I couldn't keep up with the hectic two post-a-day schedule, so I'm only doing one today, and since my brain is burned out, it's going to be an off-topic one. I'd like to turn to the subject of memes for a second. Apparently, in the world of bloggers, the term meme has come to mean a formulaic type of post where you answer a bunch of funny personal questions about yourself. I find this a bit annoying because the word meme, as originally defined, describes something interesting and useful, even if it isn't the most scientific thing in the world. The things you see on the internet are templates, or maybe ideas, but I find it hard to see them as memes. For one thing, they aren't "competing" with anything else in terms of mindspace. There is room for them all, so they lose the analogy with genes. I might agree that the concept of "a list of items as a way to fill blog space and learn interesting things about yourself and others" is a meme, but any particular implementation of that idea seems like it would not be a meme in and of itself, based on the original definition that Dawkins gave: (from Wikipedia) a unit of cultural information transferable from one mind to another...Examples of memes are tunes, catch-phrases, clothes fashions, ways of making pots or of building arches.
Anyway, I've mostly given up on this since things mean what we decide they mean. I guess if you can't beat 'em...
5 things I've never eaten for breakfast
- Tires
- Acorns
- Gravity
- Shark
- Creosote