MemeMachineGo!Wouldn't you like to be a vector, too?IQ's mutability- April 29, 2008 The Flynn Effect refers to the increase in average IQ over time. IQ tests are updated periodically, to replace out-of-date questions (&8220;typewriters&8221; have given way to &8220;computers&8221;; dated words like &8220;delectable&8221; have been jettisoned for modern jargon like &8220;operational&8221;). Whenever a test was updated, a single group of people would take both versionsthe obsolete and the replacementto check that each ranked people in a similar order. As a matter of...http://www.mememachinego.com/2008/04/iqs_mutability.html Dog bites man- April 29, 2008 Today&8217;s value of dumbest thing ever. Germany&8217;s celebrity polar bear Knut has triggered a new controversy by fishing out 10 live carp from his moat and killing them in front of visitors. &8230; There is speculation that hand-reared Knut killed the carp just for fun. Controversy. Apparently, there are people shocked, shocked to learn that the solution to the equation polar bear + fish = dead fish.http://www.mememachinego.com/2008/04/dog_bites_man.html Write what you know- April 28, 2008 Before writing the James Bond novels, Ian Fleming was pitching espionage plots to British Naval Intelligence. Fleming &8230; devised Operation Ruthless. This was a plan to obtain a German codebook by crashing a captured aeroplane into the Channel, where the crew would be rescued by a German minesweeper. The &8216;survivors&8217; would then kill the German crew and hijack the ship.http://www.mememachinego.com/2008/04/write_what_you_know.html Making coffee- April 17, 2008 I&8217;d seen mention of roasting your own coffee with a hot air popcorn popper. At the beginning of March, Pocahontas and I visited Hawaii&8217;s Big Island. While we were there, we toured a coffee farm, and drank a lot of Kona coffee. It really is better than most coffee I&8217;ve had, but the price is prohibitive in the continental U.S. One of the things the tour guide said was that green coffee beans keep for a couple of years &8212; it&8217;s roasting that gives coffee a short shelf...http://www.mememachinego.com/2008/04/making_coffee_1.html Very hard water- April 7, 2008 William Gilbert, the dude who first figured out that the Earth had magnetic poles, thought that quartz was sort of like ice-9. Lucid gems are made of water; just as Crystal quartz, which has been concreted from clear water, not always by a very great cold, as some used to judge, and by very hard frost, but sometimes by a less severe one, the nature of the soil fashioning it, the humour or juices being shut up in definite cavities, in the way in which spars are produced in mines.http://www.mememachinego.com/2008/04/very_hard_water.html Visiting England- April 3, 2008 A Cultural Briefing for the Warriors. Six Masai warriors, who are so fierce they kill male lions with their bare hands, have been warned that surviving the perils of the African bush will be child&8217;s play compared to what they can expect on their first trip to England. The warriors, who are leaving their remote Tanzanian village to run in the London Marathon, have been given a detailed four-page guide on how to contend with the most curmudgeonly species they may ever encounter: the...http://www.mememachinego.com/2008/04/visiting_england.html This is a formula, a master plot, for any 6000 word pulp story.- April 1, 2008 How was Lester Dent, the creator of Doc Savage, so prolific He had a formula. The business of building stories seems not much different from the business of building anything else. Here&8217;s how it starts: 1. A DIFFERENT MURDER METHOD FOR VILLAIN TO USE 2. A DIFFERENT THING FOR VILLAIN TO BE SEEKING 3. A DIFFERENT LOCALE 4. A MENACE WHICH IS TO HANG LIKE A CLOUD OVER HEROhttp://www.mememachinego.com/2008/03/this_is_a_formula_a_master_plo.html |