Latest news with #RichardDawkins
The Hindu
2 days ago
- General
- The Hindu
The power and puzzle of memes
Though I hate to admit it, my mornings often begin with checking social media on my phone. As I scroll through the unread messages, I am flooded with photos containing motivational quotes, morning greetings, jokes, news updates, government announcements, and other information. Popularly called memes, these are snippets of information packaged and delivered in visually engaging ways. They are like mini-advertisements, artistically crafted to impress the viewers. As I browse through these forwarded gems, I often wonder who created them in the first place. Many of them carry the creator's name watermarked in a corner. I am impressed by the ingenuity of these meme creators. A meme creator should be a multi-faceted personality with a combination of wit and intelligence. He should be topically aware and smart enough to choose an appropriate meme template that would match with the information that he intends to share. Both the information and the template should resonate with the audience. If they fail to connect, the meme simply will not be shared, as sharing is the life force of a meme. Memes are images with a piece of text, typically comical in nature, that are spread rapidly by social media users. The viral nature of memes is behind the etymology of its name. The first usage of the term, meme, comes in the book, The Selfish Gene, by Richard Dawkins. He considered meme a concept similar to a gene (the idea of transmission), which passes on from one person to another. Humans love to share information and gossip about things. They want to pass on information about someone or something when they are in a conversation. Social media and memes have tapped this basic human instinct into huge proportions. We can see people sharing and forwarding memes in troves. Double-edged weapons Because visuals leave a stronger impression than words alone, memes are powerful tools. Nevertheless, memes can be double-edged weapons. Teams winning trophies, a key message from a national leader, an announcement from a moviemaker, all reach large sections of people in a fraction of a second. On the other hand, Internet-users often forward these memes without checking the veracity of the information. Fake news about wars, death of a famous person, tragic accidents, separation of popular couples, and religious hate news are also easily spread through memes. Memes with fake information can be destructive as they are powerful weapons of bullying, media attacks, isolation, and targeting of people. Why do people create memes? While some meme creators are paid professionals — often known as content creators — many do it for fun, driven by creativity and the joy of making others laugh. For them, meme creation is an expressive art form. There is even a friendly rivalry among creators over who can produce the most timely and relevant meme after major events. Humour has evolved, from printed jokes and cartoons in magazines to the fast-paced world of digital memes and video shorts. At its core, a meme has two main ingredients — a compelling piece of information and a relevant template. Choosing the appropriate meme template is the key aspect, which attracts the attention of the viewers. The templates are chosen from popular movie scenes, iconic moments from sitcoms, and funny expressions of political leaders, sportspersons, and comedy actors. There are popular meme templates available such as the unimpressed cricket fan, Drake's 'Hotline Bling', Batman slapping Robin, comedian Vadivelu, Cheems the dog and so on. Every detail matters in meme creation: the content, the choice of template, font size and placement, and even the overall dimensions of the image. A well-crafted meme is a combination of design, wit, and timing. Memes bring people together through humour and can act as a catalyst for driving social or political conversations. However, despite the best intentions of a meme creator, not everyone gets every meme. As memes grow in popularity, they also face issues such as idea theft and copyright infringement. The future may bring legal frameworks for protecting and regulating meme creation. What is clear is that memes are no longer just jokes — they are evolving into a form of digital communication and even professional expression. In a world where advertisements cost millions, a powerful meme created at a fraction of the cost might reach more people — and leave a stronger impact. rishiortho@
RNZ News
5 days ago
- Politics
- RNZ News
Emissions Trading Scheme incentivising whole farm conversions into forestry, farmers say
Pine forestry harvesting in Waimata Valley near Gisborne. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook Federated Farmers is urging the government to listen to its submission on legislation that looks to prevent whole-farm conversions into forestry. The Climate Change Response (Emissions Trading Scheme-Forestry Conversion) Amendment Bill had its first reading in June and a number of submissions were heard in a parliamentary select committee on Tuesday. Federated Farmers Forestry spokesperson Richard Dawkins told RNZ the future of rural communities was at stake if the government did not take this opportunity to make serious changes to the ETS. "The logic is clear. We just can't continue to undermine our productive sector or we're never gonna get ahead as a country," he said. Dawkins said Federated Farmers had no issue with forestry, but with the current ETS settings. "There's no problem with the right tree in the right place. "We encourage that, but with the way the ETS settings are at the moment, you're just incentivising whole farm conversions into permanent exotics and that, it's just no good, no good for anyone," he said. Gisborne farmer and former Federated Farmers forestry spokesperson Toby Williams told RNZ the campaign was launched out of widespread concern for the increase in productive farm land being planted in pine trees. "We're really concerned that the continuing government policy looks to drive down the available land for sheep production. "We already know that our meat processors are struggling and we want to ensure that we actually have