Squatter's Rights [The Hallucinated City]
Posted on 13 December 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Now There's Clickbait for You
What’s the best pizza you’ve ever had? — Far Wide (@FarandWidecom) August 22, 2019 Thats one of those clickbait sites where they post a provocative title on... Read more
Posted on 13 December 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
