Right Thinking From The Left Coast
"To what purpose are powers limited, and to what purpose is that limitation committed to writing,
if these limits may, at any time, be passed by those intended to be restrained?"
-- Chief Justice John Marshall, Marbury v. Madison, 1803

Wednesday, July 02, 2008

Laugh, Control Group, Laugh
by West Virginia Rebel

This is kind of sad-when funny becomes fodder for scientific study.

The real news is that the investigation of humour is belatedly becoming a science. After millennia of untested speculation by armchair thinkers, moves are afoot to bring the study of laughter into the mainstream of experimental psychology. As Rod Martin, a professor at the University of Western Ontario, notes in his textbook “The Psychology of Humor”, which was published last year, humour is found in all human cultures and is ubiquitous in everyday life. His own studies suggest that on average people laugh 17.5 times per day. And a good sense of humour tends to be one of the most highly rated traits when people choose their friends, lovers or spouses. So psychologists have every reason to take humour seriously.

It seems to me that when you start thinking about it, humor starts to lose its meaning. Maybe the shrinks should take a cue from Hugo Z. Hackenbush:

Posted by West Virginia Rebel on 07/02/08 at 03:29 PM in Health Care  • (2) Comments • (0) Trackbacks • Permalink • Discuss this in the forums
Page 1 of 1 pages