The Overweening Generalist is largely about people who like to read fat, weighty "difficult" books - or thin, profound ones - and how I/They/We stand in relation to the hyper-acceleration of digital social-media-tized culture. It is not a neo-Luddite attack on digital media; it is an attempt to negotiate with it, and to subtly make claims for the role of generalist intellectual types in the scheme of things.
Saturday, May 21, 2011
Robert Sapolsky On Us And Our Cousins
This is one of the most eloquent talks I've ever seen on humans and how they are alike and different from their other-animal cousins. By the end your socks ought to have been knocked off, out the window and never to be worn again. Sapolsky is probably the funniest of all the Third Culture thinkers, and I cherish all of his books. I hope you enjoy it. It's less than 38 minutes long, and pretty darned spellbinding, to my eyes/ears. 2009 graduation at Stanford. The dean talks for about five minutes. Sapolsky is introduced around 4:50. (If you've ever wanted to study neurobiology via audio or DVD, Sapolsky has a knockout course available here.)
Well, I can't listen to this right now. Perhaps I will someday. Perhaps soon. I have not read Sapolsky. I do want to comment on every installment of Overweening Generalist. A few years ago I started commenting on every new installment, but I missed some of these early ones. Vote for Pedro.
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