Andreas Kluth, the Berlin bureau chief of the British magazine The Economist, wrote an essay called “Being German is No Laughing Matter“. Here is the beginning of that essay: Shortly after moving back to Germany in 2012 after decades of absence, mainly in Anglo-Saxon countries, I took my kids to the Berlin zoo. The children […]
Tag: Humor
“Dear Abbe” (Microscopy Today)
The Microscopy Society of America provides (via its journal Microscopy Today) a platform for microscopists to ask pertinent questions – and have them answered by their columnist Herr Abbe. [pictured left] “We are at our wit’s end! We are still using film and making wet prints in our EM [Electro-Microscopy] lab. We’re not happy with […]
Strategies and tactics for ironic subversion
If you’ve ever made use of the simile “About as useful as knickers on a kipper” then, knowingly or not, you could have been indulging in a spot of ironic subversion. Dr Tony Veale BSc MSC PhD, who is a the Principal Investigator of the Creative Language System Group at University College Dublin School of […]
“Inappropriate”: Old vs. young vs. differing senses of humor
This study documents a great lesson of some sort that was sought and perhaps learned: “Age-related differences in judgments of inappropriate behavior are related to humor style preferences,” Jennifer Tehan Stanley, Monika Lohani, Derek M. Isaacowitz, Psychology and Aging, Vol 29(3), Sep 2014, 528-541. (Thanks to investigator Erwn Kompanjie for bringing this to our attention.) The authors […]