memeweaving

Oh frabjous world of worthy wordiness!

2005-08-02T22:43:00.000+10:00

For measuring a word's worth, I think we are both agreed that we wouldn't take that worm Wordsworth's word for it. But for seemingly worthless words, whose worth lies in their frabjous worthlessness, do consult the dictionary of worthless words. Worth seems a very worthless value when workably applied to such words, whose wordiness is but their worthiness, especially in this world of worsening wordlessness and the worrying worship of marketing. Or maybe this is all just wanton wordplay wanting wit?

The saga of the fuzzy duck continues ...

2005-06-29T21:48:00.000+10:00

'Two monsters went duck-hunting with their dogs but without success. "I know what we're doing wrong," said the first one. "What's that then?" asked the second. "We're not throwing the dogs high enough!"

...

Does this qualify among the funniest jokes in the world? Would it rate highly on the universal giggleometer?

Misguided monsters that make men seem enlightened by comparison, cruelty to animals that is lessened by an implausible context and surreality that defies logic are three factors suggesting this joke could be a hot contender for superlative humour. The only problem is, it's too short, according to one winning formula. It also features ducks and hunting, two subjects internationally deemed the most laughable of the lot.

What does that say about the human race then? That we are, at our funniest, deluded imperialists basing the fact of our existence on our capacity to destroy the natural world? Surely not. Or, on a less dramatic scale, that ducks innately inspire absurdity, fuzzy, fluffy, or otherwise?

2005-06-18T06:33:00.000+10:00

Good PR
Bad PR (make sure you read the PDF)

The truth about pot

2005-06-14T12:43:00.000+10:00

Taking the Fillet o' Fish as our inspiration, do we jump on Kevin Tracy's bandwagon? Or start our own?
Personally I'm in favour of a coffee pot revolution. The humble coffee pot has attained the status of a widely-recognized cult figure, played a part in tense negotiations on the political stage, acted as the pretext for a globally influential, not to say contentious, experiment in decriminalization, furthered workers' rights, and has been used as a community development tool in the office work environment whilst stimulating increased productivity across the developing world! A revolution is brewing, and soon will boil over ... it's time for an outpouring, and an aromatic uprising. Let's bring the pot out of the cupboard!

Meme Mining for fun and profit

2005-06-12T09:19:00.000+10:00

Meme Mining (via Jon Udell)

pneumatic post - technological dead-end

2005-06-09T20:20:00.000+10:00

The Pneumatic Post of Paris

Prague Pneumatic Post

I haven't yet found any reference to any pneumatic post networks in Sydney, although seems there were some pneumatic systems installed for getting cash from tills to the back office.

Pneumatic tubes also feature in 1984 and Brazil (which seems to be heavily influenced by 1984). One of the intriguing things about Orwell's vision of the future is that it was created in 1948, just before the great leap forward in to the information age. Orwell knew that information was important to control, but he didn't seperate information from the physical medium that information was transmitted on. So, for example, when the past is changed, that means pulping and reprinting yesterday's newspapers.

But 1948 was also the year that Shannon published his paper on A Mathematical Theory of Communication.

Even though Orwell would have been aware of the individual technologies that combine to make faxes and email possible (i.e. computers, telephones, television), it needed Shannon popularising the idea that pretty much any information can be encoded as numbers, for people to realise how easily those numbers (aka binary digits, aka bits), and thus the information being encoded, can be stored, transmitted, and modified. So in the future he extropolates from 1948, technology has gotten better at moving around the atoms that information is stored on (e.g. via pneumatic tubes), whereas if he'd been writing a decade later, he would have seen that altering information doesn't really require doing anything with atoms at all. It's all about changing magnetic fields on hard disk platters now.

Nostalgia for the forgotten futures

2005-06-07T23:26:00.000+10:00

The Dead Media project. Via Tom Jennings, creator of some pretty impressive dead media himself.

random readings

2005-06-01T09:31:00.000+10:00

Dr Rugby's latest screed. When you're hot, everybody wants a piece...

how to give an receive criticism (via Intertwingly)

Six ducks, two cats and a woman

2005-05-30T23:29:00.000+10:00

Bath Ducks
Originally uploaded by Doctor of What Exactly.

Perhaps malapropism merely reflects a different way of perceiving reality on the part of the malapropist? For more scintillating details, see the third comment attached to the post 'Readings for today' ... and check out these deeply thought-provoking images for the rest of the aforementioned menagerie.

Feeling Blue

2005-05-30T21:18:00.000+10:00

Dr Rugby drowns his sorrows, starts thinking about the super 14.

Readings for today

2005-05-30T09:33:00.000+10:00

Why smart people defend bad ideas.

The Changing Scale : A look at the development of temperament with emphasis on the Renaissance.

The Meme Weavers' Terms of Reference

2005-05-28T10:44:00.000+10:00

A quick search in the habitually useful dictonary will reveal this entry for the theme of our blog:

meme

/meem/ [By analogy with "gene"]

Richard Dawkins's term for an idea considered as a replicator, especially with the connotation that memes parasitise people into propagating them much as viruses do. Memes can be considered the unit of cultural evolution. Ideas can evolve in a way analogous to biological evolution. Some ideas survive better than others; ideas can mutate through, for example, misunderstandings; and two ideas can recombine to produce a new idea involving elements of each parent idea.

The term is used especially in the phrase "meme complex" denoting a group of mutually supporting memes that form an organised belief system, such as a religion. However, "meme" is often misused to mean "meme complex". Use of the term connotes acceptance of the idea that in humans (and presumably other tool- and language-using sophonts) cultural evolution by selection of adaptive ideas has become more important than biological evolution by selection of hereditary traits. Hackers find this idea congenial for tolerably obvious reasons.

Now, dear Jonno,

Would you say that, by weaving memes in this very random tapestry of ours that is to take arbitrary shape over the next while, we are attempting a meme complex?

And is it our expectation that our memes will parasitically attach themselves to each other and also to the minds of our readers, propagating and mutating like viruses, a global epidemic being the ultimate aim?

Or ... are we just going to write about whatever lends itself to conversation, presenting our miscellaneous musings in the guise of memes?

Hmmm ...

I await your response as the other half of the memeweaving dyad, for right now I expect you are busy laying paths in your garden and watching things grow ...

Another day, another dollar...

2005-05-26T17:06:00.000+10:00

Another working day is at an end... another evening about to begin, punctuated by the anticipation of memeweaving with Jonno...

Blogging and weaving

2005-05-26T15:52:00.000+10:00

What a fine day it is to go blogging and weaving,
Making up memes and sending them leaving...

Once, we used to dance....

2005-05-26T15:04:00.000+10:00

Every night. We'd go dancing. But now, you never home, you always with your friends. you go out, and you go weaving.