It's true... the 'punnier' it is, the 'brainier' you are!

Q: Why don't cannibals eat clowns?
If you are still scratching your head over this easy one, blame it on your brain. If you, as I expect many people to, got the answer to that one easily, you are very punny or at the least, your brain is wired to be receptive to jokes that involve wordplay.

Anyway, ST ("Cracking jokes", 30 June, page A28) reports that British scientists have uncovered how the human brain responds to jokes [but do non-human brains respond to jokes?].

They scanned the brains of 12 volunteers [Margaret Thatcher one of them? Control group, lor... "You think that joke about my handbag is funny? Take that!!"] and found that the reward areas in the brain light up to a much greater degree when processing jokes than when processing speech. This reward response increased in line with how funny the participants found the joke.

A: Because they taste funny!

So, if that's what you thought was the answer, your brain can both process jokes that involve puns and those that do not. One of the British researchers, Dr Matt Davis, said: "Mapping how the brain processes jokes and sentences shows how language contributes to the pleasure of getting a joke.

"We can use this as a benchmark for understanding how people who cannot communicate normally react to jokes." With that last remark, Dr Davis and his team members were off to "find out if someone in a vegetative state can experience positive emotions [translation: laugh 'inside' even if he or she is in a deep coma. Proof? Pants got wet? I guess the team's funders have deep pockets.]

Here's another cannibal joke...
Q: What happened to the foreign editor after he introduced himself to the head of a tribe of cannibals?
A: He got an instant promotion: he became editor in chief.

And here's a non-cannibal poser:
If one member of a team of synchronised swimmers drowns, do they all drown?

Last one...
Q: What do you have when you have two balls in your hands?
A: His undivided attention.

Which provides me with the excuse to show this mioTV ad:

One final note here. I've found that SingTel Digital Media's insing.com has interesting news articles. One of the two below, about the DBSS, makes one angry; the other -- about a computer gaming addict wanting to take "revenge" on his wife -- is worth a chuckle:

http://news.insing.com/tabloid/singaporeans-lose-while-dbss-project-developers-win-big/id-17ed3a00

http://news.insing.com/tabloid/man-to-post-wife-s-nude-photos-online/id-9bcc3a00