Web Monitor
15:42 UK time, Monday, 21 December 2009
A celebration of the riches of the web.
Today in Web Monitor: the year in scientific nonsense, placing jokes and the history of canned laughter.
• The Year in Nonsense is Guardian columnist of his low points in science this year. In his blog Bad Science ,the GP looks back at the stories filled with dodgy science:
"Alongside the usual barrage of , we saw that , , and , while housework prevents it, in women."
• Location, location, location. Important in business, important for school catchment areas and now important for jokes. Well, that's according to the blog. The blog takes the joke "My wife went to the Caribbean. Jamaica? No, she went of her own accord" and runs with it. Anyone can add a similar location-based joke, just as long as they peg them on a Google map to show the place does exist. Here's :
Would you like to come and play cricket with my friend, he lives near the airport?
Heathrow?
No, but he's a really good batsmen.
• If that failed to make you chuckle, perhaps you could have done with some canned laughter in the background. the laughter track has been subject to more than one academic book and split opinions on whether it brings people together or is a form of coercion. Beato reports canned laughter has come back into fashion on internet comedy sketches:
"That the laugh track has fallen into the hands of upstart outsiders is the sort of irony that deserves a mechanical chuckle of its own. For most of its 60-year life, the eternally jovial chorus that graced so many of America's favorite sitcoms has been portrayed as a tool of monopolist coercion, favored by heavy-handed network executives attempting to orchestrate our responses to their force-fed fare."
Links in full
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