An Embarrassment of Geeks

At its most basic, an Internet meme is simply the propagation of a digital file or hyperlink from one person to others using methods available through the Internet (for example, email, blogs, social networking sites, instant messaging, etc). The content often consists of a saying or joke, a rumor, an altered or original image, a complete website, a video clip or animation, or an offbeat news story, among many other possibilities. In simple terms, an Internet meme is an inside joke, that a large number of Internet users are in on. An Internet meme may stay the same or may evolve over time, by chance or through commentary, imitations, and parody versions, or even by collecting news accounts about itself. Internet memes have a tendency to evolve and spread extremely quickly, sometimes going in and out of popularity in just days. They are spread organically, voluntarily, and peer to peer, rather than by compulsion, predetermined path, or completely automated means. The term “Meme” was coined by Richard Dawkins in his 1976 pop-science bestseller, The Selfish Gene.²

The term may refer to the content that spreads from user to user, the idea behind the content, or the phenomenon of its spread. Internet memes have been seen as a form of art.³

“Around four tonnes of ancient Roman lead was yesterday transferred from a museum on the Italian island of Sardinia to the country’s national particle physics laboratory at Gran Sasso on the mainland. Once destined to become water pipes, coins or ammunition for Roman soldiers’ slingshots, the metal will instead form part of a cutting-edge experiment to nail down the mass of neutrinos.”

“Arora et al. show it’s even worse than that: even after the buyer has lost a lot of money (because enough mortgages defaulted to devalue his “senior tranche”), he can’t prove that that tampering occurred: he can’t prove that the distribution of lemons wasn’t random. This makes it hard to get recourse in court; it also makes it hard to regulate CDOs."

Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo lifted off at 7:05am on 3/30 from the Mojave Air and Space Port. The flight lasted for nearly three hours and achieved an altitude of 45,000 feet. Spaceshiptwo was attached to WhiteKnightTwo, the second generation spacecraft from Scaled Composites.

Virgin Galactic says it has already taken in around $45 million in deposits for space flights from more than 330 people.

The test program for SpaceShipTwo will continue through the rest of the year and 2011. There has been no announcement of a date for the first commercial flight carrying paying customers.

Several extrasolar planets have been discovered to be orbiting backwards

Create and discover Ning Social Networks for your interests and passions.

MPEG Streamclip is a powerful free video converter, player, editor for Mac and Windows.

This is the way I always download videos I find on the net that I want to save to my drive.

iPhone app for controlling your cursor from your phone. Works better than Apple’s!

“I expect to be around to see it,” Obama said of pioneering U.S. trips starting with a landing on an asteroid

Anatoly Zenkov provides this nifty tool (Mac and PC) to track your mouse pointer. Really simple. Just start it, let it run, minimize the window, and carry on as usual. In the end, you get this image that looks something like a Pollock. Circles show areas where the pointer didn’t move while the tracks show movement.

The question of how to print from wireless devices has been thrust once again into the limelight recently thanks to the printing-anemic iPad. Longtime notebook and mobile device users are quite familiar with the printing conundrum

USB Golf Fidget
Product Code: ULIFE017500
Here comes another fun game you can play if you are bored at office work! The aim of the game is to hit the golf quickly to avoid it hits the right side of the screen. Once you click the ball, it bounces back to the other side on the fly. Play now to challenge your speed!

Know Your Meme: Documenting Internet phenomena: viral videos, image macros, catchphrases, web celebs and more.

The question of how to print from wireless devices has been thrust once again into the limelight recently thanks to the printing-anemic iPad. Longtime notebook and mobile device users are quite familiar with the printing conundrum

After 16 years, $10 billion, and two false starts due to electrical failures, the Large Hadron Collider finally began to make subatomic particles collide on 3/30.

Protons were accelerated to more than 99 percent of the speed of light to record-high energy levels of 3.5 trillion electron volts apiece. They raced around a 17-mile underground magnetic track outside Geneva, Switzerland. The particles crashed together inside apartment-building-size detectors designed to capture every detail from the resulting collisions thought to hold insights into the beginning of the universe.