*****  To join INSNA, visit http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/  *****

I wanted to inform everyone of the extensive updates I've done to the SPIDER website (Social Psychology of Information Diffusion -- Educational Resources), which can be accessed by clicking on
http://www.hs.ttu.edu/hd3317/spider.htm

I typically update the website every few days, so please check it regularly; periodically, though, I will send out a message to summarize the material that has been added.  The most recently added links include:

*The "Baconizer," a site that uses Amazon.com's "people who purchased X also purchased Y" database to show commonalities of consumer preferences.

*A study from the University of Florida that found traditional children's folk songs such as "Home on the Range" and "Erie Canal" are not being taught to schoolchildren as often as in the past.

*An article about the newest additions to the Oxford English Dictionary, including the Hip-Hop term "bling, bling."  Relatedly, given that inclusion in the OED can be seen as one sign of a meme's "survival," I've added a "Dictionaries" section that includes a Hip-Hop dictionary and also a Beatnik dictionary, thus making lists of terms and phrases from these subcultures available for anyone to track.

*A database maintained by the Social Security Administration of the popularity of baby names by year and by decade going back over 100 years.  Everyone I've shown this to has really enjoyed looking through it. :)

*Misheard song lyrics, known as "Mondegreens," in honor of the time when someone misheard the lyric "laid him on the green" as "Lady Mondegreen."  This is extremely relevant to Richard Dawkins's concept of "copying-fidelity" as a contributory factor to memes' survivability.

*The addition of several research-project websites.  In fact, I now have so many of these sites that I've created topic categories (business/commerce, culture, health, general memes, and general networks).  One interesting research-related link is to some papers by Ohio State University political scientist Paul Beck and his colleagues on personal discussion networks and presidential-election voting.

I've still not received any article or book reviews.  I'm sure many of you have recently read something relevant, and the reviews can be very brief (100 words or less) and informal.  You can just type out a little something and e-mail it to me.  It's fine with me to have multiple reviews of the same article or book, so don't be deterred if you see a review already in place for something.

Sincerely,
Alan

**********************************************************
Alan Reifman, Ph. D.,  Assistant Professor
Dept of Human Dev't and Family Studies
College of Human Sciences
Texas Tech University
Lubbock, TX 79409-1162
(806) 742-3000
http://www.hs.ttu.edu/hdfs/Faculty/reifman.htm

_____________________________________________________________________
SOCNET is a service of INSNA, the professional association for social
network researchers (http://www.sfu.ca/~insna/). To unsubscribe, send
an email message to [log in to unmask] containing the line
UNSUBSCRIBE SOCNET in the body of the message.