Fra Wired – læs det hele. Her er muligvis løsningen på gåden om latterens oprindelse, samt verdens korteste vittighed (mine fremhævelser):
Holt: V. S. Ramachandran, the brain researcher, has a theory about the origin of laughter — that when you’re in the jungle and there’s an apparent threat, the first member of the kinship group to notice that it’s not a real threat emits this stereotyped vocalization. And it’s contagious, so everyone starts laughing. That’s also the basis of the relief theory of humor, that there’s a release of the energy you had summoned up to solve some puzzle. Kant said that the essence of humor is a strained expectation dissolving into nothing.
Wired: Did you find any candidates for the perfect joke?
Holt: I did find what might be the shortest possible joke:
“Pretentious? Moi?”
Humor er et vigtigt våben overfor alverdens totalitære r**huller. Den, man griner ad, er man ikke bange for.
Derfor var “Venerable Jorge” i Umberto Eco‘s bog samt i filmatiseringen “Name of the Rose” så meget imod latter, at han forgiftede siderne på det eneste eksemplar af Aristoteles’ værk om humor, så dem, der bladrede i den, døde af at fugte deres fingre på tungen under læsningen. Uden frygt, ingen tro…
Det samme argument brugtes af Ayatollah Assahola:
“An Islamic regime must be serious in every field,
There are no jokes in Islam.
There is no humour in Islam.
There is no fun in Islam.”
Anna Lyttiger 