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 ( 7808 )
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Frank Herbert's Dune 50 Years Later
That is to say, after 9/11. In The Guardian: Every fantasy reflects the place and time that produced it. If The Lord of the Rings is about the rise of fascism... Read more
Posted on 06 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Even Heather Mac Donald’s Welcome to Tag-Up at the Demolition Exhibition...
A defense of graffiti’s egalitarian values in an age of oligarchic excess, financial gamesmanship, and ecotastrophe Who the Eff, you ask, is Heather Mac... Read more
Posted on 06 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Inside Out: I Don't Get It
I saw Pixar's Inside Out as soon as it opened. Why? Because I love animation, I think highly of Pixar at its best, and the film was getting mad hype. I was... Read more
Posted on 05 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Jameson on Neuromancer at 30+
Neuromancer, William Gibson's cyberpunk classic, the novel for which "cyberpunk" was coined, was published in 1984. Fredric Jameson discusses it in Public Books. Read more
Posted on 03 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Recognizing Speech from Analysis of Neural Activity
Herff C, Heger D, de Pesters A, Telaar D, Brunner P, Schalk G and Schultz T (2015) Brain-to-text: decoding spoken phrases from phone representations in the... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Sacred Animal Beyond Category: Super-Dope in Layers [#GVM004]
Three layers: 1) The Animal is the top layer and is outlined in black (the artist, BTW, is from Dubai). It's painted on 2) the wall of a small semi-enclosed... Read more
Posted on 03 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
In Search of Dennett’s Free-Floating Rationales
I’ve decided to take a closer look at Dennett’s notion of free-floating rationale. It strikes me as being an unhelpful reification, but explaining just why... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Abstract Basketball, the Triangle Offense
I've watched a few basketball games, but I wouldn't recognize the triangle offense if it bit me on the posterior. It seems that many far more knowledgeable abou... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Creativity Comes from the Margins: A Lesson for Graffiti Here?
Costica Bradatan has an interesting piece in the NYtimes today, which begins and ends with the Dadaists: Change Comes From the Margins. His thesis is well-known... Read more
Posted on 01 July 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Visual Thinking
* * * * * During the late 1980s I collaborated with Richard Friedhoff on a coffee-table book on computer graphics and image processing: Visualizationi: The... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Love Evolves?
John Tierney at the NYTimes: In the 2012 survey, people were asked a version of the famous question in Christopher Marlowe’s 16th-century poem: “Who ever... Read more
Posted on 30 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Laudato Si' @3QD: Bridging the Gaps
This month I've decided to turn my 3QD slot over to my good friend Charles Cameron so that he can comment on Pope Francis' remarkable encyclical, Laudato Se'. Read more
Posted on 29 June 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
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
