Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id XAA17648 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 22 Mar 2001 23:59:00 GMT Message-ID: <3ABA9083.430FDFA3@wehi.edu.au> Date: Fri, 23 Mar 2001 10:53:38 +1100 From: wilkins <wilkins@wehi.EDU.AU> Organization: The Walter & Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research X-Mailer: Mozilla 4.76C-CCK-MCD (Macintosh; U; PPC) X-Accept-Language: en To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme References: <F95Q9cAgjHXwKHvyo3D000049f6@hotmail.com> Content-Type: multipart/mixed; boundary="------------A2536552A1E17DCD34B12DC6" Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
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Scott Chase wrote:
>
> >From: Chris Taylor <Christopher.Taylor@man.ac.uk>
> >Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
> >Subject: Re: The Demise of a Meme
> >Date: Wed, 21 Mar 2001 15:11:44 +0000
> >
> >No, Jimmy Page is the only god (and he's made a fair profit).
> >
> >
> Aleister Crowley's "memes" connect Jimmy Page and Ozzy Osbourne. I wonder
> what their Bacon numbers are.
>
> For those not familiar with the "Bacon number", it is an index of how far
> removed someone is from the prolific actor Kevin Bacon. It's a degrees of
> separation thang. People are actually experts on this sort of triviality.
>
A much better one is the Erdös number - which is the number
mathematicians have that indicates how many steps they are from having
coauthored a paper with Paul Erdös. Most have a number no more than 4.
I prefer to work out the Darwin number. My own is 4. I have shaken hands
with someone who shook hands with someone who shook hands with Darwin.
Assuming nobody washed in that time, I might get Chagas disease :-)
-- John Wilkins, Head, Communication Services, The Walter and Eliza Hall Institute of Medical Research, Melbourne, Australia Homo homini aut deus aut lupus - Erasmus of Rotterdam <http://www.users.bigpond.com/thewilkins/darwiniana.html> Content-Type: text/x-vcard; charset=us-ascii; name="wilkins.vcf" Content-Transfer-Encoding: 7bit Content-Description: Card for wilkinsContent-Disposition: attachment; filename="wilkins.vcf"
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