These things come in waves : Pharyngula

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PZ Myers is a biologist and associate professor at the University of Minnesota, Morris.
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« Make Fort Wayne look like a much more rational place | Main | Give it up, Norm. »

These things come in waves

Category: Weblogs
Posted on: April 15, 2009 2:22 PM, by PZ Myers

I wonder what's behind the somewhat cyclic nature of internet phenomena? I'm getting a lot of messages from people telling me about this discovery that cephalopods have venom—I covered that a few weeks ago. I'm also being told that I'm in an amusing rap video…that one I mentioned over a year ago. I'm not about to discourage anyone from sending me links, I'm simply curious about the strange way I'll suddenly got lots of links to the same thing all at once.

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Comments

Posted by: Glen Davidson | April 15, 2009 2:38 PM

It's God in the internets.

Don't you know that anything complex and incompletely explained is a matter of Design beyond our capabilities?

So look in awe as your life and atheism are touched by the inscutable will of God. Or Cthulu, depending on taste.

Glen D
http://tinyurl.com/6mb592

Posted by: blf | April 15, 2009 2:42 PM

Experiments in reverse-Pharyngulianummimumn—er, however the feck it's spelt—i.e., reverse-(poll-)crashing?

Or maybe some people just read real slow and haven't gotten to those posts yet?

Or maybe, just maybe, some people, unbelievably, do not read Pee Zed? Burn those sausage-eating heretic infidels! (Or shake their hands and given them a cookie. I'm not sure which.)

Posted by: Frost | April 15, 2009 2:44 PM

Well. Beware the Believers appeared today on the front page of reddit for some reason, so I guess that may well be the reason you are hearing about it, too.

Posted by: NoAstronomer | April 15, 2009 2:45 PM

I'm sure there's several PhDs worth of study in this sociological phenomenon.

The BBC News website has a small widget on the right side that shows the most read/shared/emailed stories. If you check the list regularly you can see the occasional story popup from several years ago.

Posted by: Capital Dan | April 15, 2009 2:46 PM

What?!? You're just getting around to my mail now?

Why do I even bother with you, sir? At this rate, that bottle of scotch isn't going to get there until... well... Hey! You might be able to kick off your sabbatical in style, homey.

Posted by: Basset_Fan | April 15, 2009 2:54 PM

Speaking of "coming in waves" . . . .

http://www.funnyordie.com/videos/0d646e2edb/lindsay-lohan-s-eharmony-profile

Posted by: cedgray | April 15, 2009 2:56 PM

"Small World" phenomenon. All the kinds of people who read the kinds of things that you'd be likely to write about on here also hang about in the same places. When one person sees something that's new (to them), then tell everyone else, and those to whom it is also new send it to you.

Posted by: teammarty | April 15, 2009 3:00 PM

It's like a spirograph, all the circles meet at different places. Something years old is new if you see it for the first time.

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | April 15, 2009 3:01 PM

Why don't search engines enable users to set time constraints so that it's practical to find references to, say, "cephalopod venom >4/1/09" without also being slammed by hundreds of references from Pliny the Elder's blog?

#10

Posted by: Jack | April 15, 2009 3:14 PM

Yeah, it was on Reddit today. I was amazed at how many comments it took before someone mentioned how old it was, and the back story.

Still hilarious, though. Dawk's got the moves. Old Charlie boy doesn't do so badly, either.

#11

Posted by: recovering catholic | April 15, 2009 3:19 PM

Happens a lot, especially with collections of cute dogs, bunnies, kitties doing adorable things. But I don't mind seeing them again.

#12

Posted by: a_ray_in_dilbert_space | April 15, 2009 3:29 PM

It's the internet and there are folks out there with way, way too much time on their hands and EVERYBODY's email.

#13

Posted by: Alex Besogonov | April 15, 2009 3:35 PM

Obligatory XKCD link: http://xkcd.com/286/

#14

Posted by: Epikt | April 15, 2009 3:40 PM

I wonder what's behind the somewhat cyclic nature of internet phenomena?

A forest-fire model, maybe, or something else purloined from the field of self-organized criticality.

#15

Posted by: Sili | April 15, 2009 3:48 PM

Have some brand new links then.

#16

Posted by: ali | April 15, 2009 3:49 PM

I think something like cephalopd venom got mentioned in the latest episode of BBC World Service's Discovery. They didn't report on the rap video though...

