In the Lab With the World’s Leading Laugh Scientist

Robert Provine isn’t funny. His wife often frowns at his jokes. But the man knows how to bag a laugh.

Audio recorder in hand, he prowls campuses, malls, zoos, parking lots—wherever he hears the potential for a chuckle. He anticipates the sound, waiting to trap it, hoping to drag each individual laugh back to the lab for analysis. And he knows the tricks. Provine will walk up to strangers point-blank and ask them to laugh into his recorder. He’ll take a charity laugh, or even the nervous kind that people blurt out after saying, “I can’t laugh—you’re not funny.” He’s used sitcoms and laughing gas as bait. Tickling isn’t beneath him.

In his lab, Provine feeds the laughter into a sound spectrograph, analyzing the frequency, amplitude, and length of each sample. In more than 30 years of fieldwork he’s collected an astounding amount of data. He knows that “laugh notes” (such as “ha,” “ho,” or “heh”) have a duration of 75 milliseconds, separated at regular intervals of 210 milliseconds. He’s found that babies laugh 300 times a day, while adults laugh only 20 times. And he knows that laughter peaks at around five years of age. In a study of the “Giggle Twins,” two identical twins who were separated at birth and reunited 43 years later, Provine says, “Until they met each other, neither of these exceptionally happy ladies had known anyone who laughed as much as she did.” He used the example to show how laugh patterns and genetics are linked.

(Image credit: Flickr user Heart Industry)

So, what’s his motivation? Why does this bespectacled psychology professor walk around stalking laughs? Because he wants to understand why we do it. The answer seems obvious: We laugh because something’s funny. Not so, says Provine—and he’s got proof.

Laughing So Hard You Can’t Stop

It was back in the mid-1980s, as a young professor at the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, that Provine first became hung up on the neurological underpinnings of laughter. To understand the phenomenon, he collected over 1,200 “laugh samples.” His preferred method: skulking around campus and listening in on conversations. “I’d find a place where people were drifting by, like the line at the dorm cafeteria, and jot down notes,” Provine recalls. As he’d expected, peals of laughter followed one-liners like “You smell like you had a good workout” or “Do you date within your species?”

What Provine didn’t anticipate, however, was that nearly 90 percent of the giggles would be triggered by mundane remarks. Phrases like “I see your point” or “I’ll see you guys later” were being rewarded with laughter. What was it about these dull statements that made people laugh?

“It suddenly occurred to me that I had learned something important,” Provine says. Building off his research, Provine theorized that laughter was being used as a social lubricant; we use it to bond with others. This notion supported other aspects of his field research. It explained why people laugh 30 times more often in the presence of others than they do when they’re alone. It also explained why nitrous oxide (a.k.a. laughing gas) won’t crack you up when inhaled in solitude.

Since then, Provine has made other staggering advances in the field of laugh science. For instance, he’s actually proved that laughter is contagious. Consider the case of the “laugh epidemic” that swept through what’s now Tanzania in 1962. In the small town of Kashasha, three girls started giggling. Soon, the snickers rippled outward to 95 students, lasting for hours before dying down, then erupting again—for three months straight. The school closed down, briefly reopened, then shut down again after the laugh bug reinfected 57 students. Within ten days, laugh attacks plagued 217 kids in the nearby town of Nshamba, then 48 more in Bukoba. It continued to spread, closing 14 schools and afflicting about 1,000 people, before quarantines were put in place. A year and a half passed before this laughathon tailed off.

For the 50 years since, people have been wondering how such a thing could occur. In his lab, Provine instructed volunteers to listen to recordings of positive sounds, like cheering and laughing, and negative sounds, like screaming and retching. Using MRI scans, he showed that hearing laughter activates the brain’s premotor cortex, preparing the facial muscles to smile and laugh in kind; thankfully, screaming and retching don’t inspire the same mimicry.

Laughter’s self-perpetuating powers also explain more modern-day phenomena, including the use of laugh tracks on sitcoms. Canned guffaws first debuted in a 1950 comedy called The Hank McCune Show to give TV viewers the sense that they weren’t alone. But the sounds had a second benefit—the effect cued audiences to laugh when jokes weren’t obvious enough. As Provine explains in his book, Laughter: A Scientific Investigation: "Yes, [TV execs] are often desperately trying to wring some humor out of pathetic scripts, but the overall pattern of their efforts has a basis in reality. Most real-life laughter follows ordinary statements—laughter is more about social relationships than jokes.” As he puts it, “Your life with its own laugh track is like a vast unending sitcom produced by a very ungifted writer.”

Tickled Pink

Oddly enough, the public has strong opinions about what Provine should and shouldn’t research. One day, when he was giving a lecture at a local museum, a female audience member pulled him aside and said, “I certainly hope you’re not studying tickling.” When Provine asked why, she said, “It’s a repulsive, unpleasant behavior.” The comment had the opposite effect. “I thought, ‘Gee, this must be really important to have generated such a strong response,’” he says.

Provine distributed a 52-item questionnaire to over 400 people, asking who tickled whom and how they felt about it. Thirty-five percent of respondents had been tickled in the past week, 86 percent in the past year. Most people enjoyed tickling others—thus the success of the Tickle Me Elmo doll—and while many claimed they hated being on the receiving end, it was more like a love-hate relationship: They’d run off screaming but come back for more. Provine also found that tickling mysteriously disappears after age 40, most likely because that’s when children move out of the house and couples have less sex (tickling is often a form of foreplay). As Provine asks, “How many 80-year-olds get into tickle battles?”

(Image credit: Flickr user Matt Batchelor)

Soon, it dawned on Provine that tickling was an easy way to study laughter in other species like monkeys—so he flew to the Yerkes National Primate Research Center in Atlanta and asked to tickle a few of the residents. To his relief, the center humored his request, allowing him to observe as trainers tickled a chimp named Josh. Provine concluded that the “ha ha” of modern laughter evolved from the “pant pant” of primates during rough-and-tumble play. It also led Provine to identify the world’s first joke. “My candidate for the most ancient joke is saying ‘I’m gonna get you,’ then tickling them,” says Provine. “It’s the only joke you tell to a human baby and a chimpanzee.”

The Best Medicine (Really!)

As Provine has learned, laughing isn’t just about social lubrication and amusement; it also has a dark side. For class one day, he brought in a laugh box—a device that emits a crazed cackling at the push of a button. Provine pushed it, then asked his students to note whether they laughed. At first, nearly half of them did. “But by the tenth time, no one was laughing, and no one liked it,” Provine says. He stashed the laugh box in his office, but had to remove it after a few coworkers began swinging by to push the button. The crazed laughter was driving him to the brink of violence.

(Image credit: Flickr user Hans Splinter)

This irritation underscores laughter’s less pleasant aspects, like its ability to signal social dominance. In one study of a psychiatric ward, the senior staff often made junior staff the butt of their jokes. Rather than dish it back, the junior staff passed the negative behavior on, poking fun at their patients.

Clearly, laughter can hurt, but its healing powers are equally potent. In 1976, a newspaper editor named Norman Cousins came down with a painful degenerative disease that was initially diagnosed as ankylosing spondylitis. As his condition worsened, he checked into a hotel and treated himself with a regimen of vitamin C, Marx Brothers films, and episodes of Candid Camera. Ten minutes of belly laughs calmed his pain for two hours; within weeks, his disease mysteriously faded into remission.

It’s stories like these that keep Provine intrigued. Even after years of scrutiny, he admits that laughter remains a squirrelly subject, with certain aspects eluding his grasp like a hilariously greased pig. For example, we can’t force ourselves to laugh. Like sneezing, or crying, or yawning, laughter just happens. These days, Provine is examining the use of laughter online, and how it surfaces through comments like LOL (Laughing Out Loud). He also plans to run brain scans of people laughing—a hot area of research that many scientists are exploring. Still, the original laugh tracker prefers basic tools. “Just because something is simple and doesn’t require fMRIs or supercolliders doesn’t make it trivial,” Provine says. “All you need is a pencil and pad of paper.”

_______________________

The article above, written by Judy Dutton, is reprinted with permission from the March-April 2012 issue of mental_floss magazine.

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This baby red tree kangaroo joey and his mama are residents of the San Diego Zoo. Fortunately, someone at the zoo managed to catch them during this moment of tenderness. It just shows that no matter what the species, a mother's love is unconditional.

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(YouTube link)

A herd of sheep in New Zealand show their solidarity by banding together to let their opinions be heard. All they need is an eloquent leader to coordinate activities. Wake up, sheeple! -via Tastefully Offensive

Red Lightning Bolt Shwings Lace-Up

Jolt your favorite pair of tennis shoes back to life with the Red Lightning Bolt Shwings from the NeatoShop. This striking shoe accessory looks like a thundering lightning bolt. 

Each set of Red Lightning Bolt Shwings Lace-Up comes with 1 pair of bolts. Buy 2 pairs to really electrify your wardrobe. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Footwear. 

Link

Ron Paulk, a homebuilder in the state of Washington, wanted to be able to bring all of his tools and workbenches to any jobsite without a lot of packing and unpacking. So over the years, he built a series of mobile workshops. This one, which fits in the back of a truck, is his masterpiece. Core77 interviewed him about his marvelous workshop. You can watch the first part of the interview at the link.

Link | Paul's Website

How to educate the public about the new laws governing marijuana use in Washington state? The Seattle Police Department has a great idea. They will be at the Hempfest pot rally this weekend -giving out bags of Doritos, each bag with a sticker outlining the new laws.

Because while stoners have no problem ignoring a leaflet, police recognize that it's nearly impossible to turn down a bag of Doritos.

"Distributing salty snacks at a festival celebrating hemp, I think, is deliberately ironic enough that people will accept them in good humor," says police department spokesman Sergeant Sean Whitcomb. "We want to make sure people learn the rules and that they respect the vote."

The labels on the snack-sized bags will direct festival attendees to the SPD's post-legalization FAQ titled "Marijwhatnow?" which went viral last November, reminding citizens that possessing up to an ounce of pot is allowed, but selling and growing the stuff remains illegal (until licenses are issued later this year by the state).

With funding for the project coming entirely from the privately run Seattle Police Foundation, police say they plan to distribute about 1,000 bags of Doritos over the weekend.

Link  -via Slate

Burn Unit by Wirdou

Poor Ring. First, it was cut from its master's hand, then lost in the river for hundreds of years, then it was picked up by a silly Hobbit and hidden in a cave for hundreds more years, then some more Hobbits came about and before long, it got chucked into an active volcano!

Man, the One Ring has got it tough, as illustrated by Wirdou in this clever Burn Unit T-Shirt.

Visit Wirdou's official website and Facebook page, then go to his NeatoShop page for more neat T-shirts! Your purchase helps support indie artists as well as this blog.

Minion University	Chemical Avengers	Enjoy You Will	Night's Watch The Wall

View more designs by Wirdou | More Funny T-shirts

Are you a professional illustrator or T-shirt designer? Let's chat! Sell your designs on the NeatoShop, earn generous royalties, and get featured in front of tons of potential new fans on Neatorama!

This is a Taiwanese dish that RocketNews24 reporter Kuzo tried:

Par for the course for our gourmet reporter but these soups were also served with the bodily fluids of the animals such as blood and poison. If that doesn’t get Kuzo up and going we don’t know what will.

First he tried the snake combo which came with a bowl of snake soup, cup of snake blood, and a shot of snake venom (diluted). The soup itself had a lightly pleasant taste, and was the kind of soup that you could easily eat on a daily basis. On the other hand, the blood was kind of gross and tasted like iron.

Neatorama should hire an intern/guinea pig to send on assignments like this.

Link

The family that reddits together, stays together -even when they are in different countries. Robotswana posted this picture, saying it's just another day at his Dad's job. Then his father, Todd Pitock, stepped in to explain.

I'm the guy in the photo. I was visiting the Makhadikhadi, which is in the Kalahari in Botswana. People are doing research as part of something called the Meerkat Project. The meerkats are wild but habituated -- meaning they're used to people and don't see them as a threat. So if you sit down and wait, eventually the alpha male, who is like the chief sentry, will mosey over and climb you like a rock. As one poster noted, he's looking for good viewpoints to gauge threats. The photo was NOT photoshopped. In fact, it wasn't even edited for color. And yes, those are my Brooks trail running shoes, and many thanks to the guy who advised on the new generation of them. The story will appear in National Geographic Traveler, though I don't know when. -- Todd Pitock

Link

(Photo: Eric Pheterson)

It may look like a painting, but this is a real landform. The Zhangye Danxia Landform Geological Park in southeastern China has beautiful rippled shapes of red sandstone.

