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 ( 7846 )
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Ted "no Whiteboard" Underwood on Digital Humanities at LARB
Melissa Dinsman interviews Ted Underwood in the Los Angelis Review of Books, #12 in her interview series on digital humanities. Read more
Posted on 11 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Early Jazz Education 2: Maynard, Miles, and Diz
In my post about Rafael Mendez I mentioned how he directed my attention to jazz. I loved the material he did with the “Spanish tinge,” as Jelly Roll Morton... Read more
Posted on 10 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
My Early Jazz Education: From the Firehouse to Louis Armstrong
I don’t remember just how I first became interested in jazz. There was always music in the house, but it was mostly classical music. My father had a particular... Read more
Posted on 08 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rafael Mendez: Passion, Variety, Technical Skill
Rafael Mendez was my first musical hero. I don’t know when I first learned about him, probably when I was 11, maybe 12. In the next half dozen years or so I... Read more
Posted on 05 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
DNA Multiplexing: Two 'layers' of Information
The first 'layer' (my scare quotes) is in the sequence of bases (G, A, T and C) in the double helix. Since the mid 1980s, it has been hypothesized that there... Read more
Posted on 04 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is David Ferrucci a Neoliberal Computationalist? Some Notes on Ideology,...
I am in the process of revising my post, Golumbia Fails to Understand Chomsky, Computation, and Computational Linguistics, and reposting it as a downloadable... Read more
Posted on 01 August 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coleridge's "Limbo" – Another Ring Composition?
While wandering in cyberspace, as I am sometimes wont to do, I came across a most curious, and thus alluring, blog: Samuel Taylor Bloggeridge. Read more
Posted on 31 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
3 Approaches to Machine Intelligence: Classic AI, Simple Neural Networks, and...
Jeff Hawkins Donna Dubinsky (Numenta), Classic AI: For many problems, researchers concluded that a computer had to have access to large amounts of knowledge i... Read more
Posted on 31 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Descriptive Tables for Tezuka’s Metropolis, A Note on Descriptive Method
I've added another working paper, title above. It contains information supplementary to my article, Tezuka’s Metropolis: A Modern Japanese Fable about Art and... Read more
Posted on 29 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos, Friday Edition (!): Along the Hudson River, Hoboken, NJ
Posted on 29 July 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Why Chomsky’s Ideas Were So Popular
I am in the process of revising my post, Golumbia Fails to Understand Chomsky, Computation, and Computational Linguistics, and reposting it as a downloadable... Read more
Posted on 29 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Reply to Lindley Darden on Abstraction
Back in 1987 Lindley Darden published “Viewing the History of Science as Compiled Abstraction,” AI Magazine, Volume 8, Number 2, Summer 1987. Read more
Posted on 28 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Review of Rita Felski, The Limits of Criticique
Under review: Rita Felski. The Limits of Critique. University of Chicago Press, 2015. Dan Weiskopf in ArtsATL, July 5, 2016: Felski documents extensively how... Read more
Posted on 27 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Potential of the World's Tribes, Big, Small, and New
Sitting in Sri Lanka, recently at war with itself, Ram Manikkalingam contemplates Europe and the rest of the world in 3 Quarks Daily: Meanwhile, (with perhaps... Read more
Posted on 26 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ralph Nader Endorses We Need a Department of Peace
Photo courtesy of The Lakeville Journal. Meanwhile, in the Twitterersphere: @hipbonegamer @bbenzon @zenpundit I like what George Will said about this years... Read more
Posted on 26 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Peace Now! War is Not a Natural Disaster
Over at 3 Quarks Daily my current post reproduces a section of a slender book I’ve put together with the help of Charlie Keil and Becky Liebman. Read more
Posted on 25 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Google in the Cloud, is the Tethersphere Humanity's Future?
Amazon is 1st in cloud services, microsoft is second, and Google is playing catch-up ball, according to the NYTimes. So Google is ramping up. How will that go? Read more
Posted on 25 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos, Sunday Edition: GVX 2016
Posted on 24 July 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Dana Boyd at Davos: We Have Met the Enemy and He R Us?
Dana Boyd, reporting from Davos earlier this year: Yet, what I struggled with the most wasn’t the sheer excess of Silicon Valley in showcasing its value but... Read more
Posted on 23 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
To Russia, with Love
I've just been looking at my stats and notice that, for some reason, I've recently been getting a lot of view from Russia. Here's the breakdown: Russia USA Mont... Read more
Posted on 22 July 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
