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 ( 7356 )
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The Computational Brain?
Gary Marcus (NYU) thinks that field programmable gate arrays might be our best bet for thinking about neural computation (NYTimes): FIELD programmable gate... Read more
Posted on 28 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Theology of "Laudato Si"
Scott Beauchamp in The Baffler: Pope Francis uses theology to foreground nature, with God being the force of eminence that shoots through and connects all... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hologram Metaphor in Mind and Culture
From some old notes: Finally, I'd like to suggest cultures encode their master patterns like holograms encode images. If you rip a hologram of, for example, a... Read more
Posted on 27 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Some Styles at the Demolition Exhibition [#GVM004]
AIDS crew Tomorrow (Saturday, June 28, 2015) marks the official opening of Green Villain’s Demolition Exhibition, a show of graffti installed (good Art Word,... Read more
Posted on 26 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
On the Direction of 19th Century Poetic Style, Underwood and Sellers 2015
Another working paper (title above). Download at: SSRN: http://ssrn.com/abstract=2623118 Academica.edu:... Read more
Posted on 25 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Can Psychoanalysis Survive Neuroscience? In Search of Transference
The NYTimes has an interesting article about research attempting to reconstruct psychoanalytic ideas with neuroscientific support. Annealing? While working on... Read more
Posted on 25 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rampage Killers, Suicide Bombers, and the Difficulty of Killing People...
In a discussion over at Crooked Timber, Rich Puchalsky posted a link to a long post by Randall Collins, a sociology professor at U Penn: Clues to Mass Rampage... Read more
Posted on 24 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Official Nazi Policy Regarding Jazz
You may well know that Nazi Germany did not approve of jazz and took efforts to suppress it. This was depicted in a 1993 movie, Swing Kids. Read more
Posted on 24 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Which of Your Languages Do You Use for What Purpose?
Victor Mair has an interesting post at Language Log: ...a loyal Language Log reader sent in the following observation this morning: While in high school in... Read more
Posted on 23 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Demolition Exhibition @ #GVM004: Graffiti at the Transition from Industrial to...
While the human act of marking walls goes back 10s of thousands of years, aerosol graffiti is quite recent and, in its current form, is often propagated around... Read more
Posted on 22 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Salvation, Legitimacy, and Democratic Government
I've got a long-standing interest in the question of why, given that American culture has been so heavily European, Americans are more religious than... Read more
Posted on 21 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Synchronized Movement Promotes Cooperation
Paul Reddish, Ronald Fischer, Joseph Bulbulia. Let’s Dance Together: Synchrony, Shared Intentionality and Cooperation. PLoS ONE. 8(8) August 7, 2013. DOI:... Read more
Posted on 20 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pixar’s Inside Out is Confused, Alas, But Who Knows What the Future May Bring
A new Pixar film is an event, like it or not. Some are better (e.g. Ratatouille) than others. Advance word suggested Inside Out was one of the better ones, the... Read more
Posted on 19 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Laudato Si, Pond Scum
In honor of the Pope Francis' environmental encyclical I give you photos of phosphate run-off at work. The green is pretty, no? We have to own it before we can... Read more
Posted on 19 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Post WWII Japanese Literature Mostly Brainless Crap?
That seems to be what Minae Mizumura thinks. Her book, The Fall of Language in the Age of English, is reviewed by Jay Rubin, emeritus at Harvard, in The Times... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pope Francis on the Environmental Crisis
An article in the NYTimes opens: Pope Francis on Thursday called for a radical transformation of politics, economics and individual lifestyles to confront... Read more
Posted on 18 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Underwood and Sellers 2015: Beyond Narrative We Have Simulation
It is one thing to use computers to crunch data. It’s something else to use computers to simulate a phenomenon. Simulation is common in many disciplines,... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Death of Fine Art in the West Over the Last Century
Writing in The Smart Set, Michael Lind observes: "As far as I can tell, very few college-educated people under the age of 50 pay any attention to the old fine... Read more
Posted on 16 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Sky is Falling in Computer Land!
Every once in awhile I read something that demonstrates, at some length, how crazy and dysfunctional the world of computer software is. Not hardware, but... Read more
Posted on 12 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Computing with Magnetized Water Droplets
Engineers at Stanford have figured out how to compute with water droplets containing magnetized nanoparticles. Because of its universal nature, the droplet... Read more
Posted on 11 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
