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 ( 7606 )
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Children and Adults Do Not View Love, Trust, Popularity, and Leadership as...
Wei, K., Yang, F. (2025). Love Doesn’t Run Out: Children and Adults Do Not View Social Resources as Inherently Zero-Sum. Social Psychological and Personality... Read more
Posted on 11 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Model Trains!
When I was quite young, perhaps five or six, I got a model train for Christmas. An O-gauge freight train with a steam engine and a few cars, made by Lionel. Read more
Posted on 10 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonata Describes a Photo of Miniature Castle Ruins Among Reeds
Any human looking at this photo could see instantly that they were looking at a model of castle ruins. Not Claude 3.5 Sonata. Its initial reaction would be... Read more
Posted on 10 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Friday Fotos: Let's Dance
Posted on 10 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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Modes for Interacting with LLMs (ChatGPT and Claude 3.5)
Since the release of ChatGPT in late November of 2022 I have logged hundreds of hours interacting with LLMs. Most of those hours have been with ChatGPT, but... Read more
Posted on 10 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Not Outa' the Woods Yet
Posted on 09 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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In Which I Ask Claude 3.5 About Sexual Shame and Confusion in Humans
As far as I know, there is no standard account of why humans find sexuality so problematic. It’s not as though no one’s thought to investigate it. They have. Read more
Posted on 09 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Colt Clark and the Quarantine Kids Drive the Beatle's Car
From the YouTube page: Hey guys! IT’S BEATLES WEDNESDAY! We haven’t said that in a while! One of our New Year’s resolutions is to get back to Beatles Wednesdays. Read more
Posted on 09 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Review of John Barth's Lost in the Funhouse
William Benzon, From the Passéd Jaws of Giles, Review of John Barth. Lost in the Funhouse. The Johns Hopkins News-Letter, p. 9, November 15, 1968. Read more
Posted on 09 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
A Classical Musician Who Improvises? Who'd Have Thunk? [Gabriela Montero]
But you know, all this comes completely naturally to any half-way decent jazz musician. So much of the "gee whiz" aspect of this conversation is rather... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Coffee, Thru the Window, to Sinatra Drive [Turning Point, hHoboken]
Posted on 08 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
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In Which Claude 3.5 Discovers Syntax, Then Takes a Left onto the Holodeck Where...
I’m going to give you a sentence where I’ve substituted an underscore (____) for one or more words. I want you to make a grammatical sentence by putting a word... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
The Beatings Will Continue Until Morale Improves [Forest of Jumbled Thoughts...
Our new paper generalizing the chain, circle and graph of thought prompting strategies--that unleashes the hidden power of LLMs (and graduate students). Hope... Read more
Posted on 08 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
NVIDIA Puts Grace Blackwell on Every Desk and at Every AI Developer’s Fingertips
NVIDIA Press Release: NVIDIA Project DIGITS With New GB10 Superchip Debuts as World’s Smallest AI Supercomputer Capable of Running 200B-Parameter Models... Read more
Posted on 07 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Claude 3.5 Sonnet Describes the Main Concourse in New York City's Grand Central...
What’s this scene? This is Grand Central Terminal's Main Concourse in New York City, one of the world's most iconic railway terminals. Read more
Posted on 07 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Report Card: New Savanna and Academia.edu, End of 2024
Time to report on traffic here at the Savanna and over at Academia.edu. As of Jan. 1, 2025, this is the traffic at New Savanna over the past year. Now look at... Read more
Posted on 07 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Beyond Prediction: Yes, We Need to Work on Societal Resilience, but We Need to...
Just around the corner from here Malcolm Murray has a nice article in 3 Quarks Daily, O3 and the Death of Prediction. Here’s some excerpts from his article: A... Read more
Posted on 07 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Listening to "Break on Through" in the Old Music Museum and Analyzing and...
This is deeply weird. Just set aside the fact that it’s weird to watch someone else reacting to music. I heard this song when it first came out. I don't think m... Read more
Posted on 06 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Doctors Need a Transition Ritual to Get into “medical Head”
Stephen G. Flynn, Raymond S. Park, Pete G. Kovatsis and Anupam B. Jena, The Hack Doctors Should Take From Pop Stars and Quarterbacks, NYTimes, Jan. 6, 2025. Read more
Posted on 06 January 2025 CULTURE, PHILOSOPHY, SOCIETY -
Three Realizations of White (flowers)
Posted on 06 January 2025
CULTURE,
PHILOSOPHY,
SOCIETY
