Bbenzon
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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 ( 6676 )
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Horse Meat? Isn't Culture Peculiar?
What's so scandalous about horse meat?And at a time of immense strains brought on by the euro crisis and Continentwide austerity — when new, anti-European... Read more
Posted on 10 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Seeing Things: Anthropomorphism and Animation
From the The Thoughtful Animal blog at Scientific American:Under certain conditions, even 2D shapes can be interpreted as animate social agents rather than... Read more
Posted on 09 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Hubley on Animation
Michael Sporn has reprinted a 1946 article about animation written by John Hubley and Zachary Schwartz. Both had had distinguished careers in animation by that... Read more
Posted on 07 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
History is a Tricky Business
Figuring out what happened–mere who, what, where, and when, forget about why–can be a tricky business. The Sand Creek Massacre is a case in point. We know... Read more
Posted on 06 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Busy Bee Brain
With brains in the news these days (for example, all the hoopla about the Brain Activity Map project) I've decided to republish this old post suggesting that th... Read more
Posted on 05 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Homunculus Talk About the Brain Doesn't Work
Colin McGinn takes on Ray Kurzweil:Contemporary brain science is thus rife with unwarranted homunculus talk, presented as if it were sober established science.... Read more
Posted on 05 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Interning in the Creative Class
Smells like indentured servitude:The recession has been no friend to entry-level positions, where hundreds of applicants vie for unpaid internships at which the... Read more
Posted on 04 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Was Wittgenstein Right?
And was he a de facto pluralist?Writing the The New York Times, Paul Horwich boils Wittgenstein down to this:Philosophical problems typically arise from the... Read more
Posted on 04 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Neuroscience in the Popular Press
From The Guardian:Psychologist Cliodhna O'Connor and her colleagues investigated how brain science was reported across 10 years of newspaper coverage. Read more
Posted on 03 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Direct Brain-to-Brain Communication in Rats?
Reported in the NYTimes:In an experiment that sounds straight out of a science fiction movie, a Duke neuroscientist has connected the brains of two rats in... Read more
Posted on 01 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Long-Distance By Train
From New Orleans to Los Angeles by train, and interesting story in the NYTimes:The cliché, familiar to air travel, of the nosy passenger who makes pestering... Read more
Posted on 01 March 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Secrets of Pink Elephants Revealed
This is the second most-popular post on the blog. That, I assume, is because it's about an amazing and enigmatic bit of animation. Some day I'll return to it an... Read more
Posted on 28 February 2013 CULTURE, ENTERTAINMENT, MOVIES, PHILOSOPHY -
Chef Watson
IBM's Watson has graduated from Jeopardy. Yes, there's medical diagnostics, business analytics, and the like, but there's also baking.In San Jose, I.B.M. Read more
Posted on 28 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
An Acrobatic Machine
Here's an amazing video. Two quadracopters toss a pole back and forth:What's a quadracopter? A small flying vehicle propelled by four spinning propellers. Once... Read more
Posted on 23 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Physics is in Trouble: Restart!
Microelectronics pioneer and Caltech emeritus professor Carver Mead says that physics has failed to deliver on the revolution that started early in the 20th... Read more
Posted on 22 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Music and Movement
A precis of "Music and movement share a dynamic structure that supports universal expressions of emotion" by Beau Sievers, Larry Polansky, Michael Casey, and... Read more
Posted on 22 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Why I Love Disney’s Nutcracker Suite
The Nutcracker Suite episode in Walt Disney's Fantasia is one of my favorite pieces of film and, I believe, one of the most beautify films ever made. Whatever... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
How It All Works and the Problem of God
Thomas Nagel has recently published a slim volume, Mind and Cosmos, that's kicking up a fuss because it apparently gives and aid comfort to creationists,... Read more
Posted on 15 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Artificial Retina
From the NY Times:The Food and Drug Administration on Thursday approved the first treatment to give limited vision to people who are blind, involving a... Read more
Posted on 14 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Pigeon Navigation: The Sound of Distant Waves
Pigeons live in a different world, from The Economist:Pigeons form a far richer picture of the world than a person can manage, through three senses unavailable... Read more
Posted on 04 February 2013 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY