A Tasca

Descobri os memes através de um texto do Luís, se bem que, confesso, não tenha ficado exactamente esclarecido sobre os mesmos. Ontem, dia de confissão da minha ignorância (patente em muito de mim e do que faço e procuro fazer), dia de pesquisa e do centenário do Bloomsday, encontrei algumas frequently asked questions sobre os memes. Mas nem assim, alertado para o perigo e tentando viver no nível 3, consegui resistir à tentação, e lá comprei uma bola de futebol. E andei com uma bandeirola para trás e para à frente (se bem que, e isto que sirva de atenuante, a bandeira não é minha).

Mea culpa

-How do you pronounce "meme"?
-"Meem" (rhymes with "dream")

-What is a meme?
-Memes are the basic building blocks of our minds and culture, in the same way that genes are the basic building blocks of biological life.

-Isn't memetics just a fancy name for _________ (fill in the blank with "cultural evolution", "behavioral psychology", "sociobiology", or anything else)? Why is this anything new?
-The breakthrough in memetics is in extending Darwinian evolution to culture. There are several exciting conclusions from doing that, one of which is the ability to predict that ideas will spread not because they are "good ideas", but because they contain "good memes" such as danger, food and sex that push our evolutionary buttons and force us to pay attention to them.

-Who invented memes?
-Oxford zoologist Richard Dawkins is credited with first publication of the concept of meme in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene.