>Did an experiment like this last night. I went round to Simon from work's
>house- first time I'd visited. He and his girlfriend are cooking mushroom
>pakoras, and the batter isn't thick enough, so it falls off the pakoras as
>they fry. I wonder over to the fryer, out of my tiny skull on booze, and
>drizzle some free batter onto a frying pakora. Without me actually saying a
>word, Simon (my friend from work) picks up on the idea and starts doing the
>same.
A funny story - all the more so as I have no idea what a "pakora" is!
>Because I was a bit trollied I was doing good evangelical work for the
>Church of Virus, I admit. BUT I did have my views on what constitutes a meme
>shaken up a bit.
Yep. Memetic transfer doesn't even require language. I made this point
somewhere in the Lexicon - we learn a lot of behaviors by mimicry alone.
Monkey see, monkey do. We're very foolish if we think, just because we
drive cars and write sonnets and sing operas, that we're not still monkeys
underneath.
Glenn
"He can walk like an ape, talk like an ape
Do all that monkey can do
God made Man
But the Monkey-Man supplied the glue"
--Mark Mothersbaugh of Devo,
"Are We Not Men?"
-----------------------Glenn Grant-----------------------
<pawn@cam.org>
Web: <http://helios.physics.utoronto.ca:8080/ggrant.html>
"That which does not kill us makes us stranger."
-- Trevor Goodchild