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.

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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

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

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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

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"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

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)

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

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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

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

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)

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)

It happens at a lot of colleges when a new class of freshmen arrive: there aren't enough dormitory beds. Within a few weeks, the no-shows are counted and alternate housing is found, but meanwhile, many colleges put cots in the gym or commons building for the overflow. Some freshmen at Capital University in Columbus, Ohio, are getting a totally different experience because the school is putting them up in an indoor water park! Capital University spokeswoman Nichole Johnson said the school thought using Fort Rapids was a better option than putting new students in storage areas or lounges.

Capital officials say they typically see about fifty beds become available in the first two to three weeks after classes start.
 
Until then, about thirty students will be calling the resort home.
 
"They have suites that are similar to our suite-style living that we offer, and they were willing to step up and help us,” Johnson said of the eastside resort.
 
The university says it will offer shuttle service between campus and Fort Rapids, so students do not have to worry about making the approximately five mile trip on their own.

Meanwhile, the students will have access to the water slides. With living accommodations like that, who'd want to go to class? Link  -via Fark

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What we've learned is always interesting, but how we learned it is a great story as well. A cute animated video from the BBC Science Club tells us how the study of physics has evolved. -via Geeks Are Sexy

A badger was building a nest on a farm near Stolpe in Brandenburg, Germany. Lars Wilhelm and Hendrikje Ring, who live on the farm, are sculptors and amateur archaeologists. When they investigated the badger's work, they found it had unearth ancient treasures!

"We spotted a pelvic bone that had been dug up, it was clearly human," Ring told SPIEGEL ONLINE. "It wasn't exactly surprising to us because a whole field of ancient graves had been found on the other side of the road in the 1960s. So we pushed a camera into the badger's sett and took photos by remote control. We found pieces of jewellery, retrieved them and contacted the authorities."

That was last autumn. There was no sign of the badger, who had probably already left, said Ring. "This doesn't make him an archaeologist but he's the one who discovered it." The finds were only made public this week.

Archaeologists proceeded to unearth a total of eight graves from the first half of the 12th century at the site, including two containing Slavic chieftains.

An article at Spiegel tells what was found there, and how the clues led archaeologists to piece together the history of the site. Link -via Science Chamber of Horrors

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Go to the Police Box on Earls Court Road in London on Google Maps, and they'll show you the inside of a TARDIS! There are more pictures under "more info" at the site, or you can just mouseover the Street View above, click on the double arrow on the street, and go inside yourself! This spot has some really good reviews, too. Link  -via Buzzfeed