What’s So Funny? Well, Maybe Nothing

I have just added a line to the subtitle of this blog: What’s So Funny? Well, Maybe Nothing.

As you may read some of the items here that could be your response. Even I have not found everything funny here!

JOHN TIERNEY NYT March 13 2007: "Laughter, a topic that stymied philosophers for 2,000 years, is finally yielding to science.....They’ve discovered something that eluded Plato, Aristotle, Hobbes, Kant, Schopenhauer, Freud and the many theorists who have tried to explain laughter based on the mistaken premise that they’re explaining humour.....Occasionally we’re surprised into laughing at something funny, but most laughter has little to do with humor. It’s an instinctual survival tool for social animals, not an intellectual response to wit. It’s not about getting the joke. It’s about getting along.......most speakers, particularly women, did more laughing than their listeners, using the laughs as punctuation for their sentences. It’s a largely involuntary process. People can consciously suppress laughs, but few can make themselves laugh convincingly....The human ha-ha evolved from the rhythmic sound — pant-pant — made by primates like chimpanzees when they tickle and chase one other while playing."