Re: Blue Peter. Was: Sources of novelty

From: Bill Spight (bspight@pacbell.net)
Date: Sat Feb 10 2001 - 14:54:16 GMT

  • Next message: Mark Mills: "storyboards" 

    Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id OAA05066 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Sat, 10 Feb 2001 14:56:09 GMT
Date: Sat, 10 Feb 2001 06:54:16 -0800
From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net>
Subject: Re: Blue Peter. Was: Sources of novelty
To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Message-id: <3A855618.AD4B2266@pacbell.net>
Organization: Saybrook Graduate School
X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.72 [en]C-CCK-MCD {Yahoo;YIP052400}  (Win95; U)
Content-type: text/plain; charset=us-ascii
Content-transfer-encoding: 7bit
X-Accept-Language: en
References: <2D1C159B783DD211808A006008062D3101745C54@inchna.stir.ac.uk>
Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk
Precedence: bulk
Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk

    Dear Vincent,

    > (My mind is
    > instantly drawn to Blue Peter and all those uses for old cereal packets and
    > washing-up liquid bottles (for our non-Brits, this is a long running
    > children's TV show)).

    Now there is an expression, "Blue Peter," that I had heard before. It
    was a carding signal in whist that passed over into bridge, where it
    became known simply as a peter. It has a verb form, too, to peter.

    Is Blue Peter a character on "Blue Peter"?

    Does anybody know the history of the expression, "Blue Peter"? I would
    not be surprised if it antedates whist, particularly since it has shown
    up in children's television.

    Also, a lot of discussion here is theoretical. How about some concrete
    memetics? Is the expression, "Blue Peter", a meme itself? Do we consider
    its different usages as different memes? Certainly it means something
    quite different to a child who only knows about the TV show than to me,
    who only knows about the bridge signal. What about dropping the "Blue"?
    What is going on there, in memetic terms?

    Best,

    Bill

    ===============================================================
    This was distributed via the memetics list associated with the
    Journal of Memetics - Evolutionary Models of Information Transmission
    For information about the journal and the list (e.g. unsubscribing)
    see: http://www.cpm.mmu.ac.uk/jom-emit

    This archive was generated by hypermail 2b29 : Sat Feb 10 2001 - 14:58:13 GMT