MISSING LINKS AND PUNKED EEKS

Thomas Kuhn coined the term “Paradigm Shift” in 1962 in his “The Structure of Scientific Revolutions”. The term had a very specific set of criteria. “...when enough significant anomalies have accrued against a current paradigm, the scientific discipline is thrown into a state of crisis… During this crisis, new ideas, perhaps ones previously discarded, are tried. Eventually a new paradigm is formed, which gains its own new followers, and an intellectual "battle" takes place between the followers of the new paradigm and the hold-outs of the old paradigm.” Wikipedia

I remember learning in college that most of the time it took all of the members of the current regime to die before a new paradigm really took hold. This idea has stayed with me when I grow impatient with a current belief (not the strongest ray of hope, thinking it will change, but I just won’t live to see it).

Over twenty-five years later, the power has gone out of the word, having been both over and misused.

Question: Doesn’t the whole human tendency to fear the unknown, to stamp down a wild outrageous idea, to censor the media, to ban a book, etc. contradict the meme notion? (see recent article Pushing the Envelope for more on fear and banned books).

TANGENT: On a recent stay at family friends home, I read his son’s book Jakarta from the Inside Out. I loved this book because it is the kind of book I always wanted to write. It tells the truth therefore it is hilarious—and it is banned in Jakarta (even though their constitution doesn’t permit it). Amazon says they only have three left in stock (and when I buy one, that will be two). It’s worth a read even if you aren’t planning a trip to Jakarta just now. Help me prove my point “banning an idea makes it stronger”.

TANGENT: In a recent travel writing class my professor pointed out the folly in my logic. Apparently writing negative comments about a location doesn’t sell magazine ads. Knocked out half of my travel stories as magazine sales prospects. Darn.

Why ban a book and spread an idea at the same time? I mean, we humans are the messengers of both. Sort of reminds me of punctuated equilibrium (slang-breviated as punk eek). The way I understand it, if there were missing links, gaps in the evolutionary path, there was still a burden on science to explain this, or face the ravages of creationism. The theory held that “new and favorable mutations are diluted by the sheer bulk of the population through which they must spread....”

So maybe that would explain it. After all, all viruses are not successful, so why would all memes be? And maybe the challenge makes only the strong survive. Without the weeding out, we’d be overrun with bad ideas.

THE MEME IS THE MESSAGE

Once upon a time I asked my brother-in-law what the word for the kind of email that gets sent around--the kind that no one knows who started it or who wrote it, usually funny as hell, often apocryphal, not necessarily jokes, etc.. --he paused and answered “Meme”. I laughed.

Meme was not the word I was looking for, but it started me thinking. I really, really didn’t want to write a Blog about Meme’s (really), but…how long could I leave such a hot topic unblogged? Maybe, according to the selfish meme (sic) theory, I didn’t ever have a chance. This is what I came up with:

A gene is a unit of heredity encoded in DNA and passed on through reproduction, but also can be passed between un-related individuals via viruses (paraphrased from Wikipedia).

A meme is a unit of a self-propagating unit of cultural evolution encoded in a behavior “imitation” and can be passed between unrelated individuals via a virus—language.

TANGENT: “Language is a Virus” wasn’t the complete quote, it was “Language is a virus sent from outer space”, but it’s a lot more apropos without that last bit. It was good old William S. Burroughs who apparently said that (it’s all over the internet without a source) and the original performance artist Laurie Anderson who spread it, with a song title of the same (on the soundtrack for Home of the Brave).

To continue:

"Genes that do x are more likely to be passed on" (Susan Blackmore discussing Richard Dawkins)

"Successful meme are the ones that get copied and spread, while unsuccessful ones do not". ( ibid) TANGENT: Since Richard Sermon, a German evolutionary biologist was the first to use the concept of “meme” in 1902; and Danish botanist Wilhelm Johannsen didn’t coin the word "gene" until 1909; meme’s precede gene’s in cultural evolution (if only by seven years). source: Wikipedia definition of Meme

The idea of the gene is a meme, but a meme is not a gene, it is like a gene, which means it is a metaphor, which means it is a feature of language, and language is a virus, which is memetic, therefore a meme IS a gene. What?