an industry still that can play its part in thriving rural communities, but also a thriving New Zealand and driving our export returns," he said. Federated Farmers have put up a billboard in Wellington claiming "sheep are not the problem". Photo: Supplied The Ministry for Primary Industries had a goal of doubling primary sector exports by 2035, but Williams said the sheep flock was declining. "Shrinking the sheep flock and shrinking the area that we farm sheep on isn't a great way to drive that forward," he said. Federated Farmers wants the government's review of the ETS to make two key changes - reducing the amount of emissions that large polluters can offset with trees, and capping the number of pine tree credits entered into the ETS. "We'd like to see a sinking lid on how many offsets a polluter could do every year. For example, we'd say in 2025 this year you could do 100 percent, but next year it drops to 95 into 9085 and so on," he said. The farming group was also keen to cap how many pine tree credits a polluter could enter into the ETS. "That will also have the same effect of slowing conversions of sheep and beef land into pine trees just for carbon offsets, and it will bring some actual balance," he said. Williams said if nothing changed with the ETS, then in 25 years time about 750,000 hectares of sheep producing land would be turned into pine trees. Gisborne farmer and former Federated Farmers forestry spokesperson Toby Williams. Photo: RNZ / Jimmy Ellingham Forestry Owners Association chief executive Elizabeth Heeg told RNZ it was not impressed with the Federated Farmers campaign targeting forestry. "We are disappointed that trees, and particularly pine trees, are being singled out as being the primary cause of some kind of a decline in the sheep numbers where actually we are not the correlation or the cause of the decline in sheep numbers. "Sheep numbers have been declining over the past 20 years and the forestry area has just started to come back in the last few years. So we are actually at a position at the national level of the same amount of forestry land area that we had 20 years ago," she said. While Heeg agrees that land use had changed over the past 20 years, she said it was more complicated than blaming it on forestry. "We're not seeing some kind of exponential growth in forestry planting. Actually, we did have an increase in forestry planting in the last couple of years, but we're seeing that largely kind of plateau at this stage," said Heeg. The group was alarmed by Federated Farmers idea of a 'sinking lid' policy on how many trees a polluter could plant to offset its emissions. "We would be deeply concerned if the government looked to take forestry out of the emissions trading scheme, because trees are still the only proven mitigation technology that we have. "I find it interesting that farmers would be asking for that when it's one of the chief ways that they could mitigate their climate emissions. So the inclusion or not of trees in the Emissions Trading Scheme, I feel like that horse has already bolted," said Heeg. The Forestry Owners Association says forestry is not the problem. Photo: RNZ / Alexa Cook The association was strongly against phasing forestry out of the ETS, instead urging more action from polluters . "I think it's nuts that we would get rid of our only proven mitigation tool rather than look at achieving gross emissions reductions. "It's a little bananas that when the rural sector needs as much support as possible, that we've got people pitting elements of the sector against itself when actually a lot of farmers are foresters as well and they're happily doing both in the landscape," she said. However, Federated Farmers said its members were definitely not happy - and wanted to see more action from the government. "We want to see an urgent review of the ETS as the government has held off doing it. There have been tweaks over the years, but that's it. "We're not the only organisation calling for changes to how we're doing this because of the threat to our economy," said Toby Williams. Minister for Forestry Todd McClay said the Federated Farmers' Save Our Sheep campaign highlighted exactly why his government was taking action to stop the wholesale loss of productive farmland to pine trees. "Under the last government, sheep and beef farms across regions like Hawke's Bay were bought out by carbon speculators, driven by careless and unbalanced ETS settings. Labour made it more profitable to plant pine trees than to farm sheep - and rural communities paid the price," said McClay. Minister for Forestry Todd McClay. Photo: RNZ / Angus Dreaver However, Labour Party forestry spokesperson Cushla Tangaere-Manuel said this was not a matter of sheep and beef farming versus forestry. "It's a matter of striking the right balance between industry growth and environmental protection. Labour has always believed the right tree should be planted in the right place - anything to the contrary is scaremongering. "This government has taken nearly two years to do anything about this. Labour were the ones with policy that put decision-making back into local hands on farm to forestry conversions and we are committed to finding long-term, locally-led, sustainable solutions," she said. Todd McClay said his government was moving forward on the issue. "On 4 December last year, we announced a ban on full farm-to-forest conversions, and legislation will be passed by October this year and backdated to that announcement - stopping blanket ETS planting on productive farmland and giving sheep and beef farmers a fair go," he said. However, McClay said the ETS was not the only challenge the sheep sector faced, as the wool industry had struggled - which is why he was supporting the sector by using wool in government buildings and housing, and investing in new uses through public-private partnerships. "We're not anti-forestry, but it can't come at the expense of highly-quality, safe and sustainable food production. We're levelling the playing field and backing farmers to grow the best lamb and mutton in the world - and sell it to the world," said McClay. Sign up for Ngā Pitopito Kōrero , a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.
