The topics:

• Phil bounced back and is 100%!

• The Large Hadron Collider is being turned on this week.

• John McCain is definitely in the running for the Speculist coffee mug. Phil and Stephen listened to the segment of his acceptance speech where he talked about energy.

  McCain mentioned flex-fuel (something Obama did not talk about). Plus, he mentioned that our energy initiatives will create good high tech jobs.

  Phil gave a slight edge to John McCain in the coffee mug competition.

• We now know what the production version of the Chevy Volt will look like:

  

  Stephen is a little disappointed. The concept version was much cooler:

  

• Memes: Different types of memes. Some think of memes as idea viruses. Stephen pointed out that memes can certainly be negative, but they can be positive. People spread memes that they think are useful - regardless of their objective truth.

  We listened to a portion of Senator Obama's "Just Word's" speech. Obama was arguing that ideas are important. We also listened to the end of McCain's acceptance speech where he was reinforcing or restating the "American exceptionalism" meme:

  "Stand up, Stand up, stand up and fight. Nothing is inevitable here. We're Americans! We never give up, we never Quit! We never hide from history, we make history!"

• They talked about how early memes gave us civilization: fire, animal domestication, agriculture, and beer!

• They talked about silly modern memes like the "Don't worry, be Happy" song. They talked about bumper sticker memes.

• Bumper Stickers = Road Rage.

• A very basic meme is the chain letter. It has a bait, a hook, and even negative consequences for not passing it on. Neither Stephen nor Phil have started a chain letter. But yet they keep showing up in their inboxes. Who starts these things?

• Jokes are another example. Jokes show how memes can mutate and evolve over time.

• Phil recommended the Snopes website. Its the website that deals with urban legends.

• How do memes shape the future? The future is made out of our ideas about the future (our memes), our actions now, and how those actions interact with the world within the context of the current state of technology.

• Phil got so "infected by memes" at a Foresight Nanotech Vision weekend that he started the Speculist. Stephen thinks it beats catching Legionnaire's Disease.

• Memes have different value. Aubrey de Grey once argued, essentially, that radical life extension is the best meme in terms of the number of lives it could save. Aubrey believes that if his efforts bring about life extension even a month faster than would have been the case otherwise, he will be responsible for saving about 1,500,000 3,000,000 lives.

  One true story really brings home the relative value of memes. During the colonial period India was still, occasionally, burning widows upon the death of their husbands. When the British authorities started cracking down on the practice, Indians approached General Charles Napier and complained that this was a part of their culture.

  He responded, "You say that it is your custom to burn widows. Very well. We also have a custom: when men burn a woman alive, we tie a rope around their necks and we hang them. Build your funeral pyre; beside it, my carpenters will build a gallows. You may follow your custom. And then we will follow ours."

Our front bumper is a sample of Marginal Prophets' "The Difficult Song."

Our exit music this week is from The Joey Harlow Project. The song is "Runaround Sue."

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