Tag: laughter

Humor’s early days in children

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Young children’s ability to laugh and make jokes has been mapped by age for the first time using data from a new study involving nearly 700 children from birth to 4 years of age, from around the world. The findings, led by University of Bristol researchers and published in Behavior Research Methods, identifies the earliest age humour emerges and how it typically builds in the first years of life…

The team found the earliest reported age that some children appreciated humour was 1 month, with an estimated 50% of children appreciating humour by 2 months, and 50% producing humour by 11 months. The team also show that once children produced humour, they produced it often, with half of children having joked in the last 3 hours.

Of the children surveyed, the team identified 21 different types of humour. Children under one year of age appreciated physical, visual and auditory forms of humour. This included hide and reveal games (e.g., peekaboo), tickling, funny faces, bodily humour (e.g., putting your head through your legs), funny voices and noises, chasing, and misusing objects (e.g., putting a cup on your head).

Dr Elena Hoicka, Associate Professor in Bristol’s School of Education and the study’s lead author, said: “Our results highlight that humour is a complex, developing process in the first four years of life. Given its universality and importance in so many aspects of children’s and adults’ lives, it is important that we develop tools to determine how humour first develops so that we can further understand not only the emergence of humour itself, but how humour may help young children function cognitively, socially, and in terms of mental health.

And laughter is the best medicine…someone first said long before we were born.

Baby Trump balloon at LSU-Alabama football game to mock Fake President

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❝ It’s on.

The ‘Baby Trump’ political art protest balloon has followed Trump around the world, mocking him mercilessly. Baby Trump is reportedly headed to the site of this weekend’s football game between University of Alabama and Louisiana State University, at which Trump is expected to be booed loudly again.

Can’t always get what you want…Sometimes you get what you deserve!

Trump Commerce Secretary’s speech cut off — German audience laughs, applauds!

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❝ U.S. Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross’s video address to German Chancellor Angela Merkel’s political party’s business conference in Berlin was cut off on Tuesday after Ross went over his time limit, prompting conference attendees to laugh and cheer.

Ross’s video feed at the Christian Democratic Union conference was faded out after roughly 20 minutes for going over his time limit…

Attendees then began to applaud and laugh at the move.

❝ The episode comes as tensions have grown between the U.S. and Germany, especially on the issue of trade.

The commerce secretary echoed President Trump’s criticism of Germany’s trade surplus with the U.S.

❝ Ross’s address comes one week before the Merkel and Trump will meet with their international counterparts at the G-20 summit in Hamburg.

Ross is as boring as a Trump Conservative can be. Trying to explain the policies of an incompetent masquerading as US President is difficult enough on white bread-American network TV. Trying to make sense to an audience of worldly European conservative politicians is a lost cause.

Religious nutballs try to intimidate LGBT neighborhood – Response is rainbow decorations, good cheer!

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❝ According to Micah Latter, who lives on Gay Street in New York City, someone has been chaining a massive wooden cross to various fences around her neighborhood since Good Friday. It’s fairly safe to say that whoever is responsible is trying to make a statement, which is odd considering that the street was named in 1833, when the word ‘gay’ had a much different meaning.

❝ Latter explains on Instagram that the cross first showed up chained and locked to her apartment gate, and that the owner kept moving it around every few days. So this weekend, Latter’s neighborhood banded together to make sure whoever is moving the cross gets a surprise when they next pay a visit.

They turned it into a “love cross” by painting it in the rainbow colors of the pride flag.

❝ “As a Christian, the cross is a sign of love, peace, and hope and it was clear the mysterious owner of the cross was not sharing those same values…”

A friend suggested to Latter that she should celebrate the cross rather than letting it get to her. So on Saturday, she texted equally frustrated neighbors with her plan: “We’re rainbow painting the cross. I’ll bring paint and Champagne for anyone that can make it.”

❝ Latter estimates that more than 50 people showed up, and it wasn’t just neighbors.

❝ “My favorite part of the event were locals sharing the experience with strangers. We had two tourists from Brazil stay for the entire painting; we had kids skateboarding by stop to paint; we had many straight couples, gay couples, and a transgender couple all sit, paint, talk, and stand in the street sharing stories. It was a magical NYC moment.”

Latter also added her own locks, so that the owner can’t remove the cross. “It belongs to the street now…”

Right on!

Thanks, UrsaRodinia

Canadians can’t stop laughing over Scott Walker’s border wall proposal

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PeaceGarden
Click to enlarge — Obviously, we need a wall here…

Former Toronto mayor Rob Ford says Canada has no plans to invade the United States – and that Americans can rest assured the threat from the north is receding.

There is no need, the ailing mayor and most cackling Canadians seem to agree, for the 5,000-mile wall along the Canadian border that presidential candidate Scott Walker suggested this week is “a legitimate issue” on the campaign trail to the White House…

“I don’t have a problem with the States,” the outspoken former mayor declared in a brief interview with the Guardian on Monday evening, as he limped toward Toronto’s Rogers Centre to watch the city’s surging Blue Jays baseball team play the Cleveland Indians, a rival visiting from the far side of unfortified Lake Erie.

