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 ( 7622 )
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An Empirical Study of Abstract Concepts
Felix Hill, Anna Korhonen, Christian Bentz, A Quantitative Empirical Analysis of the Abstract/Concrete Distinction, Cognitive Science 38 (2014) 162–177. Read more
Posted on 17 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Art of Jamie Bérubé
I’ve consolidated my posts about the art of Jamie Bérubé into a single document with the title Jamie’s Investigations: The Art of a Young Man with Down Syndrome... Read more
Posted on 17 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ursula Le Guin Profiled in The New Yorker
Julie Phillips writes: Ursula absorbed these stories, together with the books she read: children’s classics, Norse myths, Irish folktales, the Iliad. Read more
Posted on 16 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jamie’s Investigations, Part 6: What We Have Discovered
When I started investigating Jamie Bérubé’s art I had no particular expectations, just a reasonable belief that it would be worthwhile. Now that I’ve examined... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cerebral Plasticity and Localization; Mathematics, Vision, Numerosity
Dan Modano, Blind People Do Math In The Visual Cortex , ReliaWire: People blind from birth appear to do math in a part of the brain typically devoted to... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Three White Men Look for the Blues: Wenders, Scorsese, and Pierce. One of Them...
Some years ago Martin Scorsese put together a documentary series on the blues, seven episodes, each by a different director. I reviewed five of the seven and... Read more
Posted on 15 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Jamie Variations
[See explanation below.] * * * * * Here is the original sheet by Jamie Bérubé (10th row down on the left): I cropped it and cleaned up the background using... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
William Gibson on Process, Recordings, the Future, Victorians & Trains
David Wallace-Wells interviews William Gibson in The Paris Review. Gibson's process: INTERVIEWER And your schedule is steady the whole way through? GIBSON As I... Read more
Posted on 14 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Gunnar Johannson and Motion Perception
These videos may have some bearing on Jamie Bérubé's biomorphs, so I'm bumping this post to the top of the queue. Think of his biomorphic sheets as a form of... Read more
Posted on 13 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jamie’s Investigations, Part 5: Biomorphs, Geometry and Topology
Figure 1: Biomorphs Michael calls these images geometrics, and they are that, geometric. But, for reasons we’ll get to in a bit, I call them biomorphs. Read more
Posted on 12 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Theme and Variations, but Not a Bérubé
Posted on 12 October 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Jamie’s Investigations, Part 4: Concentrics, Letters, and the Problem of...
Figure 1: Concentrics Let’s look at two closely related sets of sheets. One of them consists of concentric circles that have been colored-in, almost target... Read more
Posted on 11 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Across Cultures, Bodily Integrity is More Valued Than Civil Liberties
Wade M. Cole, Human Rights and the Individual: Cross-Cultural Variation in Human Rights Scores, 1980 to 2010, Social Forces (2016) doi: 10. Read more
Posted on 11 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jamie’s Investigations, Part 3: Towers of Color
Example 1 Here’s what Michael says about these sheets: I originally wanted Life as Jamie Knows It to include, between chapters, samples of these towers, but... Read more
Posted on 10 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jamie’s Investigations, Part 2: On Discovering Jamie’s Principle
To be honest, I was feeling pretty good after my first post in this series, Jamie’s Investigations, Part 1: Emergence, for it seemed to me that I’d pulled a... Read more
Posted on 09 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why I Am Not a Semiotician, Some Crude Notes
I was exposed to semiotics early in my undergraduate years at Johns Hopkins (where, of course, Pierce once held an academic post). Read more
Posted on 09 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On Learning to “Read” a Text – But What’s Next?
From my notes, an out-take from Signposts for a Naturalist Criticism, which I've edited a bit. When Moretti talks of “distant reading” he is using “reading” in ... Read more
Posted on 07 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Epiphany on the Hudson
Posted on 07 October 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Demographic Anxiety is Not Racism
From Tyler Cowen's interview with Ezra Klein: COWEN: Absolutely. Now Putman, let me ask you about Putnam, and how Putnam relates to Donald Trump. Read more
Posted on 06 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jamie’s Investigations, Part 1: Emergence
Example 1: Overall This is the first in a series of posts about the art of Jamie Bérubé, who has Down syndrome. He is the son of Michael Bérubé, who has just... Read more
Posted on 06 October 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
