JRTFB

A year ago I was in two book discussion groups. Then I dropped both. One inadvertently (kept forgetting to go) and the other one after careful consideration. There's a painful story involved, but it's not my story, so not my pain to share.

In both cases, I have run into members around town and have been pleaded with to rejoin. Why? Because I'm the only one who regularly read the book and had anything of depth to say about it. They exaggerated, but not by much.

I've missed them. I'm probably forgetting how much the lack of discussion would irk me.

Tonight I will try again. Tonight I will attend the meeting of the inadvertently dropped group. We read Hitty: Her First Hundred Years by Rachel Field. Fascinating. Discussable (is that a word?).

The other group? No, I can't go back.

Why I am knot participating

Seriously, does anyone really think this is going to give anyone any valid information? Enough to warrant a paper? A peer-reviewed paper? With like meaningful statistics and everything?

"Most memes, I'd wager, are only superficially organic: beginning small, they acquire minor prominence among low-traffic blogs before being picked up by a high-traffic one, from which many more low-traffic blogs snatch them. Contra blog-triumphal models of memetic bootstrapping, I believe most memes are—to borrow a term from Daniel Dennett's rebuttal of punctuated equilibrium—"skyhooked" into prominence by high-traffic blogs. "

Don't you just love the social science jargon?

he wants us to disseminate this totally artificial "meme" so he can say something about organic ones? As I just said a couple days ago. Memes are not equivalent to blogging writing prompts that the blogger chooses to use or ignore. The concept of meme comes from the notion of ideas as entities that spread like viruses. Who really has the ability to choose whether or not to become infected with a virus? What makes the whole notion of meme interesting is the lack of meta-knowledge of its spreading. Blog prompts that someone chooses to participate in or are not really memes, but more like fashion trends.

Also, the researcher wistfully regrets not tracking two "memes" in which he participated (or started? not sure.) Why didn't he? Because the very nature of the viral spreading of ideas is that you do not know in advance which ones will spread and which won't.

I read a lot of blogs, too many perhaps. Mostly knitting blogs but not exclusively. And get this, I never heard of those two memes. That supports my position that the spread of this artificial one has no useful information to say about real viral spread of ideas.

Ironically enough, the path upon which I heard of this artificial meme was through someone who profuses a strong dislike to the canned writing prompts that the knit blogging community calls memes. While not immune to actual memes (imo) she has been mostly immune to these artificial ones. And yet she is participating in this one. But get this: she did not follow the rules and actually talk about the project on her blog, she just links to it vaguely. An actual carrier? (But a carrier who chooses to be one, so that's a limitation in the analogy.) That's sorta interesting. But this just proves the artificiality of this "meme" since in real life she would have been the last person to have participated in any such blog writing prompt. So in real life, I possibly never would have heard about this "meme." So for the sake of science, I choose to not participate. No technorati pinging from me.

so... am I participating or not?

Where is Eugene Miya when you need him?

Not wholly satisfactory, but better than nothing

YOUR COMPLAINT HAS BEEN ACCEPTED

Thank you for filing your complaint with the National Do Not Call Registry.

Do not call complaints will be entered into a secure online database available to civil and criminal law enforcement agencies. While the FTC does not resolve individual consumer problems, your complaint will help the agency investigate the company, and could lead to law enforcement action.


Earthlink called yesterday, I told the woman I was on the Do Not Call list and she was very apologetic. Earthlink called again today and the fellow who said he was named Eric Thompson in NJ, employee number 0205 (most likely total garbage info) said, when I said this was the second call in two days so I was going to complain said "to who, your dad?" He said he had never heard of such a Do Not Call list and then he acted like he knew what it was and wanted my "reference number." His supervisor who said his name was David Thomas was just as gruff but said he would connect me with customer service, but I was disconnected instead. I filed the complaint with the FCC, but all they ask for is the number they called (to verify it is on the DNC list), the name and number (if you have it) of the Company that called and the date and time of the call. So I didn't get a chance to express the obnoxiousness of the call.


We did have a "relationship" with mindspring which is now part of earthlink, but that has been over years ago, way way more than the 18 month window allowed by law.