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 ( 7356 )
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Premonitions of 2016
Richard Rorty, Achieving our Country, 1998 pic.twitter.com/BV9cNSzovJ — lisa kerr (@coleenlisa) November 9, 2016 Chomsky back in 2010 pic.twitter. Read more
Posted on 10 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Evolution of Language – Will We Crack It in 30 Years?
When I was young, they was relatively little work on the evolution of human language. Back in the 19th century the Société Linguistique de Paris banned the topi... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Post-Election Blues, First Riffs
In the 19th century the Morris Canal moved coal from Pennsylvania’s Lehigh Valley to northern New Jersey and terminated in the Hudson River in Jersey City,... Read more
Posted on 09 November 2016 CULTURE -
Notes on 2 Recent Photos
I took this photo last Saturday, Nov. 6, while walking it Liberty State Park in Jersey City. It is one of over 300 shots I took on that walk and is my current... Read more
Posted on 08 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories – Superb
I’ve been watching “Midnight Diner: Tokyo Stories” on Netflix and I’m enthralled. Shir Avinada encapsulates the premise: Sometimes the best stories take place i... Read more
Posted on 06 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Benefits of Extended Adolescence
Jessa Gamble in The Atlantic: In a time when college graduates return to live under their parents’ roofs and top careers require years of internships and... Read more
Posted on 05 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Back to Basics, the Urban Design Center
Posted on 04 November 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Ne’er the Twain Shall Meet? Cultural Evolution in Two Worlds
The social and behavioral scientists have just formed a Society for the Study of Cultural Evolution, with Pete Richerson as the first president and Dan Sperber... Read more
Posted on 04 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Microsleep, When Parts of the Brain Nod off During the Day
Christoff Koch in Scientific American: My last column, “To Sleep with Half a Brain,” highlighted the growing realization of sleep researchers that being awake... Read more
Posted on 04 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Virtual Reality: Inside the Jellyfish
Steve Johnson, the NYTimes: Steel strapped the Oculus goggles to my head and placed two controllers in my hands. Inside the simulated world, I could lift my... Read more
Posted on 03 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sage City Symphony
For two years, perhaps three, I played trumpet with the Sage City Symphony. Why it is called the “Sage City Symphony” I do not know, as it is located in... Read more
Posted on 02 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pinker on Chomsky and Universal Grammar, the Modular Mind, Granularity
Tyler Cowen has an interview with Steve Pinker that ranges widely. Here's what Pinker says about the Chomsky/UG debate: It’s a moving target. Read more
Posted on 02 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Logic Or Transcendental Interpretation? – Golumbia on Chomsky’s...
New working paper. Title above, download sites, abstract, TOC, and Introduction below. SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2862006 Academia.edu: https://www.academia. Read more
Posted on 31 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Demographic Statistics, Punch Card Machines, Historiography
Scott Weingart, Lessons From Digital History’s Antecedents: Briefly, a group of 19th century American historians, journalists, and census chiefs used statistics... Read more
Posted on 30 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Fiction as Simulation
Gregory Currie in ReliaWire: In a paper published in Trends in Cognitive Science, the psychologist and novelist Keith Oatley lays out his stall, arguing that... Read more
Posted on 30 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reading, the "official" Word
The MLA (Modern Language Association) is putting together a site, Digital Pedagogy in the Humanities: Concepts, Models, and Experiment, "a curated collection... Read more
Posted on 29 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Halloweenn Special
Posted on 28 October 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How Do We Understand Literary Criticism?
This is a follow-up to Monday’s post, Once More, Why is Literary Form All But Invisible to Literary Criticism? (With a little help from Foucault). Read more
Posted on 28 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Human Sounds Convey Emotions Clearer and Faster Than Words
PsyPost: It takes just one-tenth of a second for our brains to begin to recognize emotions conveyed by vocalizations, according to researchers from McGill. Read more
Posted on 27 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Subjectivity Vs. Objectivity in the Epistemic and Ontological Senses (John...
Here’s a video in which John Searle discusses AI with Luciano Floridi. I haven’t watched Floridi’s section, nor the discussion afterward. Read more
Posted on 26 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
