Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id UAA26588 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Wed, 13 Dec 2000 20:57:28 GMT Message-ID: <001601c06546$bd297220$366861cb@oemcomputer> From: "Brent Silby" <phil066@it.canterbury.ac.nz> To: <memetics@mmu.ac.uk> References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745B89@inchna.stir.ac.uk> Subject: Re: Blackmore's new hairstyle Date: Thu, 14 Dec 2000 09:53:19 +1300 Content-Type: multipart/alternative; boundary="----=_NextPart_000_0013_01C065B3.B0246360" X-Priority: 3 X-MSMail-Priority: Normal X-Mailer: Microsoft Outlook Express 5.00.2615.200 X-Mimeole: Produced By Microsoft MimeOLE V5.00.2615.200 Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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If Blackmore has chosen such an outrageous hairstyle to deliberately avoid manifesting standard "hairstyle" memes, she has fallen victim to another meme -- namely the "turn on the memetic filter" meme.
Brent.
P.S. I think that her new hairstyle meme is not going to be a very successful replicator.
------------------------
Brent Silby 2000
Memetics Research
and Engineering Project
New ePaper
Memecosystems:
Are animal minds suitable habitats for memes?
http://www.geocities.com/brent_silby/memecosystems.html
[Feel free to visit my site]
[BasePage]: http://www.geocities.com/brent_silby
Room 601a
Department of Philosophy
University of Canterbury
Email: b.silby@phil.canterbury.ac.nz
__________________________________________
----- Original Message -----
From: Vincent Campbell
To: 'memetics@mmu.ac.uk'
Sent: Thursday, December 14, 2000 3:00 AM
Subject: Blackmore's new hairstyle
Hiya everyone,
A mild bit of trivia, for those wanting a bit of diversion.
Last night on UK Television there was a programme featuring Susan Blackmore.
The programme was about angels, and focused around Emma Heathcote's PhD on
angels being conducted at Birmingham University. Her focus seemed to be the
social psychology of angle experiences, although I fear she's being lulled,
a la John Mack and alien abduction, into thinking they really exist.
Blackmore appeared, in her more familiar public face as parapsychologist
debunker extraordinary (although I thought she'd given it up, saying as much
in New Scientist a while back). She described the idea of angels as a mind
virus- but avoided using the meme word (or at least in the bits they
extracted from her interview). She, rightly in my view, dismissed angel
sightings as prompted by trauma, aberrant visual cortex functioning and mass
hysteria etc. etc.
But what was most noticeable was her hair, still cropped short as on many a
previous TV appearance, but now the normal looking brown hair replaced by a
bizarre array of acid yellows and streaks of red, with one of those weird
pigtails towards the front. It looked really strange. I started to wonder
whether this hair style had anything to do with her memetic revelation, and
was supposed to represent it in some way. I'd love to know.
Then it got me thinking about how much one's intellectual outlook influences
dress sense etc. Didn't Einstein own lots of sets of the same clothes so,
he didn't waste energy deciding what to wear each day? But, even if true,
he must have spent some time thinking carefully about what to buy lots of in
the first place.
It strikes me that the pinnacle of arbitrariness lies in colour selection in
relation to conceptual ideas- fascism= black, communism=red, islam=green
etc. Where did these associations come from? and why did they persist?
Perhaps Blackmore's hair is deliberately random defying memetic trends...
Perhaps this also links to the Dees-Lofting duel... after all Chris'
breakdown of the spectrum missed out orange. (He never did answer that
question about the speed of light either... but then I'm not part of that
dyad...)
Anyway, apologies for wasting bandwidth...
Vincent
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This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
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For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit
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