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 ( 7623 )
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What You See is What You Get
The graphic computer interface that became common with Apple's Macintosh computer is sometimes known as WYSIWYG, where "WYSIWYG" = "what you see is what you get. Read more
Posted on 06 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Beyond Broca and Wernicke
Abstract: Broca and Wernicke are dead, or moving past the classic model of language neurobiology With the advancement of cognitive neuroscience and... Read more
Posted on 05 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neurolinguistics of Language
Here's links to a bunch of recent articles in Journal of Neurolinguistics (H/t Dan Everett). Note that all are behind a paywall, but you can at least link... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another RGB Series
Here is the original scene: It is an object of no particular interest, a plastic milk bottle with part of its top cut off. It's on window sill and you can see... Read more
Posted on 04 December 2016 CULTURE, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Fr8s
Posted on 02 December 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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An Executive Guide to the Computer Age
Another document uploaded to Academia.edu: https://www.academia.edu/30219563/An_Executive_Guide_to_the_Computer_Age William Benzon, "An Executive Guide to the... Read more
Posted on 02 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
For Trump's Supporters, Corruption is Part of the Deal
Matthew Yglesias in Vox: But Jan-Werner Müller, a Princeton political scientist who recently published an excellent little book about authoritarian populist... Read more
Posted on 30 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Documental "Lucumi, El Rumbero De Cuba" (Rumbero of Cuba)
This is an excellent little film (26 minutes). There's some delightful dancing and drumming in the last third. Note that the white dress is ceremonial. Read more
Posted on 29 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Quick Takes: Detect Animate Vs. Inanimate in 250 Msec
Back in the 1970s 1980s David Hays and I hypothesized the existence of perceptual mechanisms that would support a quick determination of whether or not... Read more
Posted on 29 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Change in National Mood Shows up in Patterns of Word Usage Observed in Historica...
From the NYTimes: In the wake of the election, it’s clear American society is fractured. Negative emotions are running amok, and countless words of anger and... Read more
Posted on 29 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
AI Panics (When Will They Learn?) – A Post at Language Log
Mark Liberman: The last month or so has seen renewed discussion of the benefits and dangers of artificial intelligence, sparked by Stephen Hawking's speech at... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Protect the Vulnerable: Identity Politics is Here to Stay
Michelle Goldberg in Slate; some definitions: Identity politics and political correctness aren’t the same thing, but they are interrelated. One situates... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Crown, Episode 7: Elizabeth Sticks up for Herself
I urge you, if you’ve got Netflix, to watch The Crown, which I’ve already written about in an earlier post. I’ve just watched episode 7, “Scientia Potentia Est”... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Zero-Shot Translation – "implicit Bridging Between Language Pairs Never Seen...
Google’s Multilingual Neural Machine Translation System: Enabling Zero-Shot Translation Melvin Johnson, Mike Schuster, Quoc V. Read more
Posted on 25 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Liberty Obscured
Posted on 25 November 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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How He Got Over: The Trump His Followers See
Christian Parenti has looked at a lot of raw video footage of Trump speeches. He writes about what he found at Nonsite.org: Contrary to how he was portrayed in... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Domain-general Sequence Processing in the Brain
Neurosci Biobehav Rev. 2016 Nov 14. pii: S0149-7634(16)30347-5. doi: 10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.10.033. [Epub ahead of print] Supplementary Motor Area as key... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
EEG Investigation of Film-editing Techniques
“Cuts in Action”: A High-Density EEG Study Investigating the Neural Correlates of Different Editing Techniques in Film Authors Katrin S. Heimann, Sebo Uithol,... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Kleptocrat in Chief?
Matthew Yglesias worries the Trump will ratchet up the self-dealing and corruption once he gets in office. Reflecting on Trump’s recent sit-down meeting with... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Donald Trump: A Close Reading of a Short Passage Most Revealing
Yesterday, 23 November 2016, Trump sat down to chat with reporters, editors, and pundits from The New York Times. After a bit of chit-chat about a somewhat... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
