P-sychology of humor?

A story on MSNBC.com vaguely discussed a recent study on age and humor. Apparently, "The research conducted by graduate student Wingyun Mak and psychology professor Brian Carpenter showed that the younger adults did 6 percent better on the verbal jokes and 14 percent better on the comic portion than did older participants"

First off, 6%? In a psychological study? Isn't that the same thing as "0%"?

There is a quote from the article that is bothering me. “This wasn’t a study about what people find funny. It was a study about whether they get what’s supposed to be funny,” Carpenter said.

Aside from the fact that Carpenter has a case of the 'spostas, I don't grant the premise that there is inherently some quality of "funny" universally found in those things which can be considered to be "funny" which exists in such a way as to denote inherent "funny" values in different things. Funny is subjective.

Example:
1) Cocksdickslol
2) A man walks into a bar, then falls down because it hurt.
3) Ziggy
4) Peas

Compare the "funny" value of each of those. My position is that if every person, ever, were asked to rank those in order of "funny" many people would create different lists depending upon what they think is funny.

Carpenter goes on to say, "There are basic cognitive mechanisms to understanding what’s going on in a joke. Older adults, because they may have deficits in some of those cognitive areas, may have a harder time understanding what a joke is about.”

Couple more things:
1) In that second sentence, doesn't using the word "may" twice refute any absoluteness the sentence may have? (See what I did there?)
2) Wouldn't anyone with a deficient cognitive mechanism, not just adults, experience this problem of identifying funny?
3) Does the second "may" in the second sentence mean that if a person has that deficit they may still "get" the joke?

Also, I didn't understand why the article had a reference to The Simpsons.

cocksdickslol.

Rant: Dear Apple,

Dear Apple,

I just spent 3 minutes trying to figure out how to open the little cd tray on the Mac here at work. There is no button on the CD tray, you see, because that would not be intuitive. Instead I had to get on google, search "mac open cd" and find a faq which told me to hold down F12 (didn't work), drag the disc to the trash, (didn't work), or hold down the eject key on the keyboard. Eject key? On the keyboard? Oh, apparently the little up triangle is an eject key.

That's good, though. That's good. Nice and intuitive. Nice and user friendly. We can't just PUT A FUCKING BUTTON ON THE GOD DAMNED CD TRAY. Nope, nope. We need an eject key on the keyboard, or some obscure key combination.

Because when recognizing that the basic human impulse when trying to interact with something is to poke it (thank you iPhone) the most sensible thing to do is not have a button on the CD tray. But rather put a little triangle on the keyboard.

I think my co-worker assessed this correctly when she said, "Well, that's retarded."

Go buy another turtleneck,
_J_

And the New Winner of the Craziest Son of a Bitch Today Goes To:

Wow, Just wow

China's ex head of FDA executed.

In an shining example of "the punishment fitting the crime" China's ex-head of the FDA was executed for allowing such heinous acts at the export of tainted wheat gluten.

From MSNBC.com: China on Tuesday executed the former head of its food and drug watchdog who had become a symbol of the country’s wide-ranging problems on product safety.

Zheng Xiaoyu’s execution was confirmed by State Food and Drug Administration spokeswoman Yan Jianyang at a news conference held to highlight efforts to improve China’s track record on food and drug safety.

Such cases “have brought shame to our administration and revealed serious problems. We need to seriously reflect on what lessons we can draw from such cases,” Yan said about Zheng and a separate case involving Cao Wenzhuang, the administration’s former pharmaceutical registration department director.

China doesn't fuck around.

Is not "church"! Is LAWL!

Pope Benedict XVI got his love and forgiveness on by saying that only Catholicism can has churches.

“Christ ‘established here on earth’ only one church,” the document said. The other communities “cannot be called ‘churches’ in the proper sense” because they do not have apostolic succession — the ability to trace their bishops back to Christ’s original apostles.

Joor church is no has apostolic succession. Joor church r teh lawl.

EA Irony

This is wonderful. EA's CEO says Video Games are Boring and too complicated" Here are some choice quotes:

"We’re boring people to death and making games that are harder and harder to play,”

“For the most part, the industry has been rinse-and-repeat,” he was quoted as saying. “There’s been lots of product that looked like last year’s product, that looked a lot like the year before.”

Brought to you by the CEO of EA, makers of The Sims, Madden, and every other game that does what the CEO of EA says game should not do.

Gen Con Planning and Noodling

Mostly for Jay, but I'm droppping my scheduling info here as a reminder to myself, and to see what _J_, any others if interested, have to say/plan/going on.

Gencon is Aug. 16-19.

August Experience is the week of the 26th.. so Gen-Con is just over two weeks from the start of classes... which means I'd be ending work three weeks, or at least two and a half..

Jay.. drop a line in the comments about what you've allready done, pre-reging, getting in events, etc.

Anyone else who might be interested, info is at www.gencon.com.