A funny joke about memes and genes (tweet):
memes are kinda like DNA if you think about it. has anyone pointed this out
My response (tweet):
Dawkins, sleeping silently and uncomfortably on his sofa, mumbles "oh no, not memes again", snorts, continues sleeping silently
There's more to my response. Richard Dawkins came to PSU one time and we got to hear him give a talk about one of his newer books. During Q&A someone asked him about memes (something also including the new "internet memes" that had escaped from his original meaning). Dawkin's response? "Oh no, not memes again. Next question."
Why that line stuck in my mind was because the British accent and the similarity to this line from (also British) The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy, when the Infinite Improbability Drive produces a sperm whale and a bowl of petunias above an alien planet, and they begin to fall. The whale experiences a bunch of emotions and confusion as it attempts to come to terms with its existence. For the other:
"Curiously enough, the only thing that went through the mind of the bowl of petunias as it fell was 'Oh no, not again'. Many people have speculated that if we knew exactly why the bowl of petunias had thought that we would know a lot more about the nature of the universe than we do now."