Oof...goosebumps. So I'm re-reading Peter Watts' Maelstrom, and ***SPOILER*** (though it won't make any sense if you haven't read it anyway) recalling the interesting thing that happens when the Lenie Clarke meme starts to take on a (semi)sentient existence and at the same time parallels the William Gibson concept of the critical mass of celebrity, and consequently ravages the eponymous Maelstrom. So in this interesting article there's a pretty direct real-life parallel, of something taking on a 'life' of its own on the interwebnet, with an accompanying 'face' along with it and everything! Eerie.

Whoa...honestly, this little bug kind of freaks me out a little. Trickery! I suppose it is a good example of convergent evolution, though.

I've been intrigued by chess and chess-variants of late - Baroque is one I think particularly interesting, especially in its own variants at the bottom of the page (like the very divergent Renaissance, for example)