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
-
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 ( 7809 )
-
Brain Size: African Elephants and Us
Why are humans so smart? Is it the sheer number of neurons we have, or the global architecture of those neurons? The brain of the African elephant is three time... Read more
Posted on 12 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
the Heart of AlphaGo
From Michael Nielson, Quanta Magazine, Is AlphaGo Really Such a Big Deal? To begin, AlphaGo took 150,000 games played by good human players and used an... Read more
Posted on 09 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Evolutionary Synthesis and Integrated Anthropology
The Extended Evolutionary Synthesis, Ethnography, and the Human Niche: Toward an Integrated Anthropology Agustin Fuentes Agustin Fuentes is Professor in the... Read more
Posted on 09 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Toward a Fan-Based Research Collaboratory
Cross posted at The Valve Despite some reservations about fan scholarship -- e.g. I've seen pointless edit wars at Wikipedia pros are adept at pointless... Read more
Posted on 08 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: This and That
Posted on 08 April 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Two Puzzles Concerning the Self
A couple years ago I posted about how Plato confused the operations of his nervous system – its capacity to extract ‘canonical’ forms of objects from the flux o... Read more
Posted on 07 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Geoffrey Hinton on Deep Learning, Go, and the Future of AI
Geoffrey Hinton is the one who invented so-called "deep learning", the technique that allowed a computer to beat Lee Sedol, a South Korean grandmaster, at Go.... Read more
Posted on 05 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
We Live in a Culture of Fear
Barry Glassner. The Culture of Fear: Why Americans are Afraid of the Wrong Things. Basic Books 1999. From the introduction, p. Read more
Posted on 05 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
"Not Like Those Guys"
From a Paris Review interview with Sarah Thomason, an expert on what happens when different languages collide: It’s not as if people come into contact and one... Read more
Posted on 01 April 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: First Blossoms of Spring, 11th Street, Hoboken
Posted on 01 April 2016
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
-
Donald Trump: The Empty Vessel
Martin Gurri on Donald Trump:A meticulous study of Donald Trump’s biography, statements, and policy “positions” will reveal no hint of political direction.... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is Universal Mistrust the Moral Foundation of This Stage of Capitalist Society?
Over at Crooked Timber Corey Robin has a post, The Bernie Sanders Moment: Brought to you by the generation that has no future. Here's the first paragraph:Last... Read more
Posted on 31 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Speech-to-sound Illusion and Repetition as the Basis of Music
Described by Elizabeth Hellmuth Margulis in an article in Aeon:In fact, repetition is so powerfully linked with musicality that its application can... Read more
Posted on 30 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Ricky Gervais Interview with Garry Shandling
Amy Wallace's GQ profile of Garry Shandling mentions a very awkward interview he did with Ricky Gervais. I bumped onto the interview on YouTube and have linked... Read more
Posted on 30 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Musical Creativity in the Brain
Musical Creativity “Revealed” in Brain Structure: Interplay between Motor, Default Mode, and Limbic NetworksDavid M. Bashwiner, Christopher J. Wertz, Ranee A.... Read more
Posted on 29 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
This is Your Brain on Freestylin'
Neural Correlates of Lyrical Improvisation: An fMRI Study of Freestyle RapSiyuan Liu, Ho Ming Chow, Yisheng Xu, Michael G. Erkkinen, Katherine E. Swett,... Read more
Posted on 29 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Skateboarding as Ecosystem
From California Sunday Magazine:Because of skateboarding’s quirks, the media plays an outsize role in the sport — if you can even call it that. Read more
Posted on 28 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seriously as an Actor: Garry Shandling Profile from GQ 2010
by Amy Wallace – "He’s a boxer, a Buddhist, a hoops junkie, and a kind of Yoda to every funny person born since 1965 (Sandler, Silverman, Apatow, Gervais,... Read more
Posted on 28 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Studies in Human-Thing Entanglement
This 2016 book by Ian Hodder, Dunlevie Family Professor and Professor of Anthropology, Stanford University, might have been subtitled, "An Approach to... Read more
Posted on 27 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Garry Shandling to Jerry Seinfeld on Expressing Your Spirit
Garry Shandling was on Seinfeld's Comedians and Cars Getting Coffee, season 7, episode 4. They war talking about David Brenner, who'd just died. Jerry remarks... Read more
Posted on 25 March 2016 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
