Skype

I was talking to my uncle on Skype tonight, and we were discussing the problems with the static you hear...

When I hear static,
I can hear all the miles, all the other people talking... the signal going through the equator bouncing off luxembourg plunging through 4,000 miles of ocean bandwidth through the naval yards of phillidelphia past Lititz, PA and Amish Country, crossing the bridges of pittsburgh, plunging into the Ohio river valley and then all the way across to california; or maybe it's going the other way across Asia, or maybe half is going one way and half is going the other way. Or maybe it's a third, a third, and the other third is bouncing off a satellite orbiting over San Francisco. And maybe every one of these signals is crystal clear, but they deflect one another as they all arrive in your living room phone receiver,

that's why you can only hear every third word