Inductivist

This new meta-analysis of 28 studies finds that men are funnier than women. The gap, however, is not large (Cohen's d = .32).  To get specific, 63% of males get more laughter than the average female. 

The authors explain the difference in evolutionary terms: Women are choosier than men when selecting mates, and humor serves as an indicator of mental fitness that is not easy to fake. You're funny or you're not. This pressure has supposedly selected for men who can make people laugh.

An interesting article by Gil Greengross and Geoffrey Miller:

A good sense of humor is sexually attractive, perhaps because it reveals intelligence, creativity, and other ‘good genes’ or ‘good parent’ traits. If so, intelligence should predict humor production ability, which in turn should predict mating success. In this study, 400 university students (200 men and 200 women) completed measures of abstract reasoning (Raven's Advanced Progressive Matrices), verbal intelligence (the vocabulary subtest of the Multidimensional Aptitude Battery), humor production ability (rated funniness of captions written for three cartoons), and mating success (from the Sexual Behaviors and Beliefs Questionnaire). Structural equation models showed that general and verbal intelligence both predict humor production ability, which in turn predicts mating success, such as lifetime number of sexual partners. Also, males showed higher average humor production ability. These results suggest that the human sense of humor evolved at least partly through sexual selection as an intelligence-indicator.

Asian American groups call for CBS to fire New York shock-jocks

SAN FRANCISCO -- Prominent Asian American civil rights groups in the Bay Area are demanding that CBS Radio fire New York shock-jocks Jeff Vandergrift and Dan Lay, who were suspended earlier this week for making a prank phone call to a Chinese restaurant seen as racist and sexist.

Today, the coalition of groups submitted a letter to CBS Radio, calling for the network to improve its guidelines on offensive terms, to communicate periodically with civil rights and community groups and to fire the duo -- who had broadcast on Bay Area airwaves for more than a decade before they went to New York in 2005 -- and their producer at WFNY-FM.

The coalition includes the Asian Law Caucus, Chinese for Affirmative Action of San Francisco and Equal Rights Advocates -- all in San Francisco -- along with Oakland's Organization for Justice & Equality and, in New York, the 80-20 Initiative, Asian American Legal Defense and Education Fund, and the Organization of Chinese Americans.

The station's general manager, Tom Chiusano, has agreed to meet with the coalition, but no date has been set. He had no comment on the groups' petition.

Vandergrift and Lay, who go by the monikers JV and Elvis on their show "The Dog House," placed a six-minute call to a Chinese restaurant in which they requested "shlimp flied lice," used sexually explicit language to proposition a waitress, referred to another employee's body part as a "tiny egg roll" and claimed to know kung fu.

The station suspended the pair without pay until further notice on Monday. [More....]


"Civil rights group" is a code word for American Glavlit. These groups don't even care that they are ruining the income of a Korean woman--the wife of one of the jocks. I expected to see more of this kind of thing, so as I promised, here's Chinese HBD humor I just made up:

Question: Why do Chinese people have slanted eyes?

Answer: To hide the dollar signs.

HBD Humor: Thinking about the Imus fiasco, I'm upset that a guy could lose his job for a joke, albeit an unfunny and gratuitous one. Over the years, all this race hysteria has made a contrarian like me want to speak louder when others get shut up. So I decided this evening to fight back with what I call HBD Humor. Anytime I hear that about someone getting punished for a joke, I'm going to make up another. Since Imus' joke was about black women, so is my first one:

Question: What's the difference between a black chick's ass and a Union Pacific caboose?

Answer: I mentioned the black chick's ass first.