Bbenzon
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 ( 6824 )
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Hearing the Text Changes the Experience
Gregory Jusdanis, one of the more astute bloggers at Stanford's Arcade, has an interesting post on the experience of listening to an audiobook of Mark Twain's... Read more
Posted on 28 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Moretti's Periodization
Anyone who's read Franco Moretti's Graphs, Maps, Trees with care is likely to wonder about the periodizations of the novels in the first section, "Graphs. Read more
Posted on 28 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Down to the Bay: A Jersey City Photo Essay
I’ve been to the southern end of Liberty State Park many times, and taken many shots of the Verrazano Narrows Bridge from there, and Port Liberté too. Read more
Posted on 27 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
JC Future 3: Art Surge
A couple of weeks ago Dale “Bright Moments” Hardman had a link on his Facebook page to something called Art Surge, and indicated that he thought it was pretty... Read more
Posted on 27 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Welcome to Wayquay's
This is an interesting environment to work in. I do most of my shooting outdoors. This space – a second-hand store a friend runs on weekends – is thus very... Read more
Posted on 27 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Stages in the Evolution of Music
This essay originally appeared in Journal of Social and Evolutionary Systems 16(3): 273-296, 1993. You can now download it from my SSRN page. Read more
Posted on 26 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Primer on Neural Nets
Michael Nielsen is writing a book on neural nets and deep learning and he's posting chapters to the web. You can access the first chapter here, which uses the... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Platonic Philosophical Ascent for Dummies
When I first saw this lady I thought she was real. I also wondered what she was doing and why she stood so still for so long.Then I wised up. "She's not real,"... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Hays Tradition in Cognition
In scientific prognostication we have a condition analogous to a fact of archery–the farther back you are able to draw your longbow, the farther ahead you can... Read more
Posted on 26 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Crisis in a High-Tech Start-Up: A Case of Collective Action
I’m interested in collective creativity, in how creative activity in lodged in groups. I’ve explored this topic in a number of recent posts, perhaps most... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Diane Disney Miller, RIP
From Mike Barrier's site:She died yesterday [Nov. 19] at the age of 79, as everyone knows by now, after suffering a fall in late September that left her in a... Read more
Posted on 25 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Free Jazz: A William Parker Workshop
On Wednesday 13 February 2002 I attended a workshop conducted by William Parker. It was held in downtown Manhattan at 228 W. Broadway. Read more
Posted on 25 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Light and Relationships, an Ontology
Posted on 25 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Poverty of Conceptual Blending for Literary Analysis
Not so long ago I critiqued Lakoff and Turner’s analysis of “To a Solitary Disciple” in terms of conceptual metaphor. I now want to do the same for conceptual... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Another Nail in the Coffin of the Idea of Lone Genius
From "A Little Society", by Casey N. Cep, boldface mine:Despite Charlotte Brontë’s insistence that her sister Emily wrote Wuthering Heights, the rumor that thei... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Conjunctions
This conjunction spans, what? 240,000 miles and the ontological gap between the living and the non-living.This one spans the distance between Hoboken and Midtow... Read more
Posted on 24 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Origin of Golf, a Just-So Story Involving Shepherds and Pebbles
‘Pleasures are more beneficial than duties, because, like the quality of mercy, they are not strained, and they are twice blessed.’ – R. L. S. Read more
Posted on 24 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Tip: Create a Your Own Randomizer
Whoever you are, whatever you do, if you’re serious about it, then you need a RANDOMIZER, some routine that regularly bumps you into unexpected stuff. Read more
Posted on 23 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Rise and Fall of Steven Fitzhugh Regensburg, Horn Maker to the ADA
As you know, Steve Regensburg was a drop-out from Harvard business school when he got the idea of combining bits and pieces of used plumbing with military... Read more
Posted on 23 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cognitivism for the Critic, in Four & a Parable
I published this in The Valve in March of 2010. It's a guide on how to get on board with the computational thinking that's the driver in the so-called "cognitiv... Read more
Posted on 22 November 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY