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 ( 7613 )
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The Mind is Computational, in an Extended Sense
From a post, Understanding (Artificial) Intelligence, by Ali Minai : AI, invented by computer scientists, lived long with the conceit that the mind was "just... Read more
Posted on 21 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Cultural Evolution: Literary History, Popular Music, Cultural Beings,...
Another working paper (title above): Academia.edu:... Read more
Posted on 21 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Issues in Cultural Evolution 2.2: ‘Cultural Genes’ Are Out There in the World
I think the thing to do at this point is post a version of my own view of cultural evolution, but one that skips the terminology that I’ve recently adopted. Read more
Posted on 20 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why Are We Crippling Our Kids?
Jane Brody in the NYTimes: Experts say there is no more crime against children by strangers today — and probably significantly less — than when I was growing... Read more
Posted on 20 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
What is It About This Strange Little Cucumber?
This is one of my most popular photos at Flickr, with over a 1000 views: Why? Yes, the cucumber has a strange shape (for a cucumber). But it's not that... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Issues in Cultural Evolution 2.1: Micro Evolution, Dawkins and Memes
It’s time I get back to my attempt to lay out a map of approaches to cultural evolution in a limited number of posts, say a half dozen or even less (in my... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rereading Goethe’s Faust 6: Allegory Alert
At the moment I’m reading an article about the US Military by James Fallows. It has no particular connection with Faust beyond the fact the Goethe himself... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Early-modern Europe as Backwater
Krugman is fishing for something else, but this observation struck me: But was the Mughal state sui generis? Not really. It flourished in an era of “gunpowder... Read more
Posted on 19 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dan Dennett on 'thinking Machines'
This year's Edge Question is, alas, "What do you think about machines that think?" "Alas" because I have something of a professional obligation to keep up with... Read more
Posted on 18 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Our Rage for Order and Coherence
A quickie, just to get it out there so I can see it. I have long believed that a need for order, coherence, patterns, is intrinsic to being human. Read more
Posted on 18 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Dating the Anthropocene
Andrew Revkin in the NYTimes: ...a formal decision by the International Commission on Stratigraphy is years away. In the meantime, a subsidiary body, the... Read more
Posted on 18 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Is the World Intelligible?
Rick Searle has some very interesting paragraphs at the end of his review of Tyler Cowen's Average is Over (bolded emphasis mine): For Cowen much of science in... Read more
Posted on 17 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Los Alamos, Home of the A-bomb
I didn't take these photographs. They're from a Flickr collection posted by Los Alamos National Laboratory, where the first atomic bomb was built and tested... Read more
Posted on 16 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Rhythm Changes: Notes on Some Genetic Elements in Musical Culture
That's the title of another working paper. You may download it from Academia.edu (HERE) or from Social Science Research Network (HERE). Read more
Posted on 15 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Making of a Master Musician in Hindustani Classical Music
Sumana Ramanan writes about Ulhas Kashalkar, a singer, in Caravan. Here's a passage about his training with Gajananbuwa Joshi, vocalist and violinist, and a... Read more
Posted on 15 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Uncertainty, Anxiety, and Torture
The New York Review of Books has an interview with Mark Danner, who has been following “the use of torture by the US government since the first years after... Read more
Posted on 14 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Latour and Culture
Latour has written a lot, of which I’ve read only a fraction, not even a quarter, perhaps not even a tenth: We Have Not Been Modern, Reassembling the Social:... Read more
Posted on 14 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Siri, Getting to Know You
A recent study found that computers can judge your personality based on your pattern of Facebook "likes": In the study, a computer could more accurately... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Variations on a Moon Shot
Here's photo of the Moon that I took the other day. Nothing special, just a nice clean shot of the Moon in sky empty of clouds, contrails, birds, helicopters,... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Containers: A New and Better Kind of Code?
From the NYTimes: Docker is at the forefront of a new way to create software, called containers. These software containers are frequently compared with... Read more
Posted on 13 January 2015 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY
