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 ( 7628 )
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Apes with 'language' Skills, Koko Has Died
"Koko — the gorilla known for her extraordinary mastery of sign language, and as the primary ambassador for her endangered species — passed away yesterday... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Facial Recognition in Humans and Chimps
Kret ME, Tomonaga M (2016) Getting to the Bottom of Face Processing. Species-Specific Inversion Effects for Faces and Behinds in Humans and Chimpanzees (Pan... Read more
Posted on 20 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Odors Are Perceived the Same Way by Hunter-gatherers and Westerners
In Phys.org: Previous research has shown the hunter-gatherer Jahai are much better at naming odors than Westerners. They even have a more elaborate lexicon for... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Creative Thinking – Did You Ever Wonder Where 'brainstorming' and 'thinking...
Bregje van Eekelen, Discipline and Creativity, Institute for Advanced Study, 2018. On April 6, 1960, Institute for Advanced Study Director Robert Oppenheimer... Read more
Posted on 17 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bloomsday
is a good occasion to share my deciphering of the opening sentence of Finnegans Wake. Joyce puts a lot into meaning into a small number of words.... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blue Note Records
Majorie Ingall reviews Blue Note Records: Beyond the Notes, a documentary about Blue Note Records, a record label that was extraordinarly important in the jazz... Read more
Posted on 15 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Difference Between Black Society and Culture in Jamaica and in America
With a bonus about why Melissa McCarthy's Sean Spicer impersonation is superior to Alec Baldwin's Trump. From Conversations with Tyler, Malcolm Gladwell Wants t... Read more
Posted on 15 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
See, Lit Crit Isn't the Only Displine Packed with Researchers Having Trouble wit...
We need horror physics“How the belief in beauty has triggered a crisis in physics”via @NatureNews https://t.co/gs7J9Ps13u — German Sierra (@german_sierra) June... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Comparative Vocabulary of Smell, Some Languages Have More Words Than Others
Ed Yong, The Atlantic: Every sense has its own “lexical field,” a vast palette of dedicated descriptive words for colors, sounds, tastes, and textures. But... Read more
Posted on 14 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Comparative Perspective on Turn-taking
Pika S, Wilkinson R, Kendrick KH, Vernes SC. 2018 Taking turns: bridging the gap between human and animal communication. Proc. R. Soc. B 285: 20180598.... Read more
Posted on 13 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cumulative Cultural Evolution (CCE)
Mesoudi A, Thornton A. 2018 What is cumulative cultural evolution? Proc. R. Soc. B 285: 20180712. http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rspb.2018. Read more
Posted on 13 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Empathy and Music
Original Research Wallmark Z, Deblieck C, and Iacoboni M Neurophysiological Effects of Trait Empathy in Music Listening Front. Behav. Neurosci., 06 April 2018... Read more
Posted on 12 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pre-industrial States
Philip Carl Salzman, Tribes and States, Inference, Vol. 2, No. 1. A basic fact of pre-industrial life is that it is easier to take wealth away from others than... Read more
Posted on 11 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Memory Technologies in Worlds Without Writing
Lynne Kelly, writing in Aeon: Cultures without writing are referred to as ‘non-literate’, but their identity should not be associated with what they don’t do,... Read more
Posted on 10 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Anthony Bourdain, R.I.P.
Very sad. He was to me the greatest anthropologist. https://t.co/MlgDzWpjlp — Daniel Everett (@amazonrambler) June 8, 2018 When I got up this morning I thought... Read more
Posted on 08 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Life on Mars?
NASA's Curiosity Rover Finds Chemical Building Blocks For Life On Mars https://t.co/NjSKJBBfoY pic.twitter.com/dTuaXqZQO9 — David Hulme (@DrDavidHulme) June 7, Read more
Posted on 08 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Christmas Songs with Girl Scouts
A couple of years ago, 2014 I believe, a troop of Girl Scouts visited the building where I live and sang Christmas songs in the lobby–I’m told they’d done this... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Cognitive and Cultural Foundations of Moral Behavior
Purzycki, B. G., Pisor, A., Apicella, C., Atkinson, Q., Cohen, E., Henrich, J., McElreath, R., et al. (2018). The Cognitive and Cultural Foundations of Moral... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Quantum Mechanics and Visualization
Tim Mauldin has a double book review in the Boston Review, "The Defeat of Reason". One book is about quantum mechanics and the other is about Thomas Kuhn. I... Read more
Posted on 06 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ted Nelson Speaks up
"Here I Stand, at Age 80" (2017)—a candid video memoir by the legendary @TheTedNelson; indispensable computing history https://t. Read more
Posted on 03 June 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
