The comic book translation project is on hold for a week while I work on an essay about using memes to describe art history. Memes. I have always meant to read up on memes, because it seems to be a very interesting concept, whether memes can actually be said to "exist" or not. Basically, they are units of information which replicate and propagate within a culture, as genes replicate and propagate within the environment. Just as genes "use" humans (and other living creatures) as vessels to carry them on their reproducing path, memes "use" people as vessels in the same way. I do not fully understand the concept yet, but I am having fun learning about it.
Incidentally, meme is written in katakana like so: ミーム. And the Japanese for gene is: 遺伝子 (idenshi). Natural selection, a word you should always seek to know in any foreign language you become proficient in, is 自然淘汰 (shizen touta).
This essay is about 16,000 characters long, so I should be working on it for a few days yet... I will post updates when I run across interesting concepts and language related tid bits.
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