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 ( 7812 )
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My Posts at 3 Quarks Daily
Listed in order started from the most recent. Exposed! Daniel Everett Shines a Light on the Mind’s Dark Matter We’re All in This Together: Life as Jamie Knows I... Read more
Posted on 24 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: the Old Neighborhood (Lafayette, Jersey City)
Posted on 23 December 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Mutable Stability in the Transmission of Medieval Texts
I've just checked in at Academica.edu and was alerted to this article: Stephen G. Nichols, Mutable Stability, a Medieval Paradox: The Case of Le Roman de la... Read more
Posted on 23 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Bridgewater: The AI-dominated Firm of the Future?
The Wall Street Journal has an interesting article about Bridgewater Associates LP, the world's largest hedge fund. By Rob Copeland and Bradley Hope, it is... Read more
Posted on 23 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On Discussion and Debate in the Blogosphere: Some Reflections on a Recent Example
Not so long ago I got caught up in a long and somewhat contentious discussion at Crooked Timber. It’s one of my regular sites; I’ve been following it for years. Read more
Posted on 22 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A New (digital Humanities) Tool: TimeLineCurator [#DH]
Johanna Fulda, Matthew Brehmer, and Tamara Munzner of the UBC InfoVis Group. From the online documentation: About Want to make a visual timeline, but don't... Read more
Posted on 22 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Brain is Maturing into One's 30s
From the NYTimes: The human brain reaches its adult volume by age 10, but the neurons that make it up continue to change for years after that. Read more
Posted on 22 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Plate is Full! – What I’m Up To as the Year Comes to an End
As the year comes to an end I find myself with fingers in a number of pies – or, if you will, trying to keep a half-dozen or more balls in the air. Read more
Posted on 21 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Political Skills: LBJ Got the Civil Rights Bill Passed, Could Obama Have Done It...
I'm watching a BlogginHeads discussion between Glenn Loury and Joshua Cohen. They've been evaluating Obama, giving him a C of C-. Read more
Posted on 21 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
First Time Out, Obama Never Doubted He Could Get White Support
From an interview with Ta-Nehisi Coates, in The Atlantic: Coates: Did you have doubts? Obama: Yes. Coates: You did have doubts? Read more
Posted on 20 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The New Immediacy, Live Birth
As some of you no doubt know, Facebook now allows you to broadcast live to FB with your smart phone. I've watched a number of these, a friend driving to work,... Read more
Posted on 20 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ontology and Cultural Evolution: “Spirit” Or “Geist” and Some of Its Measures
This post is about terminology, but also about things – in particular, an abstract thing – and measurements of those things. The things and measurements arise i... Read more
Posted on 19 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Cultural Evolution Approach to Digital Media
REVIEW ARTICLE Front. Hum. Neurosci., 15 December 2016 | https://doi.org/10.3389/fnhum.2016.00636 http://journal.frontiersin.org/article/10.3389/fnhum.2016. Read more
Posted on 19 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
I Don’t Give a Crap About Consilience!
In the spirit of an old post, I don’t give a crap about science. In his 1998 book, Consilience: The Unity of Knowledge, E. O. Wilson introduced consilience... Read more
Posted on 18 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Collective Trauma in the USofA
The NYTimes: Last month’s presidential election has collective trauma written all over it. For working-class white people whose communities had been hollowed ou... Read more
Posted on 17 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Hoboken Winter, December 2010
Posted on 16 December 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Journey into Shakespeare, a Tedious Adventure – Will the Real Hamlet Stand Up?
I’m inching my way toward a decision to take a serious look at Shakespeare’s Hamlet. I’m thinking about doing a book on ring-composition and I need another... Read more
Posted on 16 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Singing Promotes Cooperation in a Diverse Group of Children.
Good, Arla; Russo, Frank A. Social Psychology, Vol 47(6), 2016, 340-344. http://dx.doi.org/10.1027/1864-9335/a000282 Abstract Previous research involving... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Darwin Was an Exploratory Forager: Topic Modeling Our Way Through His Notebooks...
Cognition. 2016 Dec 8;159:117-126. doi: 10.1016/j.cognition.2016.11.012. [Epub ahead of print] Exploration and exploitation of Victorian science in Darwin's... Read more
Posted on 15 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
At the Core of Statistical Machine Translation, and Other Things (Google)
NYTimes Magazine, Gideon Lewis-Kraus, The Great A.I. Awakening: When you summarize images, you can divine a picture of what each stage of the summary looks... Read more
Posted on 14 December 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
