ANNOTATION:
Reply to James B. Thomas

A meme is easily separated from us once we create it, a copy 
stays with me, while other copies are sent to other people.  I 
create a meme, say, a new proof of Fermat's Last Theorem.  It 
can be transmitted to my neighbor, it can be put on the web, and 
 maybe someday it can be transmitted to a planet in the Andromeda 
galaxy.   We really are just rags flapping in the breeze.  We 
are here to produce memes, good ones, moral ones, ones which 
improve our culture.  They live on after we die, and to a large 
extent we have no other purpose in life than to be a medium for 
them.  And that's more of a meaning than most people can come up 
with for their lives.

Apparently the argument that James B. Thomas puts forth is based 
on the assumption that when memes are transferred the copy in 
the originator is erased.  Not so.