As ANG6990 has progressed, it has become necessary to provide the students with more background in linguistics and cultural studies from the traditional writings of social science and philosophy.  The class is completing the course with such readings alongside some of the current critical essays suggesting that most of the core memetics writers lack (a) operational precision and (b) basic awareness of the empirical or philosophical foundations of linguistics or semiotics.  This is not to suggest that memetics has nothing to offer current cultural studies.  Rather, we have come to believe that whatever positive results will derive from memetics must be understood and/or interpreted through less muddled writings than many of those in the citations linked above.   We have left our own short essay,  "Basal Memes, Deep Structure, and Culture" here, and will soon post some other more developed ideas with it.   As we turn to specific critiques of memetic writings through our own essays, we will post them here.  However, it it likely that we will follow a rather narrow path through the memetics writings of others, since we find relatively few that show both understanding and depth of background for cultural issues as we see them.