Random burblings from a stuffed up head...
Got my car back eventually. Thanks to those who wished her a speedy recovery. It was gone 6:15pm by the time I got her home. I need to take it easy on her over the next few days, so the car doctor tells me...
Anyway, I phoned the office and told them and they said there were no leads left to go on, so I get the evening off too... I phoned Jason, the branch manager and explained it to him, and he just said it was ok as long as I get a deal tomorrow...
Quoted from whatis.com:
A meme is an idea that is passed on from one human generation to another. It's the cultural equivalent of a gene, the basic element of biological inheritance. The term was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins speculated that human beings have an adaptive mechanism that other species don't have. In addition to genetic inheritance with its possibilities and limitations, humans, said Dawkins, can pass their ideas from one generation to the next, allowing them to surmount challenges more flexibly and more quickly than through the longer process of genetic adaptation and selection.
Examples of memes might include the idea of God; the importance of the individual as opposed to group importance; the belief that the environment can to some extent be controlled; or that technologies can create an electronically interconnected world community.
Today, the word is sometimes applied ironically to ideas deemed to be of passing value. Dawkins himself described such short-lived ideas as memes that would have a short life in the meme pool.
Of course, in the LJ Community, a meme is one of those quizes that we all like to post from time to time and that we all seem to copy from each other. The name is appropriate because the idea behind each quiz gets passed from person to person, rather like a benign virus. In such a way, it is effectively self-replicating and will only die out when everyone in the comunity has done it who has any interest in doing it. Some, of course, recur from time to time.
But this doesn't explain why I like them.
Well, first of all, I love the idea of them. Someone creates the meme on (say) OKCupid. They do it for thereself, and post the results. All their friends have a go and post the results. Then friends of friends, and so on. In this way the meme behaves rather like that old fashioned computer program called "life", that used a set of very simple rules to generate complex "living" patterns in accordance with chaos theory. The pattern may seem to stagnate at times, but then may generate a new burst of life in a whole new area suddenly.
So it is with a meme. It would be fascinating to be able to track the progress of a given meme across the whole of the LJ community.
The other reason I like memes is, quite simply, because they let me learn interesting facts about my friends, and let them learn interesting facts about me, that one would never, ever, think to ask! And i don't just mean the questionaire type of meme. Even the silliest of memes can teach you something about a person. For example, if I posted a meme entitled "What war film are you" what would that tell you about me? The most obvious thing is that I like war films! (hmm.... may have to see if that one exists, and if not...).
Anyway, that's enough about that, I think.
I need to decide what to eat tonight. Trouble is, I've been procrastinating thye washing up. That means if I want to eat anything I have to actually wash what I want to cook it in, eat it off and eat it with, first. I'll probably just carry on snacking.... Until about a minute ago I'd totally forgotten to do any laundry too. Fortunately, that requires a lot less effort on my part. I can just stuff the clothes into the machine, add soap and let it get on with it. If only there was room in my kitchen for a dish-washer...
I was begining to feel yucky again too, so I popped a couple more pills.
Why is there never anything worth watching on TV when I'm home on my own and Connie is at work? Oh well, at least you guys will get that next book review a bit earlier...
Anyway, I phoned the office and told them and they said there were no leads left to go on, so I get the evening off too... I phoned Jason, the branch manager and explained it to him, and he just said it was ok as long as I get a deal tomorrow...
Quoted from whatis.com:
A meme is an idea that is passed on from one human generation to another. It's the cultural equivalent of a gene, the basic element of biological inheritance. The term was coined in 1976 by Richard Dawkins in his book The Selfish Gene. Dawkins speculated that human beings have an adaptive mechanism that other species don't have. In addition to genetic inheritance with its possibilities and limitations, humans, said Dawkins, can pass their ideas from one generation to the next, allowing them to surmount challenges more flexibly and more quickly than through the longer process of genetic adaptation and selection.
Examples of memes might include the idea of God; the importance of the individual as opposed to group importance; the belief that the environment can to some extent be controlled; or that technologies can create an electronically interconnected world community.
Today, the word is sometimes applied ironically to ideas deemed to be of passing value. Dawkins himself described such short-lived ideas as memes that would have a short life in the meme pool.
Of course, in the LJ Community, a meme is one of those quizes that we all like to post from time to time and that we all seem to copy from each other. The name is appropriate because the idea behind each quiz gets passed from person to person, rather like a benign virus. In such a way, it is effectively self-replicating and will only die out when everyone in the comunity has done it who has any interest in doing it. Some, of course, recur from time to time.
But this doesn't explain why I like them.
Well, first of all, I love the idea of them. Someone creates the meme on (say) OKCupid. They do it for thereself, and post the results. All their friends have a go and post the results. Then friends of friends, and so on. In this way the meme behaves rather like that old fashioned computer program called "life", that used a set of very simple rules to generate complex "living" patterns in accordance with chaos theory. The pattern may seem to stagnate at times, but then may generate a new burst of life in a whole new area suddenly.
So it is with a meme. It would be fascinating to be able to track the progress of a given meme across the whole of the LJ community.
The other reason I like memes is, quite simply, because they let me learn interesting facts about my friends, and let them learn interesting facts about me, that one would never, ever, think to ask! And i don't just mean the questionaire type of meme. Even the silliest of memes can teach you something about a person. For example, if I posted a meme entitled "What war film are you" what would that tell you about me? The most obvious thing is that I like war films! (hmm.... may have to see if that one exists, and if not...).
Anyway, that's enough about that, I think.
I need to decide what to eat tonight. Trouble is, I've been procrastinating thye washing up. That means if I want to eat anything I have to actually wash what I want to cook it in, eat it off and eat it with, first. I'll probably just carry on snacking.... Until about a minute ago I'd totally forgotten to do any laundry too. Fortunately, that requires a lot less effort on my part. I can just stuff the clothes into the machine, add soap and let it get on with it. If only there was room in my kitchen for a dish-washer...
I was begining to feel yucky again too, so I popped a couple more pills.
Why is there never anything worth watching on TV when I'm home on my own and Connie is at work? Oh well, at least you guys will get that next book review a bit earlier...