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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Images and Objectivity
Ryan Cordell has an interesting post, Objectivity and Distant Reading, in which he comments on Objectivity (2010) by Lorraine Daston and Peter Galison:... Read more
Posted on 08 July 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Graffiti Fragments
Posted on 07 July 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Bill McKibben on the New Nation-states
Writing in The New Republic: But the Paris decision may also reshape the world for the better, or at least the very different. Read more
Posted on 07 July 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Two Problems for the Human Sciences, and Two Metaphors
For as long as I can remember such things – back to my undergraduate years in the 1960s – humanists have been defending themselves and their work against all... Read more
Posted on 06 July 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Soverign State of New York?
Will the citizen's of New York decide to amend the state's constitution to give the state greater independence from the federal government? Read more
Posted on 06 July 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Blue America is Going Around the Federal Government on Climate Change
David Roberts, in Vox: "States and cities are forming a kind of parallel national government around climate change." In recoiling from Trump, states, cities, an... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Across the River
Posted on 30 June 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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The Unintelligibilityopacity of AI Systems
In the old days of classical symbolic AI program logic was "hand-coded" and based on expert knowledge of the application domain. Read more
Posted on 28 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Humans as Pattern-seekers
Last week I’d posted a video in which Jeremy Lent sketches out a transformation in which humankind manages to escape climate catastrophe. Read more
Posted on 28 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Multifractals (fractals Within Fractals) in Literary Texts
From Science Daily: James Joyce, Julio Cortazar, Marcel Proust, Henryk Sienkiewicz and Umberto Eco. Regardless of the language they were working in, some of... Read more
Posted on 28 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Systematic Annotation of Literary Texts, A Shared Task
Posted to the Humanist Discussion Group: Dear all, We would like to draw your attention to a community-oriented initiative that will introduce a new format of... Read more
Posted on 28 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Identity and Cultural Appropriation @3QD
My most recent articles at 3 Quarks Daily: Other People’s Culture and the Problem of Identity (May 29, 2017) Kenan Malik Asks Some Questions about Culture and... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Computational Value of Diagrams
Something I'm thinking about and may comment on a bit later:In a landmark 1987 essay,“Why a Diagram Is (Some- times) Worth Ten Thousand Words,” Herbert Simon an... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Mathematics, Computing, and the Literary Mind
As some of you know, Willard McCarty has been hosting an informal online seminar on the digital humanities since 1987. One topic that comes and goes is the... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Threat of AI
Kai-Fu Lee has an important op-ed in the NYTimes, "The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence". He begins by pointing out that all too many discussions of the... Read more
Posted on 25 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Maybe Quantum Mechanics Isn't So Weird After All
I more or less believe that on general principle, but I don't quite follow this interesting article by Philip Ball, Quantum common sense. I haven't read it... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Trump's Foreign Policy: An End to American Hegemony?
Writing in The American Conservative, Andrew Bacevich notes a post-Trump nostalgia for a world order characterized as, "Liberalism, along with norms, rules,... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Thinking is Action as Well (in the Brain)
June 12, Science News: Summary: Neuroscientists have recently put forward an original hypothesis -- all these cognitive functions rely on one central function:... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Rainbow Variations on a Blossom
Posted on 23 June 2017
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Cooperative Hunting Among the Orcas?
From the National Post: The orcas will wait all day for a fisher to accumulate a catch of halibut, and then deftly rob them blind. They will relentlessly stalk... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2017 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
