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 ( 7824 )
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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 -
On the Physics, Mathematics, and Algorithms of Knitting – What's Floofy?
Siobhan Roberts, ‘Knitting Is Coding’ and Yarn Is Programmable in This Physics Lab, NYTimes, May 17, 2019. Dr. Elisabetta Matsumoto, a physicist at Georgia Tech... Read more
Posted on 19 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Along the River Line, and Just Outside the Bergen Arches
Posted on 18 May 2019
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The 'Nordic paradox'–Gender Equality Seems Correlated with a High Incidence of...
Gracia E, Martín-Fernández M, Lila M, Merlo J, Ivert A-K (2019) Prevalence of intimate partner violence against women in Sweden and Spain: A psychometric... Read more
Posted on 18 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Note About Bell Labs
Ashutosh Jogalekar, Life and Death in New Jersey, 3 Quarks Daily, May 14, 2019: Bell Labs was the most productive research laboratory in the world for almost... Read more
Posted on 14 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Geoffrey Hinton (neural Network Pioneer) Interview
AI Pioneer @geoffreyhinton Explains the Evolution of Neural Networks, in this fascinating interview w @nxthompson https://t.co/LybmRZjNzp — Steven Strogatz... Read more
Posted on 14 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Underside of the "Green New Deal" – the Mining of Nonrenewable Minerals
Jasper Bernes, Between the Devil and the Green New Deal, Commune, Spring 2019: To meet the demands of the Green New Deal, which proposes to convert the US... Read more
Posted on 10 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Prestige is More Important Than Merit in Academic Hiring
Eva-Maria Swidler, A Modest(y) Proposal, from the AAUP: An article detailing some stark facts about social inequality within academia made a small blip in highe... Read more
Posted on 10 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Who Benefits from Driverless Cars (not the Poor)
Ashley Nunes, Driverless cars: researchers have made a wrong turn, Nature, 8 May 2019: By merely rehashing the talking points of the self-driving industry,... Read more
Posted on 10 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
More Description
The psychological sciences spend too much time on, and place too much weight on, experiments. Given our current state of knowledge we should be spending much... Read more
Posted on 08 May 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
It Don't Mean a Thing If It Don't Got That Swing – Happy Birthday, Duke...
Remembering Duke Ellington, born on this day in 1899 in Washington, D.C. Here's Duke Ellington and His Orchestra performing "It Don't Mean a Thing" in 1943.... Read more
Posted on 30 April 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Miles Davis, the Painter
The Paintings of Miles Davis. Started painting drawing in his 50s and never looked back. https://t.co/wLHBBTS2cc pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 28 April 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Synthetic Philosophy
This is a good essay: "Synthetic philosophy", by Eric Schliesser. Ostensibly a review of recent books by @danieldennett Peter Godfrey-Smith, it's a good... Read more
Posted on 28 April 2019 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
