Re: virus: Eye of the Needle

Wade T.Smith (wade_smith@harvard.edu)
Tue, 16 Sep 97 10:46:40 -0400


>Didn't you propose that potty-training was the "drosophillia" (a fruit fly,
>right?) whose--I'm assuming--evolutionary history could tell us (something?)
>about evolution [in an objective way, I assume]? If you have been following
>this thread, might'nt "sewing" as I've defined it also work to reveal this
>drosophile effect?

Yes.

Umm....

Drosophila is the fruit fly, used as a basic and easily experimentable on
by geneticists. I proposed that toilet training could be used in a like
way (by memeticists) to identify memes- cultural quanta- since toilet
training is uniquely human and uniquely cultural, and universal.

I'm currently working on suggesting a new form of dream study as another
approach.

Sewing, i.e. the making of garments- is another good idea. Again, we need
to see in what manner this differentiates from animal pursuits of
individual protection from the elements, and try to distill some things.

These are all ways I see we can actually identify memes- basic units of
culture. But I am not a scientist....

********************************
Wade T. Smith
wade_smith@harvard.edu
morbius@channel1.com
morbius@cyberwarped.com
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