Errata

Science And Politics: Evolution/Creation Discussions on DailyKos: "Another Dawkins influence that holds sway in the blogosphere, including on dKos, is the love of memes. Now, I have no problem with the word 'meme' per se - everybody knows what it means. The problem is with memetics. Memetics is attempting to explain the spreading of ideas by using models from evolutionary theory. Cultural evolution, including the evolution of language, has been the focus of much thinking lately. The best and the brightest philosophers of science concentrated on it because they wanted, oh so much wanted this to work. They were salivating over the prospect of cultural evolution and memetics being valid and useful tools. Bill Whimsatt (U. Chicago) and Bob Brandon (Duke), two of the most brilliant (and rightfully revered) philosophers of science alive today especially wanted this project to work and have spent much time dissecting Boyd and Richerson and Cavalli-Sforza and other works published on the topic. And, in the end, those two guys published the most forceful and conclusive refutations of the field. What they realized was that the differences betwen biological and cultural evolution were so great that the theory did not work. It was not predictive, i.e., the theory had to be tweaked for every new piece of data and never predicted any piece of new data. The best description for cultural evolution is something similar to viral epidemiology - and that model has been used by classical linguistics and philology since at least the time of Brothers Grimm. So, memetics is dead, except for those few people who have staked their careers on it. They will keep pushing it, just like Dawkins will keep pushing selfish genes. Just let them rot. You have smarter things to do."

Wired News: Cell-Phone Shushing Gets Creative: "Across the country, the cell phone is on its way to becoming a pervasive and unremarkable medium, said Mizuko Ito, an anthropologist at the University of Southern California and Japan's Keio University who studies technology and issues pertaining to children and new media.

Ito studies cell-phone culture primarily in Japan, where she said some issues related to courteous use have been worked out. But here in the United States she gets the sense that 'it's still a thing that people are trying to work through,' she said.

'Once you have people from all demographics using the phone and social norms hopefully stabilizing a little bit, my guess is these type of concerns will start to die down or at least be something that's not a topic of widespread concern,' she said."

The New York Times > Week in Review > Thinking May Not Be All It's Thought to Be: "Apple, with the attitude of an artist and the eye of an anthropologist, has asked: How do we listen to music? What do we want from it? A response from the company, and its millions of customers, is that music is a kind of ambient grace, which blocks out the cellphone jabber on the train, the honking horn on the walk to the grocery store. And the result is that little white earbuds have become ubiquitous around the country.

"They are two things that say your rational process of making sense of things is a model that may be obsolete," he said. " 'Life is random' is a really great way of shrugging your shoulders in a Buddhist way of nonattachment.""

Wired News: Monster Fueled by Caffeine: "As well as running personal lending libraries, the software can set up social connections: What better barometer of someone's personality than their taste in books and film?"

http://nytimes.com/2005/01/09/technology/09message.html

Many high school and college students accustomed to sending unlimited instant messages on their computers do not adapt easily to text messaging's pay-per-message format, and end up with unexpectedly high bills when they get involved in keypad conversations that involve hundreds, even thousands, of messages a month. The results are angry confrontations with parents, long-term payment plans and the loss of cellphone privileges.

...

Teenagers are clearly driving the trend. "Younger people do text messaging a lot more than older folks," said Mr. Nogee of Instat. "They're more used to it from instant messaging on the computer, from growing up with it. Older people would rather call up and talk."

According to a recent survey by the Pew Internet and American Life Project, 38 percent of all teenagers who use the Internet have sent a text message using a cellphone. "Text messaging is a way to take instant messaging on the road," said Amanda Lenhart, a Pew research specialist. "It's definitely growing."

Wired News: Straining for Novel Positions: "These men are young enough to have found their first porn online rather than in their fathers' dens. Most people who explore online porn gradually extend their boundaries, becoming more adventurous and more accepting of varied sexual practices in their own lives as well as on screen. Maybe doing the butt with one or two other straight men is not as frightening to today's jocks as it would have been 10 years ago.

Because of the internet, we're starting to revise our ideas of what constitutes permissible sexual behavior in America. Married couples in the Bible Belt have discovered the joy of sex toys, and defend their right to purchase, own and use them. Many people who oppose gay marriage actually support same-sex civil unions. Online dating has made it possible to find sex -- and even love -- across political, cultural, linguistic and geographical borders.

Anyone who worries that a particular desire is unnatural, deviant or freakish can go online and connect with people all around the world who share those desires, soothing or eliminating the fear of being alone and outcast. And straight men can wrestle naked in the mud without getting beaten up at school the next day.

What a wonderful time in which to be a sexual being."

'Hole, The' by Wash West (2003): "A mock horror gay porn based on the popular 2002 hit movie The Ring (Ringu). The story centers around a mysterious videotape and anyone who see it has seven days before they turn totally gay. When the time is up, even the most all- american jock becomes a friend of dorothy.

The story follows a reporter, who is investigating the tape to find the source of its mysterious power..."

Why Wikipedia Must Jettison Its Anti-Elitism || kuro5hin.org: "There are many ways to explain this problem, and I will start with just one. Far too much credence and respect accorded to people who in other Internet contexts would be labelled 'trolls.' There is a certain mindset associated with unmoderated Usenet groups and mailing lists that infects the collectively-managed Wikipedia project: if you react strongly to trolling, that reflects poorly on you, not (necessarily) on the troll. If you attempt to take trolls to task or demand that something be done about constant disruption by trollish behavior, the other listmembers will cry 'censorship,' attack you, and even come to the defense of the troll. This drama has played out thousands of times over the years on unmoderated Internet groups, and since about the fall of 2001 on the unmoderated Wikipedia."

The New York Times > Science > God (or Not), Physics and, of Course, Love: Scientists Take a Leap: "Roger Schank
Psychologist and computer scientist; author, 'Designing World-Class E-Learning'

Irrational choices.

I do not believe that people are capable of rational thought when it comes to making decisions in their own lives. People believe they are behaving rationally and have thought things out, of course, but when major decisions are made - who to marry, where to live, what career to pursue, what college to attend, people's minds simply cannot cope with the complexity. When they try to rationally analyze potential options, their unconscious, emotional thoughts take over and make the choice for them."