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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Connections: Wittgenstein ... Lévi-Strauss ... [Shakespeare] ... [Haiku] ......
I’ve recently finished a submission for the First Workshop on the History of Expressive Systems: By 'expressive systems', we broadly mean computer systems (or... Read more
Posted on 29 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Remembrance of Things Past [#GV]
Posted on 27 October 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Abstract Patterns in Stories – We’re Swimming in The Singularity [#DH]
I’m submitting a paper to the first Workshop on the History of Expressive Systems (HEX01), November 14, 2017. Title: Abstract Patterns in Stories: From the... Read more
Posted on 27 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Searle Almost Blows It on Computational Intelligence, Almost, but Not Quite...
John Searle has long been a critic of the pretensions of artificial intelligence to, well, you know, intelligence. He’s perhaps best know for his Chinese room... Read more
Posted on 26 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mars Or Bust, Maybe Bust
Scott Kelly had spent 520 continuous days in earth orbit, the longest of any NASA astronaut. He's a guinea pig in an experiment to test human ability to live... Read more
Posted on 25 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Unlike Classical Musicians, Jazz Musicians Expect the Unexpected
Eric Dolan in PsyPost reports on research done at Wesleyan University: The researchers used EEG to compare the electrical brain activity of 12 Jazz musicians... Read more
Posted on 24 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hunt for Genius Part 3: Cultural Factors
Here's another reposting from my series on the MacArthur Fellowship Program. This time it's a short one in which I take a quick look at cultural factors. Read more
Posted on 23 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Let's Have an Adventure! – King Soloman's Mines
Bumping this to the top of the queue because, Why Not? * * * * * Another reprint from The Valve, this one from May of 2009. I've taken the liberty of appending ... Read more
Posted on 22 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Acting White in the Trump-era
Kevin D. Williamson in the National Review: White people acting white have embraced the ethic of the white underclass, which is distinct from the white working... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
75% Americans Are Afraid of Government Corruption
In The Smithsonian: For the third year in a row, corruption of government officials has topped the list—only this year it jumped 13 percentage points, from 60. Read more
Posted on 21 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ebert Defends Literature on the Uncharted Seas
Bumping this seven year old post to the top of the queue. The issues are still unresolved. Regert Ebert died on April 4, 2013. * * * * * I’ve recently become... Read more
Posted on 21 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Borges Redux: Computing Babel – Is That What’s Going on with These Abstract...
If the eye were not sun-like, the sun’s light it would not see. – Johann Wolfgang von Goethe Thinking about corpus linguistics, machine learning, neural nets,... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: The Hudson River at Rhinecliff, NY [#AutumnExpress]
Posted on 20 October 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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It's a Small World (network) After All, and It Arises Through Adaptive Rewiring
Nicholas Jarman, Erik Steur, Chris Trengove, Ivan Y. Tyukin Cees van Leeuwen, Self-organisation of small-world networks by adaptive rewiring in response to... Read more
Posted on 20 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What WAS I Thinking When I Snapped This Photo? Not the Beatles and Not Abbey Road
If you are of a certain age and a certain inclination you can’t help by think of the album cover for Abbey Road, released by the Beatles in 1969. That’s... Read more
Posted on 18 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can You Learn Anything Worthwhile About a Text If You Treat It, Not as a TEXT,...
The Chronicle of Higher Education just published a drive-by take-down of the digital humanities. It was by one Timothy Brennan, who didn’t know what he was... Read more
Posted on 18 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Out of the Ground with Your Hands, My Summer in Coal @3QD
I’ve done a little editing to a recent post and reposted it at 3 Quarks Daily under the title, slightly changed from the original, My summer job working in... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another (strenuous) Take on What Went Wrong with Literary Criticism, John...
Yeah, I know. But it’s important to get this right. Once again I’m going to review that Geoffrey Hartman statement I find so characteristic of the mid-1970s... Read more
Posted on 16 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Latour on the Second Science "war"
Jop de Vrieze interviews Bruno Latour in Science; an excerpt: Q: How do you look back at the “science wars”? A: Nothing that happened during the ’90s deserves... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This is Your Brain on Stories
Decoding the Neural Representation of Story Meanings across Languages Morteza Dehghani, Reihane Boghrati, Kingson Man, Joseph Hoover, Sarah Gimbel, Ashish... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
