Ideas Do Not Spread Because they are Good

Hey, anytime you can tie Richard Dawkins and social/viral marketing together, you get full props from me. I am fascinated with both of those topics. This is an interesting point-out regarding our naively thinking that we adopt new ideas because they’re oh-so-awesome. (To use Bush’s new favorite “presidential” word.)

Mythbusting: Ideas Do Not Spread Because they are Good | Dan Zarrella

…that book, The Selfish Gene, posited (and largely put the argument to bed) that genes replicate for their own good, not the good of the host. Genes survive and thrive not based on how much value they bring to the creature they inhabit but based on how good they are at replicating, they’re selfish. There are plenty of genes who’s phenotypes produce negative results for their hosts, yet they continue to spread.

The same is true, and perhaps even more obviously, for memes. Auto-toxic memes are harmful to their host, and exo-toxic memes are dangerous to others. The list of virulently “adopted” bad ideas is endless, but here’s a small sample:

* Blood feuds
* Terrorism
* Suicide
* Drug abuse
* Antisemitism
* Pyramid schemes
* Cults

Read more at the link above.

*Snerk*

Things that make me love the internet again

You know, I get bored with online tricks and toys. In 1995 I was impressed with having all the world’s information at my fingertips, but now… meh. The world’s information has lost its charm.

Something has rekindled my love of online living lately though, and it’s all related to Firefox. I am using the very niftiest of extensions with it. They make me feel like my own grandma, so filled am I with wonder and amazement at their handiness. Chief among these is:

Foxmarks – This extension for firefox synchronizes your bookmarks across multiple computers. As many computers as you want, whatever platform you desire, as long as you’re running Firefox on said system. I don’t think you can possibly recognize how essential that is until you experience it.

For instance – I am at work. I bookmark a great site. I add it to my Bookmarks toolbar even, that’s how much I love it and need it near me always. Later that afternoon I walk across the office and log into the Mac… it’s there. I go home and log in at home… it’s there. I am at the coffeeshop working on my laptop… it’s there. I don’t have to do anything, I don’t have to manually sync, I don’t have to use an online service like del.icio.us, I don’t have to think about it. It’s just so mindlessly convenient and right. The way things should work. Likewise if I delete a link, or remove some duplicate or redundant ones. I only have to do it once. Lovely.

Google Notebook, specifically the Firefox browser extension for it. This is a clipping service type-o’-deal, so that when I want to save a snippet of HTML I will need later, or a snippet of info from a page, or a link that I don’t want to bookmark but want to visit later that day, or the name of a plant I want to buy, I can just highlight it, click “Clip” and there it will be later! If I want to capture snippets of conversational inanity such as:

“Marketing, it’s not a science. I mean, there’s only so much you can do with it.”

or

“The actual numbers aren’t as important as the fact that we have capacity”

for a book about retarded people that I am planning to write when I have a minute, or maybe just note down the amount of times per day that my new boss calls me “Sharon”, I can do that with no problem. And all that information is available to me on any system I regularly use.

I can also visit my Notebook from any browser on any computer, and share it with others if I want to, but it’s the browser extension that I really love. It lives down in the bottom right-hand corner of my screen being all handy and shit. See?:

So, those are some things that are making me love the internet again lately. Hope you find them useful if you’re not already using them!

Why you don’t trust photos anymore

The Magic of Photoshop Makeover – video powered by Metacafe

The Big Book of Fandom & Internet Law/Jurisimprudence

More mining my own old bookmarks turned up this old favorite – the Big Book of Fandom & Internet Law. And now they have a wiki!

jurisimprudence » Keriannes Law of Dramatic Irony

Kerianne’s Law of Dramatic IronyIn an online debate, the first person to accuse his opponent of spending too much time on the Internet and/or invite his opponent to “turn off your computer and go outside” automatically loses the argument, and should be subsequently forced to turn off his own computer and go outside.

Bookworm’s Corollary:
The first person to calculate the amount of time elapsed between her posts and her opponent’s replies, and conclude that her opponent has been sitting at his computer all day refreshing the page and therefore has no life, automatically loses the argument.

So, so true. This relatively newer entry caught my eye, though it’s not in the wiki itself.

The Big Book of Fandom & Internet Law

The Gay & Slippery Slope
In any discussion about homosexuality, gay relationships, and/or same-sex marriage, should one side compare one or more of those things to/argue that one of those things will lead to:

1. Rampant llegal and/or harmful activities such as illegal drug use, pedophilia, or bestiality
2. Legalizing marriage to one’s close relatives, to pets/animals, or to inanimate objects
3. Threatening the rights of heterosexual couples and marriage
4. Destruction of the family unit in America
5. The eventual dying out or destruction of the human race;

The person who made the comparison automatically loses the argument and shall be thwacked over the head with (Link NSFW) this blunt instrument (giant dildo) wielded by a frothing, bug-eyed Lewis Black, until such time as sense is beaten into their head. Repeat beatings may be administered if the subject loses consciousness before sense enters. Actual penetration with said blunt instrument is permissable if the subject uses the “Adam and Eve, not Adam and Steve” argument in their comparison or claims that equal rights for homosexuals are “special rights”.

Girls Do It – Therefore it’s Stupid

Sorry, Boys, This Is Our Domain – New York Times

…Teasing out why girls are prolific Web content creators usually leads to speculation and generalization. Although girls have outperformed boys in reading and writing for years, according to the National Center for Education Statistics, this does not automatically translate into a collective yen to blog or sign up for a MySpace page. Rather, some scholars argue, girls are the dominant online content creators because both sexes are influenced by cultural expectations“Girls are trained to make stories about themselves,” said Pat Gill, the interim director for the Institute for Communications Research and an associate professor of gender and women’s studies at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign.

From a young age they learn that they are objects, Professor Gill said, so they learn how to describe themselves. Historically, girls and women have been expected to be social, communal and skilled in decorative arts.

“This would be called the feminization of the Internet,” she said….

So the main point of this story is apparently that “Yeah, girls may well be the driving force in originality and creativity in the adolescent web community (while boys are busy making videos of themselves humping inanimate objects, beating each other up and masturbating) but that’s only because it’s another way for the girls to preen and conform to society’s expectations.”?

Fuck you.

Yeah… it doesn’t matter what you do, it’s all just because you’re an “object” that needs better marketing. That’s the whole point behind your stupid, fluffy “emotional” web content. The real thing to do is program. If you don’t transition to that— you dumb, useless, math is hard cunt— it totally doesn’t count. You might as well be embroidering a tapestry and studying toward your MRS.

Fuck that.

Fuck that with a whiffle-ball bat covered in sandpaper.

Catch that on video and post it on YouTube. That feminine enough for ya?

Technical Assistance Needed

OK, I have two computery questions I can’t find answers to – does anyone know why either of these things happen and how to stop them?

1. I use Firefox and usually have multiple tabs open. When I am writing something (usually in WordPress) and I want to insert a special character via ALT+(some key combo) the browser starts flipping between tabs instead. It sometimes inserts the character so that when I navigate back to the tab with WordPress open it’s there and sometimes it doesn’t even insert the character, just makes me jump around – which is annoying. The only way to stop it is to close all the other open tabs. I’ve looked at shortcuts for FF, and none of the tab-control ones even USE the ALT key. I’ve also turned off the macros in BetterGmail, thinking they might be the issue, but that doesn’t seem to be it either. If I have more than one tab open and I try to insert a special character, I get the crazy jumping.
2. When I am typing on my laptop I will frequently look at the screen only to find that my cursor has (for no fathomable reason) relocated itself, and I am now typing in the middle of the previous paragraph. This happens in many applications (Word, IM, forms-fields in web pages, etc) and it makes me fecking nuts. Is it something to do with the configuration of my keyboard? Is my hand inadvertently brushing something that says “Cursor, please go and reinsert yourself randomly somewhere else?” And it’s always in the middle of another word too, so it’s not like I am hitting “home” or “end” or anything. Is this some special bonus feature that I can turn off somehow?

Any help would be appreciated!

Yeah, Steve Jobs is Still a Fucking Moron

Freed From the Page, but a Book Nonetheless – New York Times

Yet, when Mr. Jobs was asked two weeks ago at the Macworld Expo what he thought of the Kindle, he heaped scorn on the book industry. “It doesn’t matter how good or bad the product is; the fact is that people don’t read anymore,” he said. “Forty percent of the people in the U.S. read one book or less last year.”

Fucking dolt. Yeah, 40% of people may not have read a book last year, but those of us who DID read a book probably read 20-50 books, and I know I bought at least 50.

I hate that market-trending, stat-mining, emperor’s-new-clothes-wearing bastard . In a slightly unreasonable way, I will at least admit to that. But damn, he works my nerves.

How to make a superBadGirl cry

Take the beautiful site that you paid me to make for you last year, get some friends of yours to edit/update it (for free !) using FrontPage and apparently some random Mac app, break all my pretty, pretty CSS and then come back to me to have me fix this kind of mess:

(code snipped for WP displaying it like a super-dickhole)

Seriously, this makes my heart sad. I mean, holy hell, people.

*timeout for a minor geekbreak*

 This is very cool news to me. I am a big fan of the concept of OpenID, and glad to see Yahoo bringing it to the forefront.

Yahoo throws its weight behind OpenID single sign-on

The OpenID online authentication standard got a massive boost today. Yahoo has announced it intends to adopt OpenID, and will be offering all current Yahoo account holders the chance to upgrade to OpenID accounts. The company will also adopt sign-in seals—the unique photos displayed at banking websites and associated with each individual users’ account—to help users confirm that they are, in fact, logging into a genuine Yahoo webpage.

Also, though I am a big fan of Google’s services (they’re mighty handy!) recent stories about their philosophies, and those of the creators of Facebook, make me more concerned than excited that they’re going to work together on an OpenID standard.

Facebook, Google, and Plaxo recently announced their intentions to work with DataPortability.org in developing ways for end-users to move their own data and identification between various online services.