#evolutionary

The common denominator of all jokes is a path of expectation that is diverted by an unexpected twist necessitating a complete reinterpretation of all the previous facts — the punch-line…Reinterpretation alone is insufficient. The new model must be inconsequential. For example, a portly gentleman walking toward his car slips on a banana peel and falls. If he breaks his head and blood spills out, obviously you are not going to laugh. You are going to rush to the telephone and call an ambulance. But if he simply wipes off the goo from his face, looks around him, and then gets up, you start laughing. The reason is, I suggest, because now you know it’s inconsequential, no real harm has been done. I would argue that laughter is nature’s way of signaling that "it’s a false alarm." Why is this useful from an evolutionary standpoint? I suggest that the rhythmic staccato sound of laughter evolved to inform our kin who share our genes; don’t waste your precious resources on this situation; it’s a false alarm. Laughter is nature’s OK signal. ↗

— V.S. Ramachandran

#humor #laughter #humor

I think we're proving ourselves as we go along. The past several months our strategy has been evolutionary - making maximum advantage of our client browser, as well as our enterprise software for people who want to build Web sites. ↗

— Jim Barksdale

#along #been #browser #build #client

You must never aspire to 'finish' a house, you can merely hope to start it, and from then on it's an evolutionary process. ↗

— Stephen Bayley

#evolutionary #finish #hope #house #merely

We happen to be the vanguard of that revolutionary struggle because we are the most dispossessed. ↗

— H. Rap Brown

#dispossessed #happen #most #revolutionary #struggle

I have seen the Gore documentary 'An Inconvenient Truth,' just released in the States, and admired the acutely revolutionary delivery of the slideshow assisted talk he has now been giving for some 16 years. ↗

— Saffron Burrows

#admired #assisted #been #delivery #documentary

I am not a communist and neither is the revolutionary movement. ↗

— Fidel Castro

#communist #