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 ( 7828 )
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Deirdre McCloskey on Liberalism (in the Classical Sense)
Eric Wallach interviews economist Deirdre McClosky in The Politic, February 2019. The Yale Politic: According to Bourgeois Equality, the average U.S. Read more
Posted on 20 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Behind the Scenes at Davos: The Coming Revolution Shall Be Celebrated,...
Jonah Bennett, A Trip Behind The Spectacle At Davos, Palladium, Feb. 9, 2019. There’s a great NowThis video that’s been circulating around from the Forum of... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Machine Creativity Zuckerberg Style: "move Fast and Break Things"
This is from an Atlantic article, about this paper: https://t.co/MxRNipid6O, which is VERY interesting - it's a collection of anecdotes of accidental... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Joe Rogan and His Middle-bro Audience
Devin Gordon, Why is Joe Rogan so Popular? The Atlantic, August 2019. The podcast: Rogan’s podcast gushes like a mighty river of content—approximately three... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Richard Macksey at 3QD [TALENT SEARCH]
I’ve taken my Richard Macksey post from July 30, tweaked it a bit here and there, and posted it at 3 Quarks Daily:... Read more
Posted on 19 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What Happened to Childhood?
Kim Brooks, We Have Ruined Childhood, NYTimes, 17 August 2019: According to the psychologist Peter Gray, children today are more depressed than they were... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Storefronts in the 'hood
Posted on 16 August 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Haunted by Love and Marriage: She and Heart of Darkness
Rider Haggard’s She and Joseph Conrad’s Heart of Darkness are very different books. She is an adventure romance of well over 100,000 words while Heart of... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s an Idea? An Informal Case Study About an Industrial Idea That Was...
In my working paper, Stagnation and Beyond: Economic growth and the cost of knowledge in a complex world [1], I took a close look at two cases examined by... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jeff Hawkins on the Brain [Thousand Brains Theory of Intelligence]
Hawkins invented the Palm Pilot and then took his money and became a neuroscientist (he founded Numenta). Steve2152 over at Lesswrong summarizes a podcast... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is America Too Large? (Heck Yeah!)
Eli Dourado Wonders: Maybe America is Simply too Big (2016): But I want to focus on something else. I can’t shake the idea that we’re way out of equilibrium in... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is AI? (And What Could It Be?)
From a long post by David Chapman, How should we evaluate progress in AI?, at Meaningness: Because AI investigates artificial intelligence, its central question... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
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
