[ExI] analysing humor

[spike]

> ...On Behalf Of Damien Broderick
> 
> At 01:02 PM 5/17/2009 -0700, Spike wrote:
> 
> >In retrospect it may be suggestive of involving children, which I 
> >hadn't thought of before, and yes that would kill the joke.
> 
> That was my, um, point about the, uh, gag. ...such concerns were not so 
> widely or often discussed when Asimov told that joke, before 
> priests and teaching brothers all over the place were found 
> to be doing it to their charges... Damien Broderick

Oh OK, do forgive please.  Damien I had a scandalously G rated life,
especially as a youth.  You sometimes hear people joke about sneaking into
the back of the library to get a thrill from National Geographic.  I am here
to testify, my brother, that such activity did occur, and I was later
shocked to learn I wasn't the first or the only to discover those
titillating photos.  It was the early 70s, and society was changing its
views and all that, but the place where I grew up in central Florida was
untouched by these changes, at least as far as I knew.  It was definitely GI
Joe and scouts.  I would never have imagined the priest thing.  Hey it was
before the internet, Edith Bunker was more worldly that I.  Now today, all
that free high quality porno, oh my, life is good.

Take another, less controversial one:

Guy goes into a bar where he has never been, someone says "438" everyone
laughs, another says "763" everyone laughs harder, third guy says "527" gets
a smile or two, very little laughter.  The guy next to him shakes his head
and says "527" everyone laughs.  The new guy asks, "What is that about?"
Old patron says, "Stranger, this crowd has been drinking together for so
long, we have heard all of each others' jokes, to save time we decided to
number them, then instead of having to repeat the whole joke, we just say
the number."  The new guy says, "Oh.  OK so why didn't that guy get anything
out of 527?"  Old patron says "He can't do the the accents right."

Why is that funny?  Is it funny?  I thought so when I first heard it.  We
discussed it a bunch of years ago, and the thread eventually evolved into
Eliezer commenting that there is an infinite amount of fun.  We can never
run out of jokes.  I wasn't sure of that then and I am not now.

spike