The Guardian
10-07-2025
- Science
- The Guardian
Steven Rose obituary
Science and politics can make awkward bedfellows, with the very question of whether it is possible to make purely objective observations about the world drawing forth highly politicised positions. The neurobiologist Steven Rose, who has died aged 87, took a broadly reductionist approach to his research into biochemical mechanisms of memory, while at the same time adopting a high-profile political stance against the idea that human behaviour is determined by our genes. Less publicly but equally influentially, as the first biology professor to be appointed at the Open University – the distance-learning institution founded through a Labour government initiative in 1969 – Rose helped to pioneer a democratic and distributed approach to teaching practical science. He developed experiments that students could complete at home, pooling their results and prefiguring many of the 'citizen science' projects that have become popular in recent years. Impassioned, combative and articulate, Rose gave no quarter in his debates with fellow scientists. In the 1970s he challenged the idea that IQ tests – then being widely adopted in education and employment – measured some genetically determined 'general intelligence'. This and subsequent debates played out in a wider cultural arena than is typical of most scientific debates, fuelled by a series of popular books. His principal targets were the entomologist Edward O Wilson, author of Sociobiology, and the evolutionary theorist Richard Dawkins, author of The Selfish Gene, later joined by the cognitive neuroscientist Steven Pinker. To Rose, the idea that the roots of human social behaviour had been planted through the process of natural selection in the service of perpetuating our genes was anathema. While he did not question Darwinian evolution as a driving force in biology, he argued from a Marxist perspective that history and society were at least as important as determinants of human actions. In 1984 Rose co-authored Not in Our Genes: Biology, Ideology and Human Nature, together with the American geneticist Richard Lewontin and psychologist Leon Kamin. The book was a trenchant critique of sociobiology and genetic determinism, and went further in blaming such views for the failure to create a fairer society based on socialist principles. It met with mixed reviews, including the suggestion that he and his co-authors had misrepresented the views of their opponents, but Rose never retreated from his position. More than a decade later, in Lifelines (1997), he restated his arguments, highlighting the developmental and environmental events that take place across a lifetime that are not predetermined but through which an organism 'self-organises' to become a unique individual. He wrote: 'It is in the nature of living systems to be radically indeterminate, to continually construct their – our – own futures, albeit in circumstances not of our own choosing.' On first becoming a neurobiologist, Rose consciously chose an important problem to investigate. What is it that changes, biologically, when we learn? Trained as a biochemist, he pursued the hypothesis that some change in the biochemistry of individual brain cells must underlie the enduring traces of memory. He devoted his research career to looking for those traces, in the form of new protein molecules, in the brains of newly hatched chicks. While he acknowledged that human memory raises far larger questions, he and his colleagues worked on this problem because it was 'what we know how to study'. By the time of his retirement he and Radmila Mileusnic had identified protein molecules that could counteract the amnesic effects of antibiotics on learning in chicks, and were hoping to develop them as treatments for Alzheimer's disease. Like others, however, they ran up against the problem that the brain puts up barriers to such large molecules, so that they cannot be given as pills or injections. Rose was a compulsive writer, words flowing as easily in print as they did in person, weaving science, society and politics into a single whole. While still in his 20s he published The Chemistry of Life (1966), a hugely successful Penguin paperback explaining the basics of biochemistry to the general reader. His book The Making of Memory: From Molecules to Mind (1992) received the Royal Society science book prize. One of his later works, The 21st Century Brain, succinctly summarised the achievements of neuroscientists in recent decades, but also warned that science could not always provide the best answers to questions about the mind, consciousness and mental illness. While Rose championed science as an approach to understanding the natural world, he devoted at least as much of his considerable energy to critiques of the relationship between science and the state. Steven was born into an Orthodox Jewish community in north London, the elder son of Lionel Rose (formerly Rosenberg), a chemistry teacher who became an intelligence officer during the second world war. Lionel subsequently worked full-time as an organiser for the Association of Jewish Ex-Servicemen and Women before founding an advertising agency. Steven's mother, Ruth (nee Waxman), gave up her own career aspirations to care for her home and family, but later became co-director of her husband's agency and ran it single-handed after he died in 1959. Steven won a scholarship to Haberdashers' Aske's boys' school, then in Cricklewood, north London. Another scholarship took him to study natural sciences at King's College, Cambridge, where he initially intended to specialise in chemistry. But he found himself in an environment buzzing with new discoveries in biochemistry, including the DNA double helix proposed by James Watson and Francis Crick at the Medical Research Council Unit for Molecular Biology. With a double first in biochemistry, Rose decided to use his new tools to tackle one of the hardest problems in biology – how the brain works. Cambridge 'exiled' him to the Institute of Psychiatry in London to study the biochemistry of slices of cow brain for his PhD. Rose spoke of his frustration at this, saying: 'We might as well have been studying big toes or livers or kidneys for all it told me about function.' He met Hilary Chantler (nee Channell), a recently widowed mature student reading sociology at London School of Economics, at a New Left Review meeting in 1960, and they married the following year. Political action and protest had been part of his life since childhood – his community came under attack from fascist stone-throwers in the late 40s, and as an undergraduate he had joined in running battles with the police while demonstrating against the invasion of Suez. Steven and Hilary formed a close partnership, both personal and professional: Hilary co-authored several of his books, they were founder members of the British Society for Social Responsibility in Science, and they jointly held the honorary lectureship post of Gresham professor of physic from 1999 until 2002. Hilary became professor of social policy at the University of Bradford, with a particular interest in the sociology of science, and they were united in their (broadly Marxist, but not pro-Soviet) political activism on issues such as the Vietnam war, the control of chemical and biological weapons and a boycott of Israeli academic institutions. After a false start as a postdoctoral researcher at Oxford University, which he found stiflingly reactionary, Rose spent five years (1964-69) at Imperial College London. There he developed the technique of looking for biochemical changes in single neurons in the brains of chicks after they learned a new behaviour, the basis of his subsequent research work. In 1969 he joined the Open University, building the department of life sciences from scratch, and working out from first principles how one might teach science through a combination of home study and experiment, television programmes and summer schools. He retired in 1999, but retained his laboratory and continued to conduct research for more than a decade. Reflecting on the values that underpinned his work for the OU, he told an oral history interviewer: 'In a democratic society if you want to share power, you have to share knowledge and you have to share the knowledge of science.' He is survived by Hilary, their two sons, Simon (from Hilary's first marriage) and Ben, and six grandchildren, Sara, Chloe, Woody, Cosmo, Saul and Mali, and by his brother, Nikolas. Steven Peter Russell Rose, neuroscientist, born 4 July 1938; died 9 July 2025
Forbes
04-07-2025
- Entertainment
- Forbes
2 Reasons Why Memes Are More Important Than We Think, By A Psychologist
We all love sharing TikToks, Instagram reels and memes to feel connected. But how do we know when ... More it's time to look up from the screen and check in with ourselves? Sending memes, as the internet has discovered, is a form of 'pebbling,' an incredibly romantic behavior exhibited by male Gentoo penguins. Male Gentoo penguins display their affection by presenting the most-perfect looking pebble they can find to their potential mate as a mark of affection. It's a touching display that acts as a source of lifetime bonding. Similarly , humans share videos, memes and jokes they think their loved ones would find amusing. It's a way of saying, 'I understand you and I know you would like this.' The word 'meme' was first coined by Richard Dawkins, an evolutionary biologist, in his 1976 book The Selfish Gene. He described memes as tunes, ideas, catchphrases or bits of information that spread quickly from one mind to another through imitation. It's no wonder that the digital world has successfully incorporated the replicative nature of human culture; it's often the simplest and most accessible ideas turn out to cast the widest net in human societies, and capture most imaginations. Here are two powerful ways meme culture helps us process challenging emotions. 