The late Ronald Reagan, a true Republican, - when they were real - once told a great joke. Here it is for your delight and delectation.
An American and a Russian are discussing freedoms in their respective countries.
The American says, "In the United States, I can walk straight into the Oval Office, pound my fist on the President's desk, and say: 'Mr. President, I don't like the way you're running the country!'"
The Russian replies, "I can do that, too."
The American asks, "You can?"
"Of course," says the Russian. "I can walk straight into the Kremlin, pound my fist on the General Secretary's desk, and say: 'Mr. General Secretary, I don't like the way President Reagan is running his country!'"
- RONALD REAGAN, RIP
Humour
Re: Humour
Don’t have the NHS then this is for you …
Re: Humour
London Heathrow Flight 120 …
… was flying to Malaga with Silly Sam the pilot and Silly Sal the co-pilot.
As they approached the airport, they peered out of the cockpit window. “Blimey,” said Silly Sam. “Would you look at how blooming short that runway is?”
‘You're not kidding, Silly Sam,” said Silly Sal. And Silly Sam said, “this is going to be one of the trickiest landings you ever see.”
Silly Sam laid out the plan. ‘Right, Silly Sal. When I give the signal, you put the engines in reverse.”
“Right, I'll do that.”
“Then put the flaps down straight away.”
‘Right, I'll do that.”
“Then stamp on the brakes as hard as you can.”
“Right, I'll do that.”
“And then hold on tight and say your prayers.’
“I'm doing that already.’
They came in nervous, sweating and praying.
When the wheels hit the ground, Silly Sal threw the engines in reverse, slammed the flaps down, stomped the brakes and held on for dear life. With roaring engines, screeching tyres and smoke everywhere, the plane skidded to a stop centimetres from the edge of the runway.
As they both caught their breath, Silly Sam looked out the front window and said, “that has got to be the shortest flipping runway I've ever seen in my life.”
Silly Sal looked out the side window and says, “you're right, Sam, but look how wide it is.”
… was flying to Malaga with Silly Sam the pilot and Silly Sal the co-pilot.
As they approached the airport, they peered out of the cockpit window. “Blimey,” said Silly Sam. “Would you look at how blooming short that runway is?”
‘You're not kidding, Silly Sam,” said Silly Sal. And Silly Sam said, “this is going to be one of the trickiest landings you ever see.”
Silly Sam laid out the plan. ‘Right, Silly Sal. When I give the signal, you put the engines in reverse.”
“Right, I'll do that.”
“Then put the flaps down straight away.”
‘Right, I'll do that.”
“Then stamp on the brakes as hard as you can.”
“Right, I'll do that.”
“And then hold on tight and say your prayers.’
“I'm doing that already.’
They came in nervous, sweating and praying.
When the wheels hit the ground, Silly Sal threw the engines in reverse, slammed the flaps down, stomped the brakes and held on for dear life. With roaring engines, screeching tyres and smoke everywhere, the plane skidded to a stop centimetres from the edge of the runway.
As they both caught their breath, Silly Sam looked out the front window and said, “that has got to be the shortest flipping runway I've ever seen in my life.”
Silly Sal looked out the side window and says, “you're right, Sam, but look how wide it is.”
Re: Humour
“Victory parade” in Trieste, 1945. The city was liberated by the Kiwis street by street but the Italian campaign was led by the US. The Kiwis decided to justice had to be served.
Re: Humour
To Reveal the Rhythmic Roots of Laughter, Just Tickle an Ape
A study of chimps, gorillas and other great apes, including human children, sheds light on how laughter has evolved.
Video:
A gorilla being tickled, one of the many recordings from about 20 years ago by Marina Davila-Ross at the University of Portsmouth in Britain.CreditCredit...Marina Davila-Ross
By Emily Anthes
June 25, 2026
Humor is deeply personal. A punchline or a pratfall that leaves one person doubled over in delight might elicit blank stares from another. But laughter is universal, an innate instinct shared by humans everywhere.
And not just humans. Chimps chuckle, gorillas guffaw, bonobos bust a gut. All the planet’s great apes laugh, and they often do so in the same kind of regular, repeating rhythm that humans do, scientists found in a small new study https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-026-10499-z.
The research sheds light on how laughter evolved with and among great apes, becoming faster and more variable in humans than in these other primate species. While nonhuman apes appeared to laugh in ways that were largely fixed, humans were more flexible in their expressions of mirth, changing up the tempo of their chuckles depending on the circumstance, the scientists found.
“I think we can say we are the masters of laughter,” said Chiara De Gregorio, a research fellow at the University of Warwick in Britain and an author of the study. “We can have a small, polite laugh in front of the Queen of England, and then we are in the pub with our friends, and we laugh so much in a different way. We can even laugh in a way that communicates to the other person that we actually didn’t find the joke they said funny.”
This wide-ranging repertoire requires significant vocal flexibility and control — the same skills that humans would have needed for spoken language.
The study demonstrates the “uniqueness of human laughter,” said Greg Bryant, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the new research. “It provides a window into human vocal evolution.”
Chimpanzee
A chimpanzee’s call.
Bonobo
A Bonobo call.
Orangutan
An orangutan call.
In the new study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, the researchers analyzed the recorded laughter of four children and 13 young, captive apes: four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos and four chimpanzees. Some of the recordings featured laughter produced during play, while others captured laughter elicited by tickling.
(Many of the recordings were initially created two decades ago by Marina Davila-Ross, a comparative psychologist at the University of Portsmouth in Britain and an author of the new study. “I wasn’t lucky enough to be there tickling baby gorillas at the time,” Dr. De Gregorio said.)
