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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Nietzsche Like You've Never Seen Him! – Zarathustra in the Style of Dr. Seuss
John Holbo has been writing and illustrating On Beyond Zarathustra, which is Nietzsche in the style of Theodore Geisel (aka Dr. Seuss). Read more
Posted on 03 June 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The High Life
In New York City: In any case, 57th Street is now dubbed Billionaire’s Row, and wealth has reached new altitudes. Advances in skyscraper technology have much... Read more
Posted on 02 June 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Walter Freeman: My Legacy: A Launch Pad for Exploring Neocortex
I had quite a bit of correspondence with Walter Freeman at the end of the last century and in the early years of this one. I was using his conceptions of... Read more
Posted on 02 June 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Text, Intention from Textual to Interpretive Criticism
As some of you may know, there is such a thing as textual criticism, which is about the production of a definitive text, however that is understood, for literar... Read more
Posted on 31 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Hoboken Sings
Posted on 27 May 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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William James on Music
Last year Kurt Newman went through William James's The Principles of Psychology, found all references to music, and gathered them into a single blog post. Read more
Posted on 26 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Radical DH and the Xenaverse
It's not at all clear to me just what "digital humanities" is or will become, but it's clear that some are worried that it is just another form neoliberal... Read more
Posted on 26 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Emotional Contagion
From The Scientist: The idea that emotions can spread from person to person is not new. But recent research is starting to uncover the physiological mechanisms... Read more
Posted on 24 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What’s in a Name? – “Digital Humanities” [#DH] and “Computational Linguistics”
In thinking about the recent LARB critique of digital humanities and of responses to it I couldn’t help but think, once again, about the term itself: “digital... Read more
Posted on 23 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Chomsky, Hockett, Behaviorism and Statistics in Linguistics Theory
Here's an interesting (and recent) article that speaks to statistical thought in linguistics: The Unmaking of a Modern Synthesis: Noam Chomsky, Charles... Read more
Posted on 22 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Street Art Museum in Berlin
Renovation is not complete. Here's a sense of what it will be like when complete: Story HERE. Tim Renner, undersecretary of state for culture in Berlin is also... Read more
Posted on 22 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Graffiti Details
As the title indicates, these are details from various works of graffiti. Further, they are so relatively small in scale that you've got little sense of the... Read more
Posted on 20 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Who Put “The Terminator” in “Digital Humanities”?
In thinking about the current discussions provoked by the LARB takedown of digital humanities I’ve been thinking about the term itself: “digital humanities. Read more
Posted on 19 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Yet Another Response to LARB on DH: A Plague on All Your Houses!
Allington, Brouillette, and Golumbia (ABG) on digital humanities continues reverberating through the online hive mind. It's not clear to me that Justin Evans,... Read more
Posted on 19 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Godzilla Rises in Japan, for the First Time in 12 Years
The Godzilla franchise is one of the most prolific in the movie biz. Writing in The New Yorker, Matt Alt reports that the Japanese are releasing their first... Read more
Posted on 18 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Brain is Not a Computer
Robert Epstein in Aeon: But here is what we are not born with: information, data, rules, software, knowledge, lexicons, representations, algorithms, programs,... Read more
Posted on 18 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
SSRN Sold to Elsevier
SSRN (Social Science Research Network) is a text repository that's been around for over a decade. FWIW I joined up in November of 2009 and have over 90 document... Read more
Posted on 17 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
For the Historical Record: Cog Sci and Lit Theory, A Chronology
Another reprint from The Valve, though slightly revised. I'm bumping this to the top of the queue in view of this interesting post in which Scott Enderle... Read more
Posted on 17 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Navigational Skills of Dung Beetles
BBC News: Dung beetles record a mental image of the positions of the Sun, the Moon and the stars and use the snapshot to navigate, according to researchers. Read more
Posted on 15 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Google Opens a a Powerful Parser to the World
From Google's research blog: Announcing SyntaxNet: The World’s Most Accurate Parser Goes Open Source Thursday, May 12, 2016 Posted by Slav Petrov, Senior Staff... Read more
Posted on 14 May 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