#17

Posted by: 'Tis Himself, OM | April 15, 2009 4:16 PM

Yeah he's the Dick to the Doc to the PhD,
he's smarter than you he's got a science degree!
The Dick to the Doc to the PhD,
He's still smarter than you he studied biology!

Snortle

#18

Posted by: Sili | April 15, 2009 4:27 PM

And another one.

This is less religion bashing and more for the xkcd fans.

#19

Posted by: Harry | April 15, 2009 4:43 PM

I don't know about the venom thing but the Expelled rap hit the front page of Reddit today, guess a lot of the readers hear are redditors too. For those who don't know reddit is basicly a link site where users submit interesting links which others vote on, those with the most votes then being pushed to the fron page.

Also, hi! Long time reader here but I've never commented before, not quite sure what prompted me to this time........

#20

Posted by: Alpinist | April 15, 2009 4:44 PM

Reddit reader here who saw the rap video headline this morning. Haven't watched it yet, but intend to.

#21

Posted by: anthonzi | April 15, 2009 4:53 PM

Punctuated equilibrium, but with memes.

#22

Posted by: Physicalist | April 15, 2009 5:17 PM

Funny, I was just humming "Dick to the Dawk, to the PhD" to myself this morning . . .

Must the be alignment of the stars!

#23

Posted by: fcaccin | April 15, 2009 5:43 PM

Chaos theory teaches us that a surprising spectrum of "random" phenomena actually display a recursive behaviour on the long run.

#24

Posted by: Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry | April 15, 2009 6:52 PM

Actually, I am to blame for the venom one.

I only recently returned from the Amazon and finally got around to being a dutiful little academic-whore and let the media office know about the paper (which was also just assigned an issue in f Journal of Molecular Evolution: Volume 68, Issue 4 (2009), Page 311).

So they put out a press release this week and your minions obviously reported it to their tentacled overlord :)

#25

Posted by: PZ Myers | April 15, 2009 7:00 PM

Oh, you get to go to the Amazon...are we supposed to feel sympathy or something?

I feel all tingly and adventurous when I get to go to Canada.

#26

Posted by: Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry | April 15, 2009 7:18 PM

hahahahahahahahaha

Yes, I suffer :)

#27

Posted by: Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry | April 15, 2009 7:48 PM

>Why don't search engines enable users to set time constraints so that it's practical to find references to, say, "cephalopod venom >4/1/09" without also being slammed by hundreds of references from Pliny the Elder's blog?

actually you can do this by clicking on the "advanced search" link in google and then clicking the link for "Date, usage rights, numeric range, and more"

#28

Posted by: Pierce R. Butler | April 15, 2009 8:57 PM

Dr. Fry - many thanks. You are a gentleman and a scholar!

#29

Posted by: zpmorgan | April 15, 2009 10:40 PM

Here's something new. I googled scienceblogs and hardly found any reference to Octocat Adventures. This is something you should watch in high-def. (trust me on this)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VYFuThdOyDg

It's about a cephalapod, right?

#30

Posted by: Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry | April 16, 2009 1:42 AM

here is a link to download the cephalopod venom paper
http://www.venomdoc.com/downloads/2009_Fry_Tentacles_of_Venom.pdf

#31

Posted by: Carlie | April 16, 2009 6:42 AM

Sili - don't forget, this Saturday is Velociraptor Awareness Day.

Ok, so it doesn't force me to log in until after I've already written the whole thing and tried to submit, forgetting that I have to log in first, and only then get an error message. That's not cool!

#32

Posted by: AnneH | April 16, 2009 6:20 PM

Have you seen this yet? It's an interesting post about the difference between our chromosomes and that of the Great Apes-
http://www.boingboing.net/2009/04/16/our-missing-chromoso.html

I saw the cephalopod venom story on Yahoo's front page-
http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20090416/sc_livescience/alloctopusesarevenomous

so it's all over the net. I found the idea of studying cephalopod venom for potential pain medication to be fascinating.

#33

Posted by: Dr. Bryan Grieg Fry | April 16, 2009 7:19 PM

>I found the idea of studying cephalopod venom for potential pain medication to be fascinating.

For me it was a grand excuse to scuba dive in the Coral Sea and spend two months in Antarctica :D