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 ( 7626 )
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Close Reading? You Really Mean It? Just What is “close”, and “reading”?
Back on July 25, 2011 Andrew made a post at Stanford’s Arcade: Close Reading as Genre [1]. It began: Just what is that infamous thing, a close reading? Read more
Posted on 01 October 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Summer Job, Working in a Coal Mine – Or, How I Learned About Class in America
Well, not quite. Let me explain. I spent the first three or four years of my life in Ellsworth, Pa., but I don’t remember much, if anything, of that life. It wa... Read more
Posted on 29 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Objectivity and Intersubjective Agreement
Consider this an addendum to yesterday’s: Describing structured strings ofcharacters [literary form] Let’s start with a passage from my open letter to Charlie... Read more
Posted on 29 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Dancers! [Hoboken Arts & Music Festival Fall 2017]
Posted on 29 September 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Describing Structured Strings of Characters [literary Form]
I recently argued that Jakobson’s poetic function can be regarded as a computational principle [1]. I want to elaborate on that a bit in the context of the... Read more
Posted on 28 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Problem with Software
James Somers in The Atlantic: It’s been said that software is “eating the world.” More and more, critical systems that were once controlled mechanically, or by... Read more
Posted on 28 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Helicopter Landing in a Slanted City
As you may know, there are lots of helicopters in the air space over and around New York City. While a few may contain tourists seeing the sights I suspect... Read more
Posted on 27 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Anthony Bourdain in Rome, and That Hoochie Coochie Song Pops up
Here it is, I've cued it up in the video (c. 16:15). It starts with a guitar riff and apparently is about two Hindu brothers, thus keeping its oriental... Read more
Posted on 26 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
2 Comments on Moretti’s LitLab 15: Patterns and Interpretation [#DH]
Franco Moretti has produced another pamphlet: Franco Moretti, Patterns and Interpretation, Stanford Literary Lab, Pamphlet 15, September 2017, 10 pp. I have... Read more
Posted on 26 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Over the Weekend the Nacirema Nationals Trounced the Trumptastic Bombers
The Trumpistas went up against the Nacirema and were creamed. How's this going to work out? What makes the question an interesting one is that many Trumptistas... Read more
Posted on 25 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Extended Adolescence – Adulthood Revised?
Bret Stetka in Scientific American: An analysis by researchers at San Diego State University and Bryn Mawr College reports that today’s teenagers are less likel... Read more
Posted on 25 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Too Good to Last, the New Savanna Hit Streak is Over
Back at the end of January 2017 I’d noticed that traffic was up, with some days topping 3K or 4K. On August 11 New Savanna got 11,109 hits and on August 20... Read more
Posted on 24 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hermeneutics of Ta-Nehisi Coates
Peter Dorman at Naked Capitalism, (originally EconoSpeak): The thing is, he seldom makes arguments in the sense I understand that term. Read more
Posted on 24 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Military Ontology
.@andrewiliadis on the Basic Formal Ontology and its domain-specific permutations - e.g., Military Ontology https://t.co/vEsfNkwZWn pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 23 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pete Turner, Colors – the World
Richard Sandomir writes his obituary in The New York Times: Altering reality was nothing new for Mr. Turner. Starting in the pre-Photoshop era, he routinely... Read more
Posted on 23 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
I'd Be Wary of Ken Burns. In His Jazz Documentary He Stretched the Material to...
Ken Burns has a new Vietnam documentary out. I'd be wary of it. I've only seen one Burns extravaganza, the one on jazz, and that one made me a Ken Burns skeptic... Read more
Posted on 23 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Deep Learning Through the Information Bottleneck
Natalie Wolchover in Quanta: Tishby began contemplating the information bottleneck around the time that other researchers were first mulling over deep neural... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cheap Criticism & Cheap Defense: Can Machines Think?
Searle’s Chinese room argument is one of the best-known thought experiments in analytic philosophy. The point of the argument as I remember it (you can google... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
I Think Like a Pirahã (What's REAL Vs. Real)
Something I'd recently posted to Facebook. I just realized that in one interesting aspect, I think like a Pirahã. I’m thinking about their response to... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Brief Note on Interpretation as Translation
I’ve come to think of interpretation as a kind of translation, and translation doesn’t use description. When you translate from, say, Japanese into English,... Read more
Posted on 22 September 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