During tickling, the scientists found, all the species produced laughter that shared the same basic rhythmic characteristic: It was isochronous, meaning that each vocalization — each pant, hoot or “ha” — occurred at regular, evenly spaced intervals, like the ticking of a clock or metronome.
The scientists did not observe this same regularity in the laughter that humans or other apes produced during play, perhaps because the physical, rough-and-tumble nature of many of these play sessions disrupted regular breathing patterns.
Though the laughter of humans and apes shared some basic rhythmic properties, the tempo, or speed, of these rhythms varied considerably between species. On average, humans had laughter that was quicker than that of other apes, and the species that were most closely related to humans (chimps and bonobos) laughed faster than those that were more distant relatives (gorillas and orangutans).
“Imagine,” Dr. Gregorio said, “a metronome that goes slower for orangutans, so like tick … tick … tick … but faster, way faster, in humans, so tick-tick-tick-tick.”
Even though humans were the fastest laughers on average, they displayed enormous variability in their laugh speeds, laughing languidly in some circumstances and rapidly in others. They were also the only species to change the tempo of their laughter depending on the context, laughing faster, for instance, while being tickled than during play.
The study had limitations; the subject pool was small, and the researchers analyzed just a handful of laughter’s many characteristics. But future studies with larger sample sizes could help scientists learn more about how humans made it their own.
“Laughter is such an important part of our way of communication,” Dr. De Gregorio said. “It’s able to communicate way more than, ‘I’m playing and I’m having fun.’”
Emily Anthes is a science reporter, writing primarily about animal health and science. She also covered the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/scie ... roid-share
A study of chimps, gorillas and other great apes, including human children, sheds light on how laughter has evolved.
Video:
A gorilla being tickled, one of the many recordings from about 20 years ago by Marina Davila-Ross at the University of Portsmouth in Britain.CreditCredit...Marina Davila-Ross
By Emily Anthes
June 25, 2026
Humor is deeply personal. A punchline or a pratfall that leaves one person doubled over in delight might elicit blank stares from another. But laughter is universal, an innate instinct shared by humans everywhere.
And not just humans. Chimps chuckle, gorillas guffaw, bonobos bust a gut. All the planet’s great apes laugh, and they often do so in the same kind of regular, repeating rhythm that humans do, scientists found in a small new study https://www.nature.com/articles/s42003-026-10499-z.
The research sheds light on how laughter evolved with and among great apes, becoming faster and more variable in humans than in these other primate species. While nonhuman apes appeared to laugh in ways that were largely fixed, humans were more flexible in their expressions of mirth, changing up the tempo of their chuckles depending on the circumstance, the scientists found.
“I think we can say we are the masters of laughter,” said Chiara De Gregorio, a research fellow at the University of Warwick in Britain and an author of the study. “We can have a small, polite laugh in front of the Queen of England, and then we are in the pub with our friends, and we laugh so much in a different way. We can even laugh in a way that communicates to the other person that we actually didn’t find the joke they said funny.”
This wide-ranging repertoire requires significant vocal flexibility and control — the same skills that humans would have needed for spoken language.
The study demonstrates the “uniqueness of human laughter,” said Greg Bryant, a cognitive scientist at the University of California, Los Angeles, who was not involved in the new research. “It provides a window into human vocal evolution.”
Chimpanzee
A chimpanzee’s call.
Bonobo
A Bonobo call.
Orangutan
An orangutan call.
In the new study, which was published on Thursday in the journal Communications Biology, the researchers analyzed the recorded laughter of four children and 13 young, captive apes: four orangutans, two gorillas, three bonobos and four chimpanzees. Some of the recordings featured laughter produced during play, while others captured laughter elicited by tickling.
(Many of the recordings were initially created two decades ago by Marina Davila-Ross, a comparative psychologist at the University of Portsmouth in Britain and an author of the new study. “I wasn’t lucky enough to be there tickling baby gorillas at the time,” Dr. De Gregorio said.)
During tickling, the scientists found, all the species produced laughter that shared the same basic rhythmic characteristic: It was isochronous, meaning that each vocalization — each pant, hoot or “ha” — occurred at regular, evenly spaced intervals, like the ticking of a clock or metronome.
The scientists did not observe this same regularity in the laughter that humans or other apes produced during play, perhaps because the physical, rough-and-tumble nature of many of these play sessions disrupted regular breathing patterns.
Though the laughter of humans and apes shared some basic rhythmic properties, the tempo, or speed, of these rhythms varied considerably between species. On average, humans had laughter that was quicker than that of other apes, and the species that were most closely related to humans (chimps and bonobos) laughed faster than those that were more distant relatives (gorillas and orangutans).
“Imagine,” Dr. Gregorio said, “a metronome that goes slower for orangutans, so like tick … tick … tick … but faster, way faster, in humans, so tick-tick-tick-tick.”
Even though humans were the fastest laughers on average, they displayed enormous variability in their laugh speeds, laughing languidly in some circumstances and rapidly in others. They were also the only species to change the tempo of their laughter depending on the context, laughing faster, for instance, while being tickled than during play.
The study had limitations; the subject pool was small, and the researchers analyzed just a handful of laughter’s many characteristics. But future studies with larger sample sizes could help scientists learn more about how humans made it their own.
“Laughter is such an important part of our way of communication,” Dr. De Gregorio said. “It’s able to communicate way more than, ‘I’m playing and I’m having fun.’”
Emily Anthes is a science reporter, writing primarily about animal health and science. She also covered the coronavirus pandemic.
https://www.nytimes.com/2026/06/25/scie ... roid-share