From the link on Meme:
So I use the word "meme" when the connotations I'm looking for include (a) a fairly trivial but specific idea, (b) one that's confined to a specific community, and (c) one that has spread rapidly. I don't know of any other word that gets all this across so succinctly, and the concept seems like a pretty useful one in an era of widespread instantaneous communication and short attention spans. [Calpundit: Meme](“trivial but specific” sounds too much like the things I focus on—best shower and get off to a day of manual labor at work, moving cubicles around. Hmm, the dog wants his share of the day, too: wash, walk, then work.)
From the link on Metaphors (discussing Thomas Friedman's dependence on a wheeled-vehicle metaphor):
I have a parenthetical observation about the Summers quote. Friedman uses it a lot. In fact, he has used it four times in the last year. Once, he even referred to it as one of his "two favorite sayings." (The other was a Native American saying, which he called an "American Indian saying," to the effect that "If we don’t turn around now, we may just get where we’re going.") My observation is that it says an awful lot about you if one of your two favorite sayings is a quote by Lawrence Summers about a rental car. I mean, humankind has produced quite a lot of literature in the past 5000 years or so. Tacitus? Coleridge? Gandhi? "The course of true love never did run smooth?" No. Instead: No one has ever washed a rental car. [NYPress - Cage Match - Matt Taibbi - Vol. 16, Iss. 46]Posted by ronlusk at November 19, 2003 08:28 AM