Most Canadians, the former magistrate known for smoking crack added, are similarly well-disposed toward their southern neighbours – and understand full well that such an endeavour would be nearly impossible anyway…

“It’s ludicrous and hilarious,” a Blue Jays fan named Neil from Toronto said of Walker’s fleeting flirtation with a norther border wall. “But that’s the Republicans.”

Bonnie, from nearby Milton, could not stop laughing at the mention of Walker’s name. “He’s a nutcase,” she exclaimed. “They can’t afford healthcare, but they can afford walls.”…

Defending the US-Canadian border would – hypothetically, of course – require a wall 8,891 kilometres long, with 2,475 kilometres devoted to protecting Alaskan wilderness and even more wall running down the middle of the Great Lakes.

Citing preliminary estimates made by the US Department of Homeland Security for the cost of a southern wall with Mexico, the Toronto Star estimated the cost of a Walker-style wall at “north of $18 billion (US)”…

Cheerfully channeling Sarah Palin, Mike Bradley boasted that he can see America from his window in the Canadian border town of Sarnia, where he is mayor. But to him and others who have watched the increasing militarisation of the formerly undefended border over the past decade, Walker’s comments were no joke.

“This is just ongoing,” Bradley said, citing examples of unexpected hostility on the northern border since 9/11 including plans to launch observation balloons, proposals to charge fees for crossing the border, and live-fire exercises by US coast guard patrol vessels armed with machine guns.

The difference between ignorant and stupid requires that “stupid” work at defending their beliefs. So, what Canadians call the world’s longest undefended border is just one more opportunity for nutball militarists to resolve a paranoid delusion with guns.

French defend magazine firebombed over Muhammad cartoon

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Daylife/Getty Images used by permission

The French government has rushed to the defence of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo after an arson attack on its headquarters as it published an edition featuring a cartoon of the prophet Muhammad on the cover as “guest editor”.

The Paris offices of the magazine were gutted after a fire broke out at 1am following reports of a petrol bomb being thrown through a window.

The blaze happened just before the special “Sharia Hebdo” edition hit newsstands on Wednesday morning in what the paper mockingly called a “celebration” of the victory of the moderate Islamist party An-Nahda in the Tunisian elections and the Libyan transitional executive’s comments on Islamic sharia law as a main source of the country’s law. On the front page a cartoon prophet Muhammad said: “100 lashes if you don’t die of laughter..!”

However, French politicians defended the magazine. The prime minister, François Fillon, said: “Freedom of expression is an inalienable value of democracy and any incursion against press freedom must be condemned with the utmost force. No cause justified violent action.”

The interior minister, Claude Guéant, said: “You like or you don’t like Charlie Hebdo, but it’s a newspaper. Press freedom is sacrosanct for the French.” He added that all French people should feel solidarity towards the magazine.

François Hollande, the Socialist presidential candidate, told Le Monde newspaper the incident demonstrated that the struggle for press freedom and “respect of opinions” was a permanent battle, adding that “fundamentalism must be eradicated in all its forms“…

The main representative body of the Muslim faith in France, the French Muslim Council (CFCM), condemned the fire, while its president pointed out that caricaturing the prophet was considered offensive to Muslims. “The CFCM deplores the deeply mocking tone of the newspaper towards Islam and its prophet, but reaffirms with force its total opposition to any act or form of violence,” it said.

I’ll probably never have an opportunity to live in a world where my repugnance for fundamentalist hatred and violence will come to rest. There doesn’t appear to a shortage in sight of bigots of any religious stripe who would gladly kill for their God or prophet.

I hope the French police are successful in catching these thugs. Lock ’em up and throw away the key.

Secrets of life from the world’s oldest twins

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The world’s oldest twins, a pair of French sisters who turned 98 on Thursday, put their longevity down to joie de vivre, or quite simply enjoying life.

Raymonde and Lucienne Wattelade, who are officially recognised as the world’s oldest twins by the Guiness World Records, said the other secret to long life was regular sport.

Both were in the French gymnastics team in the 1930s and continue to dance waltzes as the local casino in Saint-Georges-de-Didonne, south-western France.

The pair, in perfect health, have lived together in a family home for the past five years and are partial to tarot card reading and their favourite tipples: pastis for Raymonde and whisky for Lucienne…

“We live in the present, it’s pointless thinking about the past or the future – we’re still 20 (in our heads),” said Lucienne, who is ten minutes younger than her sister.

Above all, laughter was the key to a good life, she added. “If you don’t laugh, you don’t live.”

My kind of existentialism. Save morosité for the types who wish their non-conformity didn’t keep them from being insiders.

Stand up straight and laugh at the idiots in charge of the asylum.