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE

PUSHING THE ENVELOPE: ANTI-DEPRESSANTS AND THE NATURE OF THE SELF How quickly does an examination of anti-depressants turn into a conversation about the nature of the self? How quickly does the idea of drug induced contentment (or dare I say happiness) turn into a discussion of governmental mind control? How soon after asking the question “what exactly is the difference between using alcohol or using cocaine or marijuana?”, does the conversation become a polemic on why the government spends billions of dollars fighting the war on drugs? Once you get there, you are only a hair away from joining the conspiracy theorists. The problem with letting the little problem become either philosophical or political is that you risk losing credibility. Feel free to talk about how serotonin levels change in a group of subjects taking an SSRI, but ask which is the real you-- “the depressed, angry cynic” of before or the “cheerful, open, calm” person after—and you are in for trouble. In trouble because--it makes people uncomfortable. No one wants to be happy if it is “just” because of a drug. “But it isn’t real” I heard time and time again. Why do you use the modifier “just” I would ask. “How do you define real?” etc. etc. I might as well have been the mad hatter.

TANGENT: This is the same basic mistake Galileo made. If he had stopped with some diagrams and theories about the planets revolving around the sun he might not have raised the hackles of the Church. If he had stopped there he wouldn’t have been very different from Copernicus. Instead he “went political” with it making comments to the effect of “the Bible is written in the language of the common person who is not an expert in astronomy.” And that “Scripture teaches us how to go to heaven, not how the heavens go.” (quotes from “The Galileo Project”). Obviously he was crusin’ for a bruisin’ .

A friend of mind (and I have no way of knowing if this originated with him) defined culture as “An unwritten set of rules, which serve no necessary function, but if not followed, one is ostracized from the culture.” He used as examples “eating left handed in the Middle East” and “having anything other than a 'positive attitude' in the US”. The first resonates because we have a bit of distance from the other culture, the second is abrasive because we have no distance from our own culture. Most of us do take for granted that “having a positive attitude” is a desirable thing and from the perspective of a person from another culture (the French let’s say) this can be seen as just a bit odd.

The question for me is how far can you push the envelope before they either ostracize you, jail you, or just plain kill you???

THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS

THESE ARE THE GOOD OLD DAYS: AGING, OPENESS AND PERSONALITY

At what age does thinking become “painful”? I don’t remember the experience of pain when learning new things as a child, but it sure is harder now. The metaphor typically used to describe this is that patterns are literally carved in our brains, like channels that grow ever deep, until it is too late to go a different route. “Stuck in our ways” is the expression we use.

An article published in Psychology Today in 2003 stated that according to Berkeley Professors Srivastava and John, “Personality is not set in stone by age 30…but continues to change throughout one's lifetime. Five major personality traits -- conscientiousness, agreeableness, neuroticism, openness and extraversion -- continue to evolve as people age.”

This would appear to be hopeful news, however, note they said “continues to change” not “continues to improve”. Specifically, the change in the trait of openness is for the worse, finding “a gradual decline in openness as subjects aged”.

This metaphor (of channels carved into the brain) surfaces again in discussions about depression. In Listening to Prozac I was frightened into believing that every bout of depression made the channel deeper and that taking an anti-depressant would actually prevent this from happening. It was over a year later that I learned this was a metaphor not based on biology or brain research.

Yet we all know (without reading a psychology article) that older people seem to get set in their ways, more resistant to change, aren’t exactly open to learning about “new-fangled” things.

TANGENT: I find it ever fascinating that there is this human tendency to believe the music they loved as an adolescent was the only good true music and that contemporary music is crap.

TANGENT: Anyone who uses a word to mean “the latest” takes a risk that that word will expire when a new “latest” comes out. Thus phrases like “the new-new thing” which is apparently newer than just plain old “new”. Music history of this century falls into this trap, where “classic rock” was used to mean enduring, at one moment mapping to the music of the 50’s but then switching to the 60’s, the 50’s became “Oldies”, The 70’s were “today’s music” which now are “classics”. Making the 50’s “Nostalgia” and the 60’s & 70’s “classics”, but now the 00’s are “today’s music” and now what? And how did “Adult Contemporary” come to be synonymous with “not rap music”? and “Modern Adult Contemporary” to mean “regular adult contemporary plus “alternative” rock”. What will be the alternative of alternative? New alternative?