1. Memes Make Light Of Uncomfortable Situations Imagine that you've unmuted yourself during a Zoom meeting while ranting about your boss, not realizing everyone, including your boss, could hear. At the time you were understandably mortified and written up at work, but now it's a running joke among friends. Now, you can watch Brian's work Zoom videos that your friend shared and laugh about how you'd been like Brian once upon a time. Notice the shift in perspective about your sense of self. Initially, you may have been ashamed to have been perceived any differently by your coworkers, but later, you came to accept your imperfect self. You stopped taking yourself as seriously, and saw the humor in an otherwise challenging moment. Humor looks different to everyone. One way to understand this is with the help of benign violation theory, which talks about how people laugh at something that's typically threatening or uncomfortable, as long as it's presented in a non-threatening, socially acceptable way. A violation is anything that differs from your idea of how the world 'should' be. For instance, it may include moral violations like dark jokes or social violations like disregarding hierarchy in the office. This is also why some people find certain jokes funny that others do not. Moreover, memes appear to temporarily lighten the load of even traumatizing scenarios. For instance, reels where individuals jokingly treat bombs as shooting stars in the Iran-Israel war and add Katy Perry's Firework as an audio highlight how memes are used to cope with serious threats and fears by attempting to make them absurdly funny. The meme cycle churns out new content by the minute and if you're away from your screen for even a day or two, you might miss a potentially viral reel that your friend circle is starting to share. This cycle lets people instantly latch onto a relatable post about mental health, heartbreak, job burnout or existential dread. This immediacy helps normalize pain by making it visible and less isolating. 2. Memes Help You Find A Community Memes are essentially digital inside jokes. When people have inside jokes, they become a part of an 'in-group' where participants construe solidarity through agreement and shared humor. They may say things like 'I get it' or 'You've seen this too?' Sometimes, sharing and commenting on reels or memes may even become a form of interaction between friends, where one asks, 'Hey, did you see that video I sent you? This reminds me of us.' In these ways, memes help people feel that there are others who 'get them' and lessen feelings of isolation. An interesting way these communities run is by sharing and associating with memes to indicate their knowledge of that subculture, explains Julian Burton, PhD in his research on youth, memes and the power of online cultural politics. Think of the recent Justin Bieber confronting paparazzi with a 'It's not clocking to you' outburst that went viral. People started sharing the same by mimicking his lines as he talks. The singer himself took part in the meme-making process by sharing a remixed version of his own. But how far is too far when it comes to our reliance on memes? Memes reflect our need to be seen, to be understood and to turn pain into something bearable. But they are not meant to be a replacement for therapy or deeper emotional work. Meme culture has become our online, and sometimes our only, source of connection. Many end up resorting to jargon-heavy memes as a way to cope, instead of seeking help outside of these self-validating online communities. Pebbling is all fun and games, until we realize we're all exchanging neatly packaged versions of our pain. We need to understand the fine line between having fun and avoiding deeper issues, because knowing when to laugh and when to reach out might just be the most meaningful pebble we can offer ourselves. Is your daily scroll through social media helping or hurting you? Take this science-backed test to find out: Doomscrolling Scale
NZ Herald
30-06-2025
- Business
- NZ Herald
Federated Farmers elects new board members, Karl Dean and Richard Dawkins
Karl Dean and Richard Dawkins have been elected to the Federated Farmers board at the organisation's AGM in Christchurch, replacing Richard McIntyre and Toby Williams. Dean, 36, who sharemilks with his wife Amie near Leeston in Canterbury, has been elected as the organisation's new national dairy chair. Dawkins, 35, farms
