Received: by alpheratz.cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk id TAA00137 (8.6.9/5.3[ref pg@gmsl.co.uk] for cpm.aca.mmu.ac.uk from fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk); Thu, 17 Jan 2002 19:42:11 GMT Message-Id: <5.1.0.14.0.20020117135311.02c379a0@pop.cogeco.ca> X-Sender: hkhenson@pop.cogeco.ca X-Mailer: QUALCOMM Windows Eudora Version 5.1 Date: Thu, 17 Jan 2002 14:39:23 -0500 To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk From: Keith Henson <hkhenson@cogeco.ca> Subject: Memetic mutations Content-Type: text/plain; charset="us-ascii"; format=flowed Sender: fmb-majordomo@mmu.ac.uk Precedence: bulk Reply-To: memetics@mmu.ac.uk
Recent mentions of movies and memetic drift reminded me of this.
Humphrey Bogart's line in Casablanca is "Play it, Sam." not "Play it again,
Sam."
For "Bogart Play it again Sam" Google today turned up 780 web pages, some
of which refer to the Woody Allen movie which uses the misquote as a
title. 100 pages note the quote is incorrect.
Richard Dawkins discusses in the 2nd Ed. of _Selfish Gene_ the drift in the
words to the song Aude Lang Syne. I think his speculations are interesting
and likely correct (basically transmission errors).
The full Bogart quote is:
"Play it, Sam. You played it for her, now you can play it for me."
You can see from the context how this might be recalled as the incorrect
quote since the second sentence could be collapsed more or less intact into
"again."
Keith Henson
===============================================================
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 : Thu Jan 17 2002 - 19:58:01 GMT