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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Why Do We Need to Talk of Cultural Evolution, Specifically, Rather Than of...
I’ve posted about this before, e.g. A short note on why it is important to conceive of culture as giving rise to an evolutionary process. And I continue to thin... Read more
Posted on 19 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Analytics and Neuroscience
Culture analytics version:No, nobody’s tried that.Nope, no that would be really cool.Huh! I wonder what would happen.Hasn’t been done!Super interesting,... Read more
Posted on 19 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chinese Ghost Stories
Replug: As tales of demons, ghosts, and the supernatural are exorcized from China’s mainstream media, the country’s classical horror stories still have the... Read more
Posted on 19 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Impeachment and the Implosion of Liberalism
One of the better commentaries on impeachment: “With public institutions dysfunctional and liberal democracy hollowed out, liberalism.. Read more
Posted on 18 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why is Trinidad Such Fertile Ground for the Islamic State?
Simon Cottee, Trinidad's Islamic State Problems, Lawfare, November 17, 2019. In November 2013 Shane Crawford and two other men pulled off a double murder in a... Read more
Posted on 18 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Different Teams Analyze the Same Neuroimaging Results in Different Ways
Rotem Botvinik-Nezer, Felix Holzmeister, Colin Camerer, et al., Variability in the analysis of a single neuroimaging dataset by many teams, bioRXiv, Nov. 15,... Read more
Posted on 17 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Purple Sky Times Three [but No Rain]
Posted on 17 November 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Sleep Fallacies
Alexey Guzey critiques Matthew Walker, Why We Sleep (2017). In the first chapter of Why We Sleep, Walker: completely misrepresents the relationship between slee... Read more
Posted on 16 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Philologists in Space: Forbidden Planet [Media Notes 18]
I watched Forbidden Planet last night on Netflix, most of it anyhow. I’d seen it as a child when it first came out back in 1956. Read more
Posted on 16 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Interactive Television in 1968 [nothing New Under the Sun]
it's not clear what exactly the audience was voting on at each decision point—contemporaneous reviews describe them pushing buttons to "select the characters,"... Read more
Posted on 16 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Variations on a Giant Christmas Tree Ornament
I took this photo 13 years ago: Here's a photo of that largest ball: In red, then blue: Bonus: Read more
Posted on 15 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Quick Guide to Cultural Evolution for Humanists [#DH Digital Humanities]
Note: As this is the draft of an appendix to an article in which I cite my own work, I do not mention it here. Of course, New Savanna has many posts on... Read more
Posted on 14 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hallucinated City: Sol Rising
Posted on 14 November 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Jack Ryan, the Ending of Season Two [Media Notes 17]
I think I’m done with The King (4 posts!) so I restore this topic to its original purpose, quick notes. Jack Ryan, as some of you know, is a TV show currently... Read more
Posted on 14 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Workshop on a Positive Future for Southern Africa in the Anthropocene
About the project: ...the Seeds of Good Anthropocenes initiative aims to solicit, explore, and develop a suite of alternative visions for “Good Anthropocenes”... Read more
Posted on 14 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Electrification and Structural Transformation in America
🚨New paper 🚨w. @rowenagray6 Paul Gaggl. In the US, electrification was a key factor in structural transformation, moving workers from farming... Read more
Posted on 13 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Impeachment Depositions Tell a Story About How Diplomacy in the National...
Margaret Taylor, Benjamin Wittes, The Story the Impeachment Depositions Tell, Lawfare, November 12, 2019. In fact, the voluminous pages of the impeachment... Read more
Posted on 13 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s AI? – Part 2, on the Contrasting Natures of Symbolic and Statistical...
Comparison of Semantic Nets (left) with Attractor Nets (right). See below. Color me pleased with the AI essay I just published in 3 Quarks Daily, Some Notes On... Read more
Posted on 13 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hallucinated City: Manhattan Vertical
Posted on 12 November 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The King, Part IV: The Matter of Cultural Influence [Media Notes 16]
Now we know, from The Telegraph, that Michôd was quite deliberately playing off of and altering Shakespeare about young Hal/Harry/Henry V: When asked about his... Read more
Posted on 11 November 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
