Comedy, laughter, kissing and psychosomatics

As can be seen, the video above features comedy, laughter and kissing (not necessarily in that order). Now for an Improbable question: ‘How might a psychosomaticist view such things?’ Those looking for answers might be well advised to examine the pages of The Journal of Psychosomatic Research. “[…] a multidisciplinary research journal covering all aspects […]

Comedy movies and risky stock trading – linked?

Attention stock-market followers – have you considered whether weekend comedy-movie attendance, and investment in risky stock-market assets on the following Monday might be linked? This question has been the subject of an in-depth investigation by Gabriele M. Lepori, (formerly) Assistant Professor of Finance at Copenhagen Business School, Denmark (now at Keele Management School, UK). His […]

Tax demands – the funny side (he makes ’em LAUGH, then PAY)

John Morreall (pronounced Mor-el), is not only professor of religion and department chair at the College of William and Mary, Williamsburg, Virginia, US, he also runs Humorworks, which, amongst other things, conducts corporate seminars on the subject of humor, with clients such as the Internal Revenue Service, The World Bank, and Ernst & Young. Thus […]

Study: Top (male) comedians die earlier?

A new study from professors Simon Stewart and David Thompson of the Centre for the Heart and Mind and the Mary MacKillop Institute of Health Research (MMIHR) at the Australian Catholic University (ACU) has found that : “Elite comedians are at increased risk of premature death compared to their less funny counterparts.” The team examined […]

The Psychoanalytic Geography of Alan Partridge

Preamble: Alan Gordon Partridge is a (fictional) TV and Radio presenter, based in Norfolk, UK. For further info, Youtube currently hosts a three-part (fictional) TV documentary about his (fictional) life : part 1   part 2   part 3 What have Lacan and Foucalt to do with Alan Partridge? For answers, see the work of Paul Kingsbury, […]

Spotlight on Unusual Research Institutes (part 1 of 2)

The Central Institute for Questions and Answers (affiliated to the University of the Arctic Circle) has produced a swathe of scholarly papers. This one for example, published by the Social Science Research Center, Berlin, in their journal WZB-Mitteilungen, issue 115, March 2007, in which Professor Dr. Dr. I. Q. Besser-Wisser (author of the definitive five-volume […]