posted
I have a part-time job calling alumni of my university asking for contributions. I spend several evenings a week calling people like this:
"Hi, will you give me money?" "No." "Um, right then, ok." and on to the next call. (OK, so that's not exactly what I say, but you know )
Sometimes instead of "No" I get a response more like, "No, I hated that school and I hate everyone there including you, you putrid camel excrescence."
And then there are the hang-ups. I hate hang-ups. Couldn't they at least say no and good-bye like a normal person? It's not like I don't give them plenty of opportunities throughout the conversation. When people hang up on me, I am always tempted to call them back and ask how on earth they can consider themselves Christians and be so rude (it's a Christian school so the chances are good that they do consider themselves Christians).
Ooh, and then there're the people I call who say: "Are you calling on the Sabbath?" The answer, of course, is "No, the Sabbath was yesterday. I'm calling on Sunday." But I've never been brave enough to contradict irate right-wing Christians to their faces.
But the real point of this post is the people I work with. I have just one complaint: "alumni" is a plural noun. This means that one cannot say, "I/he/she am/is an alumni." It should be "alumnus" or "alumna", depending on...well, you know. I would even accept "alum" as a casual option. But agreement problems like that just IRK me -- and they tell the people we're calling that even though we (the callers) are in college, we don't know how to use the dang word correctly.
Anyway... *bump*
[This message has been edited by Lissande (edited April 01, 2001).]
posted
Here is a legitimate newbie question. I have noticed that when I go back and read my posts that there are number of errors in them. Grated, my spelling is bad, but I have noticed a number of dropped words. Is it the keyboard I am using, or is there something happening between sending the completed post and posting it?
I have even gone back to proof before sending. Is it me, or can I blame the computer?
posted
I hate to say it, but it is probably your typing. It is so easy to type quickly and lost important and unimportant words. I often forget the main verb. I will have the whole sense of the sentence otherwise and even include all of the auxillary words, but the main verb just drops out. Very weird. But I am pretty sure it is me.
Posts: 26077 | Registered: Mar 2000
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posted
Whoa, Snorri, how did you even find this thread? I don't think it's ever been on the first page since you've been posting. (Well, maybe it was...but lately it certainly hasn't been bumped up with the same frequency as it was in the past.) And since you've bumped it up, might as well make people aware of this link to the FAQ's, from the other side (no one is allowed to laugh that I was the one who looked for it! ):
posted
Dobie was a poster who is now best known for the parody threads which now bear his name.
Well, that and the Word of the Day thread.
He was banned shortly before I stopped lurking. About a year ago, I believe.
He tried to create a 1000 post thread. All at once. Crashed the site and caused quite an uproar. I've heard that he didn't even apologize, but I can't confirm that.
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I was looking for all the newcomer threads and this was the only one I could find. I was planning on bumping them all.
Posts: 10177 | Registered: Apr 2001
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So, just out of curiosity--those of you who haven't seen this thread before, are you reading all the way through it, or just glancing at a bit of the first page, and then posting?
Posts: 16059 | Registered: Aug 2000
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Noemon - Now you're making the newbies think that something important went on in the second and third pages...when, in all reality, it was a discussion about The Princess Bride and "I don't remember not being able to read".
Not that these aren't interesting, but hardly required reading.
Is that what is sounded like Frisco? That wasn't what I meant to do at all. I was just curious whether people tended to actually read the whole thing, or if they just read over the useful part.
posted
The point I was trying to make is that that story is so ridiculous that I am surprised any reasonable person could believe it.
Posts: 1794 | Registered: Jul 2002
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It didn't strike me as ridiculous, but why don't you post your side of the story, perhaps over at GreNME? I'd be curious to hear it.
Posts: 13680 | Registered: Mar 2002
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Some of my favorite posts are on this thread. A few weeks ago I was trying to remember where I asked the question about edible underwear, and where I told my story about "blue," and the answer is: here! It was exciting to read it all again! So I think that newbies should read the whole thread. Maybe one of them has actually bought edible underwear and can answer the question once and for all.
Posts: 3801 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Yeah Ophelia, this is one of my favorite threads too. I was glad to see it when it was brought back up to the surface. I still find your story about the word "blue" to be fascinating.
posted
Sheesh! I just went through and read this whole thread again, all four pages, even all the posts about a movie I've never seen made from a book I didn't particularly like. But the early childhood stuff was really good! Welcome to all newcomers! Hatrack is a cool place! I miss a lot of the people who posted on this thread. Waaaaaaahhh! Come home, ye wayward hatrackers!
Posts: 5509 | Registered: May 1999
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Wow! My thread still lives!!! I will have to read the whole thing through... thanks for the bump. Posts: 189 | Registered: Jan 2000
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Wow! I just read through the entire thread for the first time since the Princess Bride stuff... I liked the early childhood discussion. I have a two year old and I sometimes wonder how much he will remember of his life right now. Will he remember his first Easter Egg hunt (Saturday; it was darling--he ran around the yard picking up eggs and dropping them into the bag, not realizing that they were full of candy he could be eating, even though we told him, and totally ignoring his basket in favor of more eggs)?
Also, to people who wondered who I am: I posted and mostly lurked quite a bit a couple of years ago, but I ended up spending too much time online so I had to swear off of it for a while. (And I may have to do it again). Anne Kate, and I think katharina, are probably the main ones who would remember me...and I met Ela briefly at Endercon. Hi!
At the time I registered I was working on my honors thesis at BYU, alternating between work and procrastination... now I've finished it, graduated, and had a baby. I have another one coming (a girl!), and I stay at home with my son. My in-laws live in our basement, due to their medical problems and the resulting financial disaster. It's nice to have them there, though--instant and willing babysitters.
To Dobbie, who said he was in love with me on page 3, although I am flattered I have to inform you that I'm happily married. And pregnant. And expanding. Rapidly.
jRc, like I said before, not many people would remember me. Although it's nice that people as cool as Anne Kate and katharina do.
And CT--I don't know about generosity of spirit--I just wanted to avoid putting my foot in my mouth. But thanks for keeping the thread alive --it is fun to see it here.
And now back to the original purpose of the thread: could someone define "meme" for me? Thanks!!! -Emily Milner
Posts: 189 | Registered: Jan 2000
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posted
Emily Milner, a meme is a term for any thought, idea, cultural practice, philosophy, religion, work method, etc that is communicable (by any method from smoke signals to AIMessaging) from person to person or culture to culture. As you can see, it is an incredibly inclusive and wide-ranging definition.
One key idea is that memes behave similar to pathogens in the physical world (bacteria or virii, as well computer virii), "infecting" people and spreading from brain to brain like some bad sci-fi movie. Continuing the pathogen analogy, one can build up "resistance" to bad/evil/malicious (subjectively defined) memes, often using specific "antibody" or "anti-" memes or just the core "logic meme" (fortunately for my race's plan,lacking in most humans.)
Ironically, the "meme" meme has spread through the HR community like wildfire. Perhaps their resistance is low.Hmmm? Morbo's HR meme search caused half the servers in Utah to crash like flying penguins.
The various crazy and absurd cults that sprang up in the US in the 20thcent (e.g. Moonies, Church of Scientology,Jim Jones' tragic and suicidal cult etc; we'll leave off on earlier cults out of repect for HR's Utah mafia ) are classic examples of bad (subjective, but considered so by just about everyone but fanatical cult members who gave everything to the cause and their cynical puppet masters at the top of cults who made (often tax-free) loot hand over fist) memes that were much more virulent than most bad memes. This was because the cults' methods (sleep/food/water deprivation, social isolation, peer pressure, solitary confinement, Scientology's use of lie detectors to ferret out "unbelievers," etc) are all designed by the vermin at the top of the cults' food chain to bypass many people's logic or common sense meme. As a result, many highly intelligent and repectable people found themselves doing things they would have found crazier than Dubya's trickledown economics before they joined the cult. Then their poor families would have to spend small fortunes hiring detectives (cults routinely deny family contact and move "partially infected" cultees out of state), lawyers (cult members were often kidnapped by their own families, and cults defend their turf with zeal) and deprogramers who would "insert the anti-cult meme" or deprogram the hapless cult victim. This would, ironically, involve many of the same methods the cults themselves used in an effort to bring the confused cultee back to a normal social mindset.
The cults found it harder going in the '80's and '90's in the US because Jim Jones' cult's mass suicides (700+ victims, one of the largest mass suicides in recorded history) brought to common awareness cults crazy and often destructive practices. Also those damn Moonies were in everybody's face with flowers on every urban street corner. This common awareness of the dangers of cults can be thought of as part of the anti-cult or cult anti-body meme that would "inoculate" recipients from cult meme "infection." As a result of this inoculation, cult numbers have decreased or stopped growing, measured as both total US cult membership and number of US cults in toto. Except for those pesky Scientologists, possibly because they are crafty,well-organised,use lie-detectors extensively, and have the Hollywood celebrity thing going for them. Fortunately, Morbo has diplomatic immunity, because the Church of Scientology sues the living snot out of anyone who dares critisise them.
EXAMPLES OF MEMES AND META-MEMES (interlocking meme structures)
Good memes ( i.e. those that have some benefit for the individual and/or society) examples:anonymous Internet forums,fire,the wheel,stirrups,the plow, the printing press, Christianity,capitalism,socialism,communism,the scientific method, nuclear non-proliferation, famine relief,miniskirts,bikinis,pierced belly buttons(I say, I say can I get an AMEN,my brothers!), Morbo worship (resistance is futile!).
Bad memes: terrorism,war, materialism,slavery,US media consolidation,star wars missile defense (technically infeasible and futile), karaoke, reality TV, prefab boy bands and Morbo hatred.
Annoying memes:voice mail,telemarketing,snippy posters on Morbo unmasked! thread
All of these memes (and billions,possibly many trillions more) duke it out in a darwinian struggle for the hearts and minds of humanity, like some divine game. But God help us all if the moonies or Microsoft get an edge....
This was off the top of Morbo's head late at night and Morbo is weak on touchy-feely stuff like human psych and sociology. So cut Morbo some slack, willya? Also, Morbo suspects that EG's :bump: was a transparent dig. But since Morbo's original alias has a conceptually antinomic structure like yours (though not half as cool)(Morbo unmasked players--clue!) and because EG's posts are invariably articulate, well-reasoned and usually funny to boot, Morbo will postpone your destruction (need batteries for my destructo-matic) Hope that answers your question, Em. Also, Morbo would like to offer his congrats for the coming offsping and hopes that the child will be both healthy and tasty.(joke in poor taste.)If you want to learn more, Morbo recommends Neal's book Snow Crash, an incredibly funny and readable sci-fi novel with meme transference as a central theme. For a much darker look, try John Barnes Kaliedescope Century (PARENTAL UNIT WARNING: even Morbo was shocked by the body count in KC ) another good sci-fi novel in the "War of the Memes" series. John assumes that in the future, memes will find a way to jump from computer to brain.
Note that if memes could jump from computer to brain, that combined with the scary warhol computer worm(computer virus that could infect 99% of the internet in 15 minutes) could in theory allow a lazy high school hacker to coopt every computer on the internet and every scientist in the world into doing his physics homework!! Kids,ask for a parent's or guardian's permission before trying this at home. Welll,Morbo worship doesn't look so far-fetched now,does it. Party at Morbo's in 20 minutes. 99% of you puny humans are invited...BYOB
posted
C'mon DB, which other person has a nick that's a conceptually antinomic structure? Hmm, I wonder.
Posts: 15770 | Registered: Dec 2001
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that link dosn't work for me ---could a virus really spread through the internet in 15 min? And best of luck with the kids, Mrs Milner
Posts: 96 | Registered: Jun 2003
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) are classic examples of bad (subjective, but considered so by just about everyone but fanatical cult members who gave everything to the cause and their cynical puppet masters at the top of cults who made (often tax-free) loot hand over fist) memes that were much more virulent than most bad memes. This was because the cults' methods (sleep/food/water deprivation, social isolation, peer pressure, solitary confinement, Scientology's use of lie detectors to ferret out "unbelievers," etc) are all designed by the vermin at the top of the cults' food chain to bypass many people's logic or common sense meme. As a result, many highly intelligent and repectable people found themselves doing things they would have found crazier than Dubya's trickledown economics before they joined the cult. Then their poor families would have to spend small fortunes hiring detectives (cults routinely deny family contact and move "partially infected" cultees out of state), lawyers (cult members were often kidnapped by their own families, and cults defend their turf with zeal) and deprogramers who would "insert the anti-cult meme" or deprogram the hapless cult victim. This would, ironically, involve many of the same methods the cults themselves used in an effort to bring the confused cultee back to a normal social mindset.
