Karaoke worldwide

One of the most amazing and enchanting features of Skypeland is the existence of casts where people from all over the world sing for each other and play instruments. Sometimes people sing together and sometimes jam together. Some of the people who do this are professionals and an amateur like me completely embarasses themselves by attempting to join these rooms. Sometimes all new visitors to these casts must sing a capella renditions of songs for the others.

Why do I have two blogs?

A number of people have asked why I have two different blogs about Skypeland, this one and "Skypeland Adventures". However, there is method to my madness.

"Skypeland Adventures", my other blog about Skypeland, is much more raw and crude than this one. A lot of it consists of direct quotes by angry people, or mentally disturbed people. Admittedly, the posts there are much more comical than the posts in this blog, but they are more outrageous and offensive as well. Sometimes stimulating conflict and engaging in difficult discussions teaches me something. Hopefully others learn something from these descriptions as well.

For example, the discussions of the Mohammed Cartoons actually has some serious components to it. The investigation of aniconism in Islam and other faiths and how it has evolved with time and differs with location and culture is fascinating.

The discussions of conspiracy theories are also interesting, because they show how people reason and make connections. I suspect these are evidence of apophenia, confirmation bias, clustering illusions, syncronicity misinterpretation, misapplication of Occam's Razor and other logical fallacies. The fervor with which the subscribers defend these conspiracy theories is astounding, and is an impressive sight to behold.

As discouraging as some people find these accounts, they do constitute raw data which we can study and learn from. There are clear patterns to these belief systems, and they are astoundingly widespread. It is quite interesting to ponder why they exist, and what comfort the proponents and inventors of these theories draw from them.

When I survey these data, I am positively impressed by the contributions that the scientific method has made to everyday life, even though many do not appreciate this. These discussions are a window back into the "demon haunted world" that Carl Sagan warned us about, and make it easier to appreciate many past beliefs and practices which now seem hopelessly nonsensical.

Intellectual stimulation

One positive aspect of Skypeland is the ability to connect with others who have similar interests and share information. For example, there is a group of scientists, largely centered in Brazil, that meets in the evenings to talk about research results in medicine, neuroscience, biology and related fields. A friend from California often hosts casts that deal with language and brain function. We swap references, links to podcasts and videos and ideas. I sometimes muse about the nature of consciousness and like to hear the ideas of others on this topic.

One of my favorite areas to investigate is the origin of various foods. I also like etymology. I was talking with a friend about profiteroles (the French name for cream puffs) and found out that they were made from "choux" dough. I realized that the French words "choux" and "chou" (meaning cabbage) were homonyms.

The word "chou" is often heard in the expression of endearment common in French, "Mon petit chou", which always struck me as a little strange. Cabbages have many deep connections to history:

The brutal Roman Emperor and persecutor of Christians Diocletian refused to
return to power after he retired to grow cabbages, saying "Have you seen my
cabbages?"

and culture:

For example, cabbages appear in the poem "The Walrus and the Carpenter" by Lewis
Carroll, pseudonym of mathematician Charles Dodgson.

These are the kinds of bits of trivia that I find fascinating. Even something as prosaic as a cabbage can be interesting.

There are words that are not homonyms in their native language, but sound like homonyms to native speakers of other languages. There might be a fancy term for this, like "pseudohomonym" or something, but I don't know of one. The French words "cou" (neck), "coup" (strike), "queue" (line) and "cul" (posterior) sound very different to a native Francophone, but to English ears sound almost identical. There are similar families of words in Chinese that sound the same to Anglophones. The "r" and "l" sounds that sound so different to Anglophones are difficult for Japanese and Chinese speakers to distinguish, which is a common source of comedy and confusion. (According to a linguist I asked, Chinese has no "r" sound, and Japanese has no "l" sound, but both have a trilled-r sound. The Japanese apparently substitute an "r" sound for an "l". The Chinese substitute an "l" sound for an "r", called lallation, a type of lambdacism, which are classified as an inability to prounce the "r" sound, called rhotacism.)

This appears to be associated to the existence of these sounds in a given language, and the programming of the brains of the people to be able to hear these different sounds. This might be part of the reason that all dog barking sounds like nonsense to us, when dogs have been shown to be able to make hundreds of different barks that carry information from one dog to another, as has been discovered by recent research. I wonder about human difficulties in decoding cetacean sounds and songs in spite of decades of effort.

There is clear evidence of animal ability to pass on information from generation to generation. For example, animals are afraid of humans on those islands in the Galapagos where humans slaughtered the animals 100+ years ago. On neighboring islands that have no such history, the animals show no fear at all of humans.

There is tremendous conceit among humans when it comes to our language abilities.

Addendum: Somewhat related to the concept of spoonerism, it is common in English to alter the order of phonemes in a word. Sometimes, as in the case of "ask" and "axe", this has roots in Old English, when ascian and axian/acsian were both in use. Similarly, aspen and apse both were common names for a type of tree. However, this can also be just an error, and in that case it is called metathesis: (pretty/purdy, nuclear/nucular, introduce/interduce, etc).

Dog races

One friend in Skypeland works on weekends at a dog race track run by her grandmother. It is not like the dog tracks in the US, where things are very competitive and dogs are treated cruelly. Any dog can run at her grandmother's track, even old dogs. They chase a sock with a "squawker" in it, around and around. Some dogs get smart and cheat, and run to the finish line by taking a short cut so they can get the sock first. Once in a while dogs strain their muscles and need to have massages and pain killers. It sounds like fun.

A dog and cat hotel

I met a nice lady from Israel whose family runs a dog and cat hotel in the north of Israel. It sounded very interesting. They have room for 20 to 30 dogs and cats at any given time. She takes the dogs for walks 3 times a day. She does not walk the cats, so they have large cages. Her speciality is to clean up the poop. Her aunt has an orange cat who learned to use the toilet himself, with no training. The funny thing is, she is allergic to dogs and cats.

US military

In Skypeland, I have met several people who are currently serving in the US armed forces. Some are in Iraq and Afghanistan, and some are stationed in other places. They have invariably been intelligent, well-mannered and well-informed. It is an honor to meet them and I salute them for their service to our country. I am proud to have them representing us.

Grateful Irish

I have met a person from Ireland that is grateful of the current peace in Northern Ireland. He has told me several times that he is glad that the US "knocked a few heads together", and brokered a peace accord.

Iran and Iraq in favor of peace

I have met several from Iraq who are glad that the US is helping them move towards democracy. I have also met several people from Iran who want the US to do the same thing for them.

Palestinian Israeli peace

I have met some people from an organization promoting peace in Palestine and Israel. It is good to hear people from both sides promoting peace together and cooperation.

A world famous chef

I met a chef from Perth, who is now working in Florida, and was trained in Europe. He told me how rigorous the training program was in Europe to be a chef. He confirmed for me that the best garlic in the world comes from China. I am still not quite sure why this is.

He also told me how he met his fiance. He met her, cooked her a dinner, with a nice chocolate desert. One meal was all it took, I guess...

Introduction

By special request, I have decided to start a blog describing some of the nice people I meet in Skypeland. Many interesting and creative people are in Skypeland from all parts of the world. They might not be so outrageous, and their behavior not so funny, but they are still nice. I have learned a lot. I have selected some to include here.