What's So Funny?

What's So Funny? PDF Author: Donna M. Jackson
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
ISBN: 9780670012442
Category : Wit and humor
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Explains why our brains think something is funny, what happens to us physically when we laugh, why you can tickle your friend but not yourself, and much more.

What's So Funny?

What's So Funny? PDF Author: Donna M. Jackson
Publisher: Viking Juvenile
ISBN: 9780670012442
Category : Wit and humor
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Explains why our brains think something is funny, what happens to us physically when we laugh, why you can tickle your friend but not yourself, and much more.

The Humor Code

The Humor Code PDF Author: Peter McGraw
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1451665423
Category : Business & Economics
Languages : en
Pages : 256

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Book Description
Part road-trip comedy and part social science experiment, a scientist and a journalist travel the globe to discover the secret behind what makes things funny, questioning countless experts, including Louis C.K., along the way.

What's So Funny?

What's So Funny? PDF Author: Nancy A. Walker
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 9780842026888
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 302

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Book Description
Critical studies attempting to define and dissect American humor have been published steadily for nearly one hundred years. However, until now, key documents from that history have never been brought together in a single volume for students and scholars. What's So Funny? Humor in American Culture, a collection of 15 essays, examines the meaning of humor and attempts to pinpoint its impact on American culture and society, while providing a historical overview of its progres-sion. Essays from Nancy Walker and Zita Dresner, Joseph Boskin and Joseph Dorinson, William Keough, Roy Blount, Jr., and others trace the development of American humor from the colonial period to the present, focusing on its relationship with ethnicity, gender, violence, and geography. An excellent reader for courses in American studies and American social and cultural history, What's So Funny? explores the traits of the American experience that have given rise to its humor.

Humour

Humour PDF Author: Terry Eagleton
Publisher: Yale University Press
ISBN: 0300244789
Category : Philosophy
Languages : en
Pages : 191

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Book Description
A compelling guide to the fundamental place of humour and comedy within Western culture—by one of its greatest exponents Written by an acknowledged master of comedy, this study reflects on the nature of humour and the functions it serves. Why do we laugh? What are we to make of the sheer variety of laughter, from braying and cackling to sniggering and chortling? Is humour subversive, or can it defuse dissent? Can we define wit? Packed with illuminating ideas and a good many excellent jokes, the book critically examines various well-known theories of humour, including the idea that it springs from incongruity and the view that it reflects a mildly sadistic form of superiority to others. Drawing on a wide range of literary and philosophical sources, Terry Eagleton moves from Aristotle and Aquinas to Hobbes, Freud, and Bakhtin, looking in particular at the psychoanalytical mechanisms underlying humour and its social and political evolution over the centuries.

What's So Funny About God?

What's So Funny About God? PDF Author: Steve Wilkens
Publisher: InterVarsity Press
ISBN: 0830852670
Category : Religion
Languages : en
Pages : 0

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Book Description
Jokes often touch on the biggest topics of our existence, but many Christians haven't taken humor seriously. This insightful yet delightful crash course from philosopher Steve Wilkens argues that viewing Scripture and theology through the lens of humor helps us understand the gospel and avoid the pitfalls of both naturalism and gnosticism, while facilitating a humble, honest, and appealing approach to faith.

Ha!

Ha! PDF Author: Scott Weems
Publisher: Basic Books
ISBN: 0465080804
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 258

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Book Description
An entertaining tour of the science of humor and laughter Humor, like pornography, is famously difficult to define. We know it when we see it, but is there a way to figure out what we really find funny -- and why? In this fascinating investigation into the science of humor and laughter, cognitive neuroscientist Scott Weems uncovers what's happening in our heads when we giggle, guffaw, or double over with laughter. While we typically think of humor in terms of jokes or comic timing, in Ha! Weems proposes a provocative new model. Humor arises from inner conflict in the brain, he argues, and is part of a larger desire to comprehend a complex world. Showing that the delight that comes with "getting" a punchline is closely related to the joy that accompanies the insight to solve a difficult problem, Weems explores why surprise is such an important element in humor, why computers are terrible at recognizing what's funny, and why it takes so long for a tragedy to become acceptable comedic fodder. From the role of insult jokes to the benefit of laughing for our immune system, Ha! reveals why humor is so idiosyncratic, and why how-to books alone will never help us become funnier people. Packed with the latest research, illuminating anecdotes, and even a few jokes, Ha! lifts the curtain on this most human of qualities. From the origins of humor in our brains to its life on the standup comedy circuit, this book offers a delightful tour of why humor is so important to our daily lives.

Linguistic Theories of Humor

Linguistic Theories of Humor PDF Author: Salvatore Attardo
Publisher: Walter de Gruyter
ISBN: 3110219026
Category : Language Arts & Disciplines
Languages : en
Pages : 449

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Book Description
So this English professor comes into class and starts talking about the textual organization of jokes, the taxonomy of puns, the relations between the linguistic form and the content of humorous texts, and other past and current topics in language- based research into humor. At the end he stuffs all the various approaches to verbal humor into linguistic theory as a whole. Nobody gets it, see, so he tells them to buy the book.

LSD and the Mind of the Universe

LSD and the Mind of the Universe PDF Author: Christopher M. Bache
Publisher: Simon and Schuster
ISBN: 1620559714
Category : Body, Mind & Spirit
Languages : en
Pages : 450

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Book Description
A professor of religious studies meticulously documents his insights from 73 high-dose LSD sessions conducted over the course of 20 years • Chronicles, with unprecedented rigor, the author’s systematic journey into a unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence • Makes a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience and discusses the challenge of integrating these experiences into everyday life • Shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation and help birth the future of humanity On November 24, 1979, Christopher M. Bache took the first step on what would become a life-changing journey. Drawing from his training as a philosopher of religion, Bache set out to explore his mind and the mind of the universe as deeply and systematically as possible--with the help of the psychedelic drug LSD. Following protocols established by Stanislav Grof, Bache’s 73 high-dose LSD sessions over the course of 20 years drew him into a deepening communion with cosmic consciousness. Journey alongside professor Bache as he touches the living intelligence of our universe--an intelligence that both embraced and crushed him--and demonstrates how direct experience of the divine can change your perspective on core issues in philosophy and religion. Chronicling his 73 sessions, the author reveals the spiral of death and rebirth that took him through the collective unconscious into the creative intelligence of the universe. Making a powerful case for the value of psychedelically induced spiritual experience, Bache shares his immersion in the fierce love and creative intent of the unified field of consciousness that underlies all physical existence. He describes the incalculable value of embracing the pain and suffering he encountered in his sessions and the challenges he faced integrating his experiences into his everyday life. His journey documents a shift from individual consciousness to collective consciousness, from archetypal reality to Divine Oneness and the Diamond Luminosity that lies outside cyclic existence. Pushing the boundaries of theory and practice, the author shows how psychedelic experience can take you beyond self-transformation into collective transformation, beyond the present into the future, revealing spirit and matter in perfect balance.

What's So Funny? How to Sharpen Your Sense of Humor

What's So Funny? How to Sharpen Your Sense of Humor PDF Author: Paul Moran
Publisher: Lulu.com
ISBN: 1430301147
Category : Humor
Languages : en
Pages : 106

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Book Description
The author's goal is to help you learn to think funny every day.

Inside Jokes

Inside Jokes PDF Author: Matthew M. Hurley
Publisher: MIT Press
ISBN: 0262518694
Category : Psychology
Languages : en
Pages : 375

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Book Description
This evolutionary and cognitive theory of humor seeks to reveal the complex science behind why we crack up. “A sophisticated analysis . . . written with clarity, good cheer, and, of course, wit.” ―Steven Pinker, author of How The Mind Works Some things are funny—jokes, puns, sitcoms, Charlie Chaplin, The Far Side, Malvolio with his yellow garters crossed—but why? Why does humor exist in the first place? Why do we spend so much of our time passing on amusing anecdotes, making wisecracks, watching The Simpsons? In Inside Jokes, Matthew Hurley, Daniel Dennett, and Reginald Adams offer an evolutionary and cognitive perspective. Humor, they propose, evolved out of a computational problem that arose when our long-ago ancestors were furnished with open-ended thinking. Mother Nature—aka natural selection—cannot just order the brain to find and fix all our time-pressured misleaps and near-misses. She has to bribe the brain with pleasure. So we find them funny. This wired-in source of pleasure has been tickled relentlessly by humorists over the centuries, and we have become addicted to the endogenous mind candy that is humor.