Has anyone already heared about a laughing epedemic 1962 in Tansania? The Neue Zürcher Zeitung reports about it in an article about scientific reseach of laughing: "Betrachten wir zum Beispiel jene bemerkenswerte Lachepidemie, die 1962 in einer Mädchenschule in Tanganjika (heute Tansania) ausbrach. Die ersten Symptome traten am 30. Januar auf, als drei Mädchen einen Kicheranfall bekamen und nicht mehr aufhören konnten zu lachen. Die Symptome griffen bald auf alle 95 Schülerinnen über, bis die Schule am 18. März schliesslich den Unterricht einstellen musste. Die Mädchen wurden nach Hause geschickt, von wo sich die Epidemie weiter ausbreitete. In anderen Schulen Zentralafrikas kam es zu weiteren Ausbrüchen, die sich wie ein Lauffeuer ausbreiteten, und als die Epidemie zwei Jahre später verebbte, hatte sie etwa 1000 Menschen, zumeist Frauen und Mädchen, ereilt." Really strange stuff. Via Quimbo

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In the last days I was discovering a little mistake in my (and others?) concept of Cyberethnology: As I know, researchers were always or often thinking about internet culture as a new culture, which has differences to offline cultures. For example, you compare commodification in online games to commodification in real markets, and discover similarities and differences (see also older story). Or a fellow student at our institute does research about democracy in the internet compared to the offline world, another one about ethnical conflicts in the internet (also with comparing or measuring it to the offline world). But taking internet culture serious means, that we are always aware that it's nearly as complex as the offline world and that there are really huge differences inside the internet. I mean, the differences of it to the offline world are really obvious and most of them (definitely not all!) are most likely based only on the technical difference, not in the cultural. The cultural interesting thing rather is: How are the differnces inside? As "inside" the technical difference is lesser. So taking internet culture serious means, that we are aware, that the internet is a own social space with it's own rules, of course affected by the offline world, but meanwhile maybe more affected by itself. So, what I would do to understand the internet, will rather be comparing different internet cultures. For example, commodification in one online game community compared to another (ok, this is stupid as it's most likely influenced by the game programing code). Another example: Comparing forum tradition and use and habits of one community to another. Intuitive I would guess, this would be more interesting as comparing it to offline communication of communities. Of course, this means not that comparing to the offline world is senseless. I think, at the moment it's only less interesting. Comparing to offline worlds is necessary for adapting our theorys. But then - as researches interested in culture - we should look at the different cultures inside the internet space.

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Telepolis reports about the evolving capitalistic markets in Online Games. The author mentions also the most important study in this segment from Edward Castranova.

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This article (german) at Telepolis thinks about the dangers of increasing intellectual property right for delveloping countries. They compare the ongoing protection of copyrights and patents withs some kind of intellectual land occupation, wich takes the econmical weaker countries the possibility to compete in knowledge driven technologies or even to invent new knowledge.

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An interesting and sarcastic thought by a fellow weblogger: "Facing the fact, that in our country every educational TV- or radio documentation about islamic countries begins with the call of the muezzin, I ask myself always more often, if the arabic broadcasters begin every report about europe with the ringing of the church bells." Well, nice thought. But it's just not true. Most of them end with the call of the muezzin ;-) Makes me also think about the strongly european influenced undertitle of our page ...

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For seven centuries, the ancient city of Teotihuacán flourished 40 kilometers northeast of modern-day Mexico City. Its culture and artwork were distinct from the Mayan civilization nearly 1000 kilometers to the southwest on the Yucatán Peninsula, so scholars thought that there was little interaction between the two peoples. But now, a newly discovered tomb suggests that Teotihuacán rulers had some kind of connection with Mayan royal families, reports Daily Insight Via Anthropology in the News

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NAIROBI, Kenya (Reuters) -- Scientists hope to learn from ancient tribal knowledge how to protect fragile lands bordering Africa's deserts as part of a $50 million conservation project, the United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) said. CNN reports. Via Anthropology in the News

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Spiegel Online reports (in german) about the situation in the Kongo. After the so called forgotten war (which killed 3 Million people between 1998 and 2002) the armys left the land, but the slaughter between tribes, rebells and other groups is going on - an so do the deals with mineral resources.

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