Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id SAA08992 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk); Mon, 8 Oct 2001 18:59:00 +0100 Date: Mon, 08 Oct 2001 10:54:24 -0700 From: Bill Spight <bspight@pacbell.net> Subject: Re: Fwd: The Science Behind the Song Stuck in Your Head To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk Message-id: <3BC1E850.907163C1@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: <20011008152126.AAA27667%camailp.harvard.edu@[205.240.180.74]> Sender: fmb-bounces@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Dear Wade,
> With all the tunes out there, why is it stuff like 'My Sharona' that
> takes over our brains?
>
> By ROY RIVENBURG
> TIMES STAFF WRITER
>
> http://www.latimes.com/news/science/la-000080020oct07.story?coll=la%2Dnews%
> 2Dscience
>
> October 7 2001
>
> Warning: This article could be hazardous to your sanity. It contains
> discussions of songs so diabolically annoying that merely reading their
> titles--"It's a Small World," "The Lion Sleeps Tonight," "My
> Sharona"--can cause them to get stuck in your head. Proceed at your own
> risk.
>
Thanks for the ref. :-)
Also for the warning. I'll not read the article yet. Right now I'm
enjoying Beethoven's 7th. Good old Ludwig Van! ;-)
In his study of the social transmission (recall) of visual information
in "Remembering", Bartlett notes that, unlike the focal parts of the
pictures, trivial detail tended to be the most accurately reproduced
material and the longest lived. He also said that that kind of
phenomenon was already known in anthropology, and that it had been used
to help determine cultural relationships. Relative unimportance seems to
be a factor in memetic success. :-)
There was a short story written, I believe, in the 50s called, "Nothing
but Gingerbread Left." (Or something close to that.) It was about the
idea of memetic attack (although not using the term, OC). The title
comes from a marching cadence:
Left! X
Left! X
Left a Wife with
Seventeen Chidren in
Starving conDition with
Nothing but Gingerbread
Left! X
Left! X
Left a Wife with
Etc. (Stressed syllables are capitalized. The X's are unspoken.)
In the final scene, Hitler has succumbed to the memetic attack, and is
goosestepping around the room, going, "Left! Left! . . ." ;-)
Best,
Bill
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