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 Struck and Broken Down: How Did Literary Criticism Come to This Foul Pass?...
Over the weekend the humanities Twitterverse, at least the part of it that I frequent, broke out in a flurry of discussion concerning the Avatal Ronell case.... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another Photo of the Met Life Tower, Plus Link to My 3QD Reflections of New...
See that slender tower in the middle? That's the Met Life tower, which is one of the central actors – yes, that's clearly how KSR conceived it, following... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computation, Semantics, and Meaning: Adding to an Argument by Michael Gavin [#DH]
I've completed a new working paper. Title above. You can download it here: Academic.edu:... Read more
Posted on 20 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Brain is Driven by a Difference Between Prediction and and Actuality
New research bolsters a controversial theory of how the brain works — from how we see and hear, to how we remember and make decisions.https://t.co/NAftwdr5NL... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Strangers in a Strange Land – More on ‘useless’ Philosophical Arguments About...
I’ve been thinking about those philosophical arguments I find so useless and have an idea about what they might be up to. Let’s look at this statement early in ... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
250 Mile Optical Telegraph in the Byzantine Empire in the 9th Century CE
The Byzantine Empire used a system of beacons (an optical telegraph) to transmit messages across Asia Minor to Constantinople. The main line of beacons stretche... Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It Turns out There IS a Quick Way to Find Your Nearest Neighbor
I'm sure this mathematical result is important, I even suspect that it's important to me, that is, that it will be useful in some of the problems I look at. Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Aretha's Jazz Foundations
How Aretha Franklin's jazz beginnings predicted her genre-transcending career (by @natalieweiner in @RollingStone). https://t.co/vciIsMtn2H pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 18 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Triangulating the Met Life Tower
As you may know, I'm involved in a group reading New York 2140, which centers on the Met Life Tower in Lower Manhattan.So, I've been taking a particular... Read more
Posted on 17 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gavin 5: Three Modes of Literary Investigation and Two Binary Distinctions [#DH]
Now that we’ve got two modes of semantic investigation on the table, statistical semantics and computational semantics, it’s time to add a third to the group.... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Female Founders Please Apply
I love this look at statistical variation in hypothesizing why cognitively diverse teams help explain why mixed gender teams do better than all-male founding... Read more
Posted on 16 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Leg Exercise is Critical to Brain and Nervous System Health (in Mice)
In the Frontiers blog: Groundbreaking research shows that neurological health depends as much on signals sent by the body’s large, leg muscles to the brain as i... Read more
Posted on 15 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sordid Truth About True Romance as Revealed by Online Dating Markets
Dating in Seattle: write a lot of stuff that's kind of negative. https://t.co/QtWzOvkdMq pic.twitter.com/5iQvs74wSQ — Simon DeDeo (@SimonDeDeo) August 14, 2018... Read more
Posted on 14 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Useless Philosophical Arguments About Mind & Computation, Brain & Computer
I’ve been interested the mind, computing, brains, and computers ever since my undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins back in the mid-1960s. Read more
Posted on 14 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Man Who Revealed That the Tree of Life is in Fact a Tangled Net
From an article in the NYTimes Magazine about Carl Woese: What made Woese the foremost challenger and modifier of Darwinian orthodoxy — as Einstein was to... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bishop of the Moon, I Kid You Not – from Orlando to the Moon
Aim to have the courage of the Bishop of Orlando telling Pope Paul VI that the Moon was part of his diocese pic.twitter.com/9Bx8pFbbq0 — Ned Donovan... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Crash of 2008 and Its Aftermath, So Far
Fareed Zakaria reviews Adam Tooze, CRASHED: How a Decade of Financial Crises Changed the World (2018): Tooze calls it a problem in “Western capitalism”... Read more
Posted on 13 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Grappling in the Agora with Joe Rogan
I've posted another working paper to Academia.edu. The title's above. Here's the URL: https://www.academia.edu/37222120/Grappling_in_the_Agora_with_Joe_Rogan... Read more
Posted on 12 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A New Humanities? Glad You Asked
The work of @SimonDeDeo has made me realize a seminar on the philosophy of textual difference, vector spaces, and information theory would be amazing. This is... Read more
Posted on 12 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ah, the Danes and the Sea, Christian Benjamin Olsen
#HistoryofPainting“Beauty awakens the soul to act.” Dante (Durante degli Alighieri)#TheNewPaintingDon't Be Afraid of #Art!Christian Benjamin Olsen (3 May 1873,... Read more
Posted on 12 August 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
