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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Ritual in Apocalypse Now
This is one of a number of old posts on Apocalypse Now (which I've listed at the end of the post). I've collected them into a single downloadable PDF: Apocalyps... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Cleopatra's Pump, Grid Edition
Posted on 02 February 2018
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Will in the Nervous System, and Its Consequences
This is a passage that didn’t make the cut for Beethoven’s Anvil. It’s about the will, its footprint in the nervous system, and what that means about our... Read more
Posted on 02 February 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Visual and Auditory Brain Areas Share a Neural Code for Perceived Emotion
Beau Sievers, Thalia Wheatley, Visual and auditory brain areas share a neural code for perceived emotion, bioRxiv, https://doi.org/10. Read more
Posted on 31 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Whoops! Deep Learning is Easily Fooled (Surprise! Surprise?)
Max Little at Language Log, Adversarial attacks on modern speech-to-text: Accumulated evidence over the last few years shows that empirically, methods (such as... Read more
Posted on 30 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stories of Good Vs. Evil: A Product of Nationalism?
Catherine Nichols in Aeon: Stories from an oral tradition never have anything like a modern good guy or bad guy in them, despite their reputation for being... Read more
Posted on 29 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music Universals?
In The Atlantic: Even without unlimited resources and an omniversal traveling machine, they managed to amass songs from 86 cultures around the world—all... Read more
Posted on 26 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the 3D Transportation Geometry of New York 2140 Feasible?
One of the problems that was in the back of my mind as I read New York 2140 was: Is the transportation system geometrically feasible? Read more
Posted on 26 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Some Mechanisms
One thing all of these devices have in common is some kind of rotary motion. Read more
Posted on 26 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Effects of Population Size on Language Structure and Vocabulary Size
Florencia Reali, Nick Chater, Morten H. Christiansen, Simpler grammar, larger vocabulary: How population size affects language, Proceedings of the Royal... Read more
Posted on 25 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Black Box" AI, Feature Or Bug?
In 'old school' symbolic AI, the system reasoned using rules and structures 'hand-coded' by humans and often derived from protocols where human experts would... Read more
Posted on 25 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pittsburgh, a Mid-20th Century African-American Florence
Mark Whitaker in the Paris Review: That story of Pittsburgh is well documented. Far less chronicled but just as extraordinary is the confluence of forces that... Read more
Posted on 24 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Inter-Racial Sex: A Passage to India and Light in August
I'm bumping this to the top of the queue on general principle. It's one of the oldest posts here, having originally been posted on May 6, 2010. Read more
Posted on 24 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Story of Civilization: Stuck in Traffic
Are things too big and out of hand? I'm bumping this one from September 2012 to the top of the queue. One day I waited an hour in traffic to go a quarter of a... Read more
Posted on 22 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hey, Aziz, Read Any Good Romance Novels Lately?
Jennifer Weiner, We Need Bodice-Ripper Sex Ed, NYTimes: “Romance novels teach readers that all partners are equal participants in a sexual relationship,” said... Read more
Posted on 21 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
New York 2140, Some Notes About Form and Structure
The novel’s plot unfolds as an opportunistic linking of contingencies. Characters see opportunities and forge links. At first the contingencies and characters... Read more
Posted on 20 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: A Sampler
Posted on 19 January 2018
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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New York 2140: What IS Fiction, Anyhow?
I slipped over to Manhattan yesterday for a meeting that was held – wouldn’t you know? at the New York Yacht Club, an honorable establishment with old money... Read more
Posted on 18 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Micro-timing in Conversation
Tanya Stivers, et al. Universals and cultural variation in turn-taking in conversation, PNAS June 30, 2009 vol. 106 no. 26 10587-10592Abstract:Informal verbal... Read more
Posted on 18 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ross Douthat on Opus Dei and the Consecrated Life
I remember all the gnashing of teeth, the rending of garments, and the wailing of women, boys, and men when Ross Douthat got the nod as a NYTimes Op-Ed writer. Read more
Posted on 18 January 2018 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
