Theory of Humor. A scientific paper, written by Tom Veatch, describes his Theory of Humor. When is something funny? When is it not funny? When does it cross the line? Why are puns generally shitty? And the mysterious and magical powers elephant jokes have on children, revealed! A great data set to use for practice in applying the theories presented in the paper can be found here.
posted by iamkimiam on Nov 20, 2007 - 57 comments

Recursion and Human Thought - Why the Piraha don't have numbers
posted by Gyan on Jun 13, 2007 - 47 comments

Speculative Grammarian is the premier scholarly journal featuring research in the neglected field of satirical linguistics. Don't miss: Re-Rating the World's Languages, Hunting the Elusive Labio-Nasal, The Endangered Languages Armamentation Programme, New speech disorder linguists contracted discovered! and of course Choose Your Own Career in Linguistics.
posted by goodnewsfortheinsane on Mar 7, 2007 - 17 comments

Nothing is funnier than an academic or scientist explaining humor.
posted by Falconetti on Dec 11, 2005 - 10 comments

Athanasius Kircher was the 17th century's Jesuit version of the übergeek. His scholarly attentions were drawn to egyptology, astronomy, magnetism, languages, optics, music, geology, mathematics and many many other pursuits. The "dude of wonders" invented novel machines such as the mathematical organ and magnetic clock, established one of the first museums, published about 40 academic works (with beautiful accompanying illustrations) and was globally revered as one of his time's greatest intellectuals. He is also the main link in the Voynich manuscript mystery. [MI]
posted by peacay on Aug 7, 2005 - 12 comments