Seriously humorous
Daniel Elkan’s thought-provoking article on the science of joke appreciation led me to think of some interesting questions (30 January, p 40).
There is a large class of jokes, such as those that focus on social or cultural stereotypes, where the joke-teller and listener share a sense of superiority over the object of the joke. Can the enjoyment of this type of joke be associated with a particular type of personality?
Jokes also fall into two categories: those that do not depend on language and can be translated readily, and those that depend directly on language and probably cannot be translated at all. Are language-dependent jokes processed differently from language-independent jokes?
From Ken Green
An important component of humour is missing from Daniel Elkan’s article: the appreciation of a joke depends heavily on the social circumstances.
When I worked in the BBC Television Theatre in London, many years ago, we made a production of Brandon Thomas’s farcical play Charley’s Aunt. It was not very successful initially. The BBC arranged a showing in the theatre to which staff members were invited free of charge. The few desultory giggles and moans that they produced were picked up by the audience-reaction system and recorded on the soundtrack.
At a second showing, the audience heard the quiet reactions of the first audience and responded heartily. Their laughter was also added to the recording. When the show was finally broadcast with this soundtrack, it was very funny indeed. It seems laughter needs a trigger as well as a joke.
Penpethy, Cornwall, UK
From Phil Thompson
Daniel Elkan discusses the idea that empathy is important in appreciating certain types of humour 鈥� relating how empathisers appreciate jokes where there is behavioural incongruity 鈥� and states that people with autism do not find this type of humour funny because they lack a “theory of mind”.
This is an oft-related hypothesis, but perhaps a better explanation is that people tend to understand and relate better to those who think in a similar way. While autistic people may have difficulty understanding “neurotypical” people, many neurotypical people seem just as poor at intuiting the minds of those with autistism, a reciprocal point seemingly missed by some researchers. Further, there is anecdotal evidence that many autistic people are often better at understanding their autistic peers.
Los Altos, California, US
From Geoffrey Sherlock
Many years ago I read a sci-fi short story about a scientific analysis of humour and jokes in humans, which concluded that all jokes and humour were being sent to Earth by an alien civilisation to keep humans from turning their attention to conquering space.
The aliens felt this to be necessary in view of the mess that had been made on Earth. When this fact became widely known by humans, all humour was shut off and jokes destroyed, sending the population of Earth into terminal decline.
Could the scientists Daniel Elkan reported on be dissuaded from all further research?
Amersham, Buckinghamshire, UK
Cosmic dimwits
Your editorial and Stephen Battersby’s article (23 January, p 3 and p 28) raise questions about possible modes of communication with intelligent alien communities and the potential dangers of transmissions from Earth into near space. There was also an excellent article by David Shiga about hidden asteroids (23 January, p 10), for which there are currently no effective detection or deflection procedures.
We Earthlings have probably already revealed our presence through radio and TV signals, which have leaked into space over the past century. With this in mind, listening is perhaps the best and cheapest way to discover whether or not we are alone.
Let us suppose that there are alien communities seeking out their peers in nearby space. A primary way of identifying signs of intelligent life is quite likely to be looking for the long-range radars surrounding a planet for its defence against impacting asteroids. If no such technology is observed, alien communities might well assume that our species is not only a bit dim, but also not worth contacting due to its inevitably short-term future.
Furthermore, given the quality of much of our leaked radio and TV signals, alien leaders might conclude that they are correct in excluding the inhabitants of Earth from their search for extraplanetary intelligence.
One-way to Mars
In Stuart Clark’s article on the possibility of sending exploratory missions to Mars’s moon, Phobos, Scott Maxwell suggests that he would be happy to go to Mars and that NASA need not worry about bringing him back (30 January, p 28). We need not consider such a suggestion to be suicide exploration. The pertinent question is whether it is easier and cheaper to send a mission equipped to survive many years on the planet, than to equip it with the ability to return home.
After all, 10 years down the line, we ought to be able to bring someone back more cheaply than we can today.
Slime roads
Paul Marks describes how researchers plotted alternative routes for the UK’s motorways using the feeding habits of a yellow slime mould, Physarum polycephalum (9 January, p 19).
In an experiment in 2001 we found that Escherichia coli migrates by following the shortest line along a food “gradient” from low to high concentrations of nutrient. The P. polycephalum study appears to replicate this.
However, the slime mould may not be as good a road planner as the researchers hope. While roads tend to go around and through rather than over the top, the researchers will almost certainly find that P. polycephalum will choose the shortest route available to find the nutrient, regardless of whether a volcano or a nature reserve stood in the way.
Unsecure e-banking
In his article on the dangers of online banking and electronic money, Jim Giles mentions security issues with online schemes like “Verified by Visa” and “MasterCard Secure” (30 January, p 18). However, he fails to appreciate the objective of these initiatives, which, just like other banking industry “innovations” such as chip-and-PIN, is not to reduce the likelihood of fraud but to shift liability from the bank to the merchant or consumer.
We will only have truly secure systems when those that provide them 鈥� both financial institutions and software suppliers 鈥� are liable for losses arising from flaws in those systems.
Good clean fun
I found the information on exercise in Clare Wilson’s article on how to stay fit very helpful (9 January, p 34), but I was confused by its diagram of metabolic equivalents.
“Sex (vigorous)” was scored at barely more than the metabolic “resting rate”, while vacuuming scores much higher and is considered “moderate exercise” 鈥� a difference that I find extraordinary.
Did the University of South Carolina’s study use some Victorian-era steam-powered solid brass vacuum cleaner? Or maybe the researcher was working alone…
Basford, Nottingham, UK
From Norman Siebrasse
Clare Wilson tells us that scientists have done a poor job at explaining in plain terms how to get fit (9 January, p 34).
She goes on to say that measuring exercise intensity by heart rate 鈥� which anyone can do while exercising with an inexpensive heart-rate monitor 鈥� is old hat. Now we are supposed to consider metabolic equivalents (METs), which can only be measured in a lab.
As a practical alternative, she suggest we “just look up” the average MET for the activity we are engaging in. Yet the average tells us nothing about how hard we are actually going: for example, the chart says cycling, which covers everything from a casual ride with the family to Lance Armstrong climbing Mont Ventoux, is on average 8 METs, or about equivalent to jogging 鈥� whatever that might mean.
Clear advice about how to get fit remains elusive.
Fredericton, New Brunswick, Canada
The editor writes
鈥� () provides a comparison of how other forms of exercise compare. For example, as mentioned in the article, 3 METs roughly equates to walking at 100 steps a minute.
Sane sanitisers
Feedback comments on John Trinkaus’s research on the use of hand sanitisers at a local hospital, where he found that non-medical people were twice as likely to use the facility as medical staff (9 January). He suggested that this might be because the medical staff were in “summer mode” and thus thinking of more pleasant things than disease.
A much more likely explanation is that the medical people were aware that the alcohol gels dispensed by these sanitisers are ineffective against viral infections and were waiting to use the soap-and-water facilities that would be effective in removing any swine flu virus.
Sickly scent
I read Feedback’s epistle about manufacturers adding scents to consumer products with some sympathy (16 January). My wife and I recently bought a large bag of birdseed with a sickly sweet cherry odour so pungent that it permeated the entire house until we sealed it in a large plastic bag. When I come home in the evening I can tell whether my wife has filled the bird feeders, even if it was hours ago.
What is mystifying is that birds have no sense of smell, so this odour must be intended for the purchaser’s benefit. As Feedback notes about other scented items, the smell will remind us never to buy this particular product again.
For the record
鈥� Due to an auditory aberration during his interview, we misquoted Rob Hopkins, who believes that the effects of peak oil will be felt by 2013, not 2030 as previously stated (6 February, p 25).
鈥� We misspelled Timo Kasper’s surname in our article on the perils of electronic money (30 January, p 18).