TANGENT: This brings me back to Tom Wolffe’s “The Painted Word” discussion of the art world again. Modern (late 1900’s to the 1970’s), Post Modern (presumably after the 70’s), and the art of today “Contemporary”. I don’t think anybody had the nerve to risk “Post-Contemporary”

THE OPPOSITE OF GESTALT

In History of Psych class I was introduced to the idea of gestalt. I immediately loved that word. Now I’m thinking that we need a word for the opposite of Gestalt. Instead of our brains putting a pattern together (even one that isn’t there), maybe sometimes our brains disregard patterns (even when one IS there).

According to Wikipedia, the Gestalt effect refers to “the form-forming capability of our senses, particularly with respect to the visual recognition of figures and whole forms instead of just a collection of simple lines and curves.”. The best example of this is our propensity to see faces where there are no faces, on the grill of a car for example (the VW bug for instance). If there is a face to be picked out somewhere, our minds will find it. I forget where I read that “humans are incredible pattern recognition machines”, but I agree with them.

TANGENT: Read an interesting book recently by my pal William Gibson (at least he feels like an old friend) Pattern Recognition. The hilarious thing about this novel is that Gibson has conceived of a character who has a phobia—of brand names!!! Could he have written the whole novel tongue in cheek? Unfortunately this is not a great novel, but it definitely is a great outline of a novel.

TANGENT: Speaking of Gibson, probably best known as the father of the “cyberpunk” genre. Gibson created this genre in his novel “Neuromancer” over twenty years ago. This novel starts with one of my favorite sentences “the sky…was the color of a television, tuned to a dead channel”. Kind of makes me think he was living in Los Angeles when he wrote that.

TANGENT: A friend of mine, fond of reading James Joyce’s Ulysses, thought someone was saying “New Romancer” when he heard them talking about “Neuromancer”. Which leads me to my last tangent for tonight:

TANGENT: Mondegreens –There are so many websites that cover Mondegreens because after sex and gambling, music is right up there on internet users hot lists (darn it, that reminds me of one more tangent, but it will have to wait!). A favorite mondegreen of my generation was thinking that the line in Jimi Hendrix’s Purple Haze was “’scuse me while I kiss this guy” instead of the actual lyric “’scuse me while I kiss the sky”. This example was considered so representative of the mondegreen phenomena that when someone set out to create an archive of misheard lyrics that named it: http://kissthisguy.com/

Apparently, the term "mondegreen" was coined by Sylvia Wright in a 1954 Harper’s article. As a child, young Sylvia had listened to a folk song that included the lines "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And Lady Mondegreen." As is customary with misheard lyrics, she didn't realize her mistake for years. The song was not about the tragic fate of Lady Mondegreen, but rather, the continuing plight of the good earl: "They had slain the Earl of Moray/And laid him on the green."” (quote from dozens of web anecdotes).

FLYING AND THE SNEEZE REFLEX

Years ago I had a friend who would open his eyes and look at the sun to make himself sneeze. I thought it was just his idiosyncrasy, but every once in a while I'd hear someone else say they sneezed in sunlight.

My brother-in-law was looking for a word for it, and it turns out there already is one (or two): About.com says that "a close association between the eye's optic nerve and nerves causing the sneeze reflex may explain why an estimated 5-25% of people sneeze with sudden exposure to bright sunlight." and goes on to say that this is "known as photic sneeze reflex. The reflex also is called Autosomal Dominant Compelling Helioophthalmic Outburst syndrome, known (as) ACHOO."

Of course I had to fact check that last one with the ultimate source reference Cecil, author of the column The Straight Dope. Cecil didn't mention ACHOO, but he did ask his readers to "...Listen to this frightening headline: "The photic sneeze reflex as a risk factor to combat pilots," Military Medicine, Breitenbach et al, 1993.""

Of course there had to be someone investing in research on the impact of sneezing on combat! It isn't as if we need to work on curing cancer or stopping world hunger or anything.

TANGENT: A mystery surrounds the identity of Cecil (shocker!). Judge for yourself.

WHERE DOES YOUR EMAIL GO WHEN YOU DIE?

Career of the Future: Data Retrieval Services for the Bereaved. I always imagined that when I died my descendants would go through my papers, find that long lost pile of love letters tied with a ribbon, maybe find a poem or a story I wrote, and certainly treasure my boxes of photographs. This idea, of leaving ones writings for posterity…well, to not put too fine a point on it…is Dead.

BLOC-ING

It's the little things that keep me up at night. I finally persuaded myself to run a spell check BEFORE posting my blog (crazy I know!) and what is the first spelling error that the Google/Blogger spell check engine finds? BLOG! It suggested I replace it with Bloc. TANGENT: Speaking of things that keep you up at night (and no I'm not talking about Starbucks): It really bugs me when I hear someone say a word and I suddenly don't know if they are right or wrong, for example do you succeed or secede someone in a position? I had to actually say "secede from the union" to jog myself back to reality. or would that be joc?

WHISTLE-BLOGGING - PART II

Google reveals ten links to the phrase and some very interesting articles (better than mine) on the web (it hasn't made it to Wikipedia yet, but I bet it will be there by midnight). TANGENT: By the way, none of those links were to mine, and my blog host-site blogger is owned by Google! The link I loved the most was about the Delaware Supreme Court Justice who basically ruled "don't sue 'em for defamation, blog 'em back". See the article here: http://www.bloggersblog.com/cgi-bin/bloggersblog.pl?bblog=114062 The topic is, as on of my friends would say, "deliciously complex". So now I have another TANGENT: blog words. Here are the ones that are new to me: vlogging (the video blog). These can be done in your car while driving (now that sounds smart!). ghostblogging - having your blog written for you and then taking the writing credit for it.

THE COLOR OF SOUND

THE COLOR OF SOUND: RAINBOW BRAIN CHEMISTRY Can you see that sound? People who have blending of the senses (a rare condition called "synesthesia"), find that a stimulus, such as sound, creates a reaction in another sense, as well as the expected sense. Synesthesia is thought to occur in just 1 per cent of all adults. I first heard about it on NPR in a Morning Edition story: "For Pianist, Music Unleashes Rainbows of Color" Here's where brain chemistry comes in...According to Wikipedia, "Synaesthesia is a common effect of some hallucinogenic drugs such as LSD or mescaline".

LEFT TURN

Last month, on the night before Christmas, a friend borrowed my car and as he attempted a left turn, was hit by a motorcycle—a black ninja appropriately enough. As you can imagine I told the story to a friend, who commented that you can never win on the left turn. If you say the light was turning yellow, they say it was already red, if you say it was a solid green, they say the other party had the right-of-way. Thus, from now on…the left turn will be my metaphor for: you just can’t win. Bye bye to “you can’t beat City Hall”, or do only Chicagoans say that one?

PHO'N WITH PUNS

Writing about Meta phenomena is perilously close to recursion. Okay, here I go: I was reading an article about blogs the other day (oy, I make myself laugh). The point of the article was basically that blogs are becoming increasingly specialized to target audiences in order to achieve readership. From there, they went on to list some “foodie” websites—among them a site devoted to my favorite Vietnamese chicken soup: Pho. The problem with Pho, is that it is pronounced “Fuh” and the LA Times probably didn’t notice the bad pun when the recommended readers visit the website: Pho-King (ouch)!

TANGENT: I don’t think a Wikipedia definition of recursion is helpful because you have to dig for the part that relates to my usage. I’ll just quote this little bit:

“A more humorous illustration goes: "In order to understand recursion, one must first understand recursion." Or perhaps more accurate is the following due to Andrew Plotkin: "If you already know what recursion is, just remember the answer. Otherwise, find someone who is standing closer to Douglas Hofstadter than you are; then ask him or her what recursion is." TANGENT: I can’t even say “meta” without mentioning Douglas Hofstader’s 1979 Pulitzer

Prize winning book: Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid. The whole idea of the self-referential idea (it's everywhere) completely re-shaped my thinking.

DEPRESSION IS DEPRESSING

I set out this morning to dash off a little entry on Prozac. In preparation I looked up the latest stats on usage in the US. The numbers are usually presented to stagger the audience, wow 21 million scrips written in the US in 2004, what is happening to our society? Etc. etc.

But keep this in perspective: 92 million scrips written for just ONE of the varieties of Viocdon (hydorcodone), 69 million for Lipitor (got to keep those lipids down), 29 million for Zoloft anti-anxiety medication.

That doesn’t even take into account the "pam’s" (Lorazepam, Clonazepam, Diazepam, Temazepam, etc.). Those would be your valiams, your xanax, your restoril’s. As a group, that would make 52 MILLION scrips!!!! My god man, CALM THOSE NERVES, reading about Prozac is giving me an ANXIETY ATTACK!

It isn’t hard to understand the 31 million Albuteral prescriptions for all that asthma, or the 18 million for Allegra, got to clear those nosies! Do I have to go on? OK, just one more, should I keep it up? 13 million….Viagra! (oh god, THAT was bad).

PROZAC MOVIES: YOU HEARD IT HERE FIRST

PROZAC MOVIES: DRUG INFLUENCE ON THE ARTS It was inevitable…first psychedelic art, and then ecstasy art, movements (one over, the other in progress) art and street drugs have always been joined at the hip (Hemingway and Spanish Wine, The Beats and Mary Jane, etc.). And so… it was bound to happen, with well over 30 million anti-depressants being prescribed…I announce the onset of the Prozac Movie. The problem is, as with all drug influenced art forms, no one is going to admit it. But I would hold out two flicks as evidence of the first signs: 1) Lost in Translation and 2) Garden State.

Psychedelic Art

I can’t argue that all the drug fried brains caused by overuse of LSD 25 really outweigh the outpouring of art that emerged around the time of its street popularity, BUT no one can deny that the psychedelic art (lights, music, poetry) weren’t worth something.

Ecstasy Music

I have to admit I have my own form of “they just don’t make good music like they did when I was in highschool” disorder. I would think, for example, psychedelic drugs gave us the Beatles greatest work, but Ecstasy only gave us 110 beats per minute of mind-numbing bass.

But before I finished the thought, I see that LA’s Museum of Contemporary Art is offering an exhibit called “Ecstasy”. Maybe they know something I don’t. I will make it a point to visit this one. The MOCA exhibit called “Ecstasy: In and About Altered States” running through February 20th 2006.

MODERN ART & FURNITURE: A MOOD ALTERING EXPERIENCE

Years ago my father introduced me to Modern Art, I remember the impression that Mondrian made on me at the Art Institute of Chicago, as a little girl. I also remember being bored to tears when he dragged me around exhibitions of modern furniture. I may have, if I had any reaction at all, wondered why anyone would care who designed that chair. I didn’t get it. But suddenly the idea found purchase, when at forty years of age, I found myself sitting in front of a furniture store looking at what I somehow knew was known as the Barcelona chair—in red leather no less!

That chair simply had to come home with me and then little memories from the past emerged and I began to read about the designers and to discover that so much of what I had seen in stores and homes had been, in fact, classics of the modern variety. The mind twisting part was that I found that so much the distinctive furniture in the trendy high end stores today were designed back in 1925. TANGENT: This led me to wonder about the word modern. I have to admit—to not do so would be dishonest—that my perspective on the subject had been formed when reading Tom Wolfe’s fabulous send up of the art world in 1975. At the time, the New York Times called Tom Wolfe’s book “The Painted Word” his “…most successful piece of social journalism to date". What fascinated me in the book—which I fixated on from that point forth—was that the word modern, wasn’t modern! I really enjoyed his discussion of the post-modern, etc. and the art worlds struggle to find the right word to describe what was actually current. How could modern be old-fashioned. We are certainly in a fix.

As usual, I am taking forever to get to my point, which is this: my house was finally shaping up, clean and flowing, punctuated by the “metro” coffee table and “Barcelona" chair. One evening I walked out into my living room and was startled by the starkness. It gave me a cold frightening feeling. Instead of the peace of openness and the calm of nature, I had a feeling like cold steel, hospital. Now what in the world does temperature have to do with feelings? All I know is that it was opposite of that cozy warmth you get when you come into a friends tiny living room and plop onto the tweed sofa. This is NOT what I was aiming for. I wanted beauty; I wanted something free of clutter, a perfect simplicity. But what did I have? I was scared to be in my own living room. Hmmmm.

TANGENT: In this case warm and cold are metaphors, which never fails to remind me of my favorite writer, the never heard of philosopher king from Carbondale, Illinois—Mark Johnson. Mark wrote “The Body in the Mind : The Bodily Basis of Meaning, Imagination, and Reason” in 1987.