Link -via TYWKIWDBI

(YouTube link)

"Oh no! Your hand is falling out of the window! Ah, I got it. Now you're safe!"

What a brave and heroic kitten. -via Daily of the Day

(Image: Amazing Maps)

China has a population of 1.35 billion people. That's a lot of people crowded into the red area of the map above. Every other color also represents 1.35 billion people. So all of the Americas, western Europe and Australia are equal to the population of China.

Link -via 22 Words

I recall shopping for a car in 1983 and seeing all the fancy dashboard lights -even some that were projected on the windshield! All I could think of was "Look at all the things that can stop working." But they sure were pretty!

In our humble opinion, one of the most coolest things that occurred in the 1980s was the rise of digital dashboards in cars, watches, hi-fi equipment (and just about everywhere), with their "early video game"-like riot of LCDs and LEDs and warm glow of CRT displays... When applied to car dashboards, all this could turn some otherwise cheap plastic car interiors into futuristic spaceship control panels.

Dark Roasted Blend takes you back to those days with an assortment of fancy dashboards of the 1980s, plus KITT (the ultimate dashboard, from the TV show Knight Rider), and even customized dashboard lights you can have today. Link

(Video Link)

(Photo: New York Times)

How does a master comedian write jokes? Jerry Seinfeld writes his stand-up routines just like he wrote his television scripts: by longhand on paper tablets. In this video by the New York Times, Seinfeld discusses the development of his famous Pop-Tart joke:

I've probably been working on this for two years. Two years? I mean usually I'd write a bit in a couple days. It's a long time to spend on something that means absolutely nothing. But that's what I do; that's what people want me to do...is spend a lot of time wastefully. So that then I can waste their time.

Link -via American Digest

Bomb Squad Bag

Back to school time is here. Are you looking for a bag that is da bomb? Brace yourself for the Bomb Squad Messenger Bag from the NeatoShop. This fantastic, 100% cotton canvas bag, features a retro looking Bomb Squad design. 

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Bags & Totes. 

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How great is this tattoo of an ape face on the back of the head? It might be a Photoshop, but if not, the guy can always cover it up by letting his hair grow out. But then again, if he eventually started to go bald, the eyes would show up first. If he goes totally bald, what a weird picture that would make! We don't have the source of the picture, but it may have originated in Russia. -via Boing Boing

A few weeks ago, I headed to a local craft fair where I stumbled upon the great fashion creations of Miss Finch's Finery. Her collection of tiny top hats and flowery hair pieces brought me in, but it wasn't until I saw her great geek hats that I recognized her work from Comic Con.

After talking to maker Shienna Mondejar, I couldn't wait to go show her fantastic geek creations to you guys. You can see more of her work on Facebook and if you like what you see, she'll be happy to custom make a hat for you if you just contact her to place an order.

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Haim is a donkey in Israel who was abused before being taken in by Ramat Gan Safari, an animal sanctuary that is home to 1,600 creatures. He has been in rehabilitation for skittishness and physical wounds. But the raw skin on his legs wouldn't heal because of flies which caused Haim to scratch and pick. Traditional bandages caused too much damage and pain because they had to be changed often.  

Two caretakers, Becca Rivkin and Shira Inbar-Danin, came up with a solution. They spent four hours stitching a special pair of pants for the donkey that are held up by suspenders over his shoulders. The pants are double-layered, with a soft stretchy material on the inside, covered by a rougher baggy material that flies can’t bite through. The two women also rub cream on his legs every day.

The special pants are working swimmingly, and Haim will soon receive pants for his hind legs as well. With his skin protected, his fur is expected to grow back quickly, and then Haim the donkey will be able to trot around bare-ass once again.

Link -via Arbroath

(Image credit: Zoological Center Tel Aviv - Ramat Gan)

Photo: Yasuhiro Takagi

Want to walk in the clouds? Now you can, thanks to Cloudscapes, a collaboration by Japanese studio Tetsuo Kondo Architects and environmental engineering firm Transsolar, located at the Museum of Contemporary Art Tokyo.

The indoor cloud is created by pumpking three layers of air into the structure: cold dry air at the bottom, humid hot hair in the middle, and hot dry air on top. Visitors can then immerse themselves in the clouds that form in the middle layer.

Photo: Yasuhiro Takagi

"The temperature and humidity inside the container are controlled to keep the clouds at their desired height," The project stated, "The edges of the clouds are sharp yet soft, and always in motion. Their colour, density and brightness are constantly changing in tune with the weather and time of day."

The Tokyo installation is actually the second Cloudscapes that Tetsuo Kondo and Transsolar had created. Their first, located in Venice, Italy in 2010, was created for the 12th International Architecture Exhibition.

From Tetsuo Kondo's project page:

Via Dezeen and Lost at E Minor

(YouTube link)

Brent Weingard has been cleaning windows in tall buildings for 35 years. Watching him at work might induce vertigo. Even with proper safety equipment, this is one scary job! -via the Presurfer

Meet Kim Ki-hoon, an English teacher in South Korea. He's been teaching English for over 20 years in the country's private, after-school tutoring academies or hagwons. That's not unusual but what's unique about Mr. Kim is that not only is he respected as a teacher, he also makes a lot of money teaching.

How much is a lot of money, you ask? How about $4 million a year:

Mr. Kim works about 60 hours a week teaching English, although he spends only three of those hours giving lectures. His classes are recorded on video, and the Internet has turned them into commodities, available for purchase online at the rate of $4 an hour. He spends most of his week responding to students' online requests for help, developing lesson plans and writing accompanying textbooks and workbooks (some 200 to date).

"The harder I work, the more I make," he says matter of factly. "I like that." [...]

The bulk of Mr. Kim's earnings come from the 150,000 kids who watch his lectures online each year. (Most are high-school students looking to boost their scores on South Korea's version of the SAT.) He is a brand name, with all the overhead that such prominence in the market entails. He employs 30 people to help him manage his teaching empire and runs a publishing company to produce his books.

Amanda Ripley of The Wall Street Journal has the story (Photo: SeongJoon Cho for the Wall Street Journal)

Add this to the long list of the strangest things ever faked in China. A chinese zoo in People's Park of Luohe, Henan province, got into trouble recently when its supposed "African lion" started barking like a dog:

The beast was in fact a Tibetan mastiff – a large and long-haired breed of dog.

“The zoo is absolutely cheating us,” the [Beijing Youth Daily] quoted Liu, who was charged 15 yuan ($2.45) for the ticket, as saying. “They are trying to disguise the dogs as lions.”

Not so, the zoo defended itself:

The chief of the park’s animal department, Liu Suya, told the paper that while it does have a lion, it had been taken to a breeding facility and the dog – which belonged to an employee – had been temporarily housed in the zoo over safety concerns.

Link - Thanks Steve!

Update 8/15/13: Neatoramanaut Marcos pointed out the real photos of the fake animals from Beijing Youth site (fake lion photo updated above) - Thanks Marcos!

Fake golden jaguar:

Fake wolf:

Photo: Mark Gurney

Ain't he cute? Meet the olinguito, the first new species of carnivore to be identified in the Western hemisphere in 35 years. It's a small raccoon-like animal approximately 2 and a half feet long and weighs about two pounds. It has woolly orange-brown fur and a cute teddy bear-like face to boot.

The cute mammal was discovered by a team of scientists from the Smithsonian Institution in the cloud forests of Colombia and Ecuador. The search for the olingo was started when zoologist Kristofer Helgen uncovered bones and animal skins in the storage room of Chicago's Field Museum of Natural History.

"When I looked at the skulls I didn't recognize the anatomy," Helgen told BBC News, "It was different to any similar animal I'd seen, and right away I thought it could be a species new to science."

But it turns out that scientist shouldn't have had to look far. Turns out, the olinguito has been known to man all along: they've been displayed in museums and zoos for the past few decades. In fact, there's one living in the The Smithsonian-run National Zoo in Washington.

"It's been kind of hiding in plain sight for a long time," Helgen said. It was a case of mistaken identity with its closely related cousin the olingos.

Yes, Christmas is a long way away still, but it's never too early to start working on those homemade ornaments, especially if they are based on something as utterly memetastic as Sharknado. Dollar Store Crafts has all the instructions you need to make your own awesome Sharknado ornament.

Link

When a society designs a system to help only the very most helpless and needy, there will be unintended consequences. For example, there are people willing to go to jail to receive health care, and others become disabled because there aren't enough jobs. Now Out magazine tells us about men in New York City who contract AIDS and found that it improved their lives. Tye Fortner was a 22-year-old homeless sex worker who found out he was infected.  

“My whole world changed,” Fortner says, recalling the moment six years ago when he received his diagnosis. At first it changed for the worse as he struggled to come to terms with his diagnosis.

But then, it changed for the better.

After years of homelessness and a day-to-day existence, Fortner, now 28, was faced with the tantalizing prospect of a place to sleep, regular meals, and more thorough New York City services provided to people who reach a certain stage of the disease. First he would have to meet their diagnosis requirements; then he would receive help.

“I didn’t know about the services,” he says. “I didn’t know that once you have AIDS you’re entitled to all this other stuff.”

That silver lining was a surprise to Fortner. And while it might seem counterintuitive, contracting the virus has made life easier for other young homeless men in New York City, who in return for developing full-blown AIDS gain a roof over their heads and basic services.    

Read more about the paradox that confronts the down-and-out with a deal in which no one really wins. Link -via Digg

(Image credit: Armenian Red Cross Youth)

Sunny Days Office Supply (sold individually)

Back to School time is here. Make sure you have all the desk essentials you need to complete your work with the Sunny Days Office Supplies from the NeatoShop.This delightful set of 4 gingham patterned office necessities includes: scissors, tape dispenser, stapler, and staple remover.

Sunny Days Office Supply sets are available in Blue, Green and Pink.

Be sure to check out the NeatoShop for more great Office Supplies.

Link 

(Photo: SpeedyCop/Nick Pon)

Jeff Bloch, AKA "SpeedyCop", makes delightfully weird custom cars. You may remember his car built from of a Cessna. His latest project is a 1999 Chevrolet Camaro that SpeedyCop flipped over, then made roadworthy. Why does he do it? SpeedyCop explains that:

I'm an 8 year-old kid trapped in a 40 year-old body, with just enough talent to pull off my wacky ideas, and, fortunately, enough truly amazing friends to help make them a reality.

Link -via Oddity Central

Scientists from the ORB LAB were trying to catch sharks that has previously been tagged. They caught a 3-foot dogfish shark first, and when they started to reel it in, the dogfish became bait for a huge sand tiger shark! The larger shark had been tagged previously, and was examined, measured, and released. The dogfish, of course, was not so lucky. Link -via Geekologie

Make up artist Carly Paige likes to show off her skills on Facebook. Rather than trying to show how pretty she can look, like most make up artists on the site, Carly shows how she can recreate pop culture icons. Above is her take on Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt and below is her version of Kim Kardashian.

You can find lots more of her great work at the link.

Link Via Fashionably Geek

You've learned a lot about the history of breakfast cereals here at Neatorama, and if you are in the New York area, you can see a part of that history. The Museum of Food and Drink in Manhattan will have one of the original puffing guns on display beginning August 17th. It was used in the mid-20th century to make puffed rice, wheat, and other grains. The gun was developed after puffed cereal was discovered accidentally.

In 1901, while attempting to determine the moisture content in a granule of starch, a botanist at the New York Botanical Garden, Alexander P. Anderson, filled hermetically sealed test tubes with cornstarch and wheat flour, and toasted the contents in a five-hundred-degree oven. Hit with a hammer, the still-hot tubes, which became pressurized as the temperature rose, exploded. The cornstarch, he found, had ballooned into a “porous puffed mass, white as snow” and nearly ten times its original volume, according to one account. Essentially, the water in the starch, unable to boil because of the hermetic seal, immediately vaporizes when the seal is released and the pressure drops; the steam expands outward and puffs the starch.   

American cereal manufacturers use a more continuous puffing system now, but puffing guns are still made for use in other countries. However, only two men know how to make them, and when they are gone, so will puffing guns be gone. See the puffing gun in action in a video at The New Yorker. Link

(Image credit: General Mills)