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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Star Trek DS9 S1 E10: Move Along Home [Media Notes 1]
Note: This is episode 9 on Netflix, where the first two episodes are combined into a single numbered episode. Broadcast March 9, 1993 I’ve been watching a lot o... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Cognitive Science Washed Up?
Rafael Núñez, Michael Allen, Richard Gao, Carson Miller Rigoli, Josephine Relaford-Doyle and Arturs Semenuks, What happened to cognitive science? Read more
Posted on 13 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Our Brains Are Made for Music
A news release from NIH/National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke: In the eternal search for understanding what makes us human, scientists found... Read more
Posted on 13 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fully Automated Luxury Communism
Asteroid mining. Gene editing. Synthetic meat. We could provide for the needs of everyone, in style. It just takes some imagination. https://t. Read more
Posted on 12 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Daniel A. Shore on Why Literary Studies Abandoned Linguistics
I've been reading some interesting remarks by Daniel A. Shore on why literary studies (at least in much of the Anglophone world) abandoned linguistics, though... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Rhythmic Nature of Speech
Is speech rhythmic? Definitely not perfectly isochronous, but still sound quite temporally regular to me. Check out this recording (and also other clips of... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Anti-tech Coalition
Big (internet) tech is under attack. Alexis Madrigal lists the players in The Atlantic, The Coalition Out to Kill Tech as We Know It. He observes: At a broad... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another Classic Text from 1957, Frank Rosenblatt's Tech Report Introducing the...
Here's a link to a downloadable PDF of the report: The Perceptron — A Perceiving and Recognizing Automaton. That introduced the idea of artificial neural... Read more
Posted on 09 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Once More, Kin Selection and Group Selectioni
Jonathan Birch, Are kin and group selection rivals or friends? Current Biology, Volume 29, ISSUE 11, PR433-R438, June 03, 2019,... Read more
Posted on 09 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Predicting History
Joseph Risi, Amit Sharma, Rohan Shah, Matthew Connelly Duncan J. Watts, Predicting history, Nature Human Behaviour (03 June2019) Abstract Can events be... Read more
Posted on 07 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Human Cerebellum, Universal Transform Or Multiple Functionality?
At what level does a uniform circuitry really imply a uniform function? Maybe it's time to rethink the "the cerebellum is an internal model" doctrine. Our revie... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Connectionism, Symbolic AI, and Machine Learning in AI
Where do the predictive techniques of machine learning come from? How do they represent and organise the social? Join us for a public talk with’s Dominique... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Untouchability and Open Defecation in Rural India
Dean Spears and Amit Thorat, "The Puzzle of Open Defecation in Rural India: Evidence from a Novel Measure of Caste Attitudes in a Nationally Representative... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Do People Die in Novels?
Olivier Morin, Alberto Acerbi, Oleg Sobchuk, Why people die in novels: testing the ordeal simulation hypothesis, Palgrave Communications 5, Article number: 2... Read more
Posted on 05 June 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Extreme Counterpoint
#BachUpsideDown #1: Here’s Bach’s 1st Goldberg Variation, normal, then upside down! Been meaning to do this for a while. My computer‘s doing a chromatic... Read more
Posted on 31 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Kids Will Sing and Dance
why is this video of a sea of elementary school kids going HAM to old town road literally the funniest video i’ve ever seen in my whole life pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 31 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Farmers Work Harder Then Hunter-gathers
Farmers have less leisure time than hunter-gatherers, ScienceDaily, May 21, 2019 Hunter-gatherers in the Philippines who adopt farming work around ten hours a... Read more
Posted on 24 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Statistical Mechanics of Musical Harmony
Jesse Berezovsky, The structure of musical harmony as an ordered phase of sound: A statistical mechanics approach to music theory, Science Advances 17 May... Read more
Posted on 23 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Foxes" Are Better at Predicting the Future Than "hedgehogs"
David Epstein, The Peculiar Blindness of Experts, The Atlantic, June 2019: One subgroup of scholars, however, did manage to see more of what was coming. Unlike... Read more
Posted on 19 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ridding Facebook of "bad Activity" – AI Isn't up to the Task
Cade Metz and Mike Isaac, Facebook’s A.I. Whiz Now Faces the Task of Cleaning It Up. Sometimes That Brings Him to Tears. NYTimes, 17 May 2019. Mr. Read more
Posted on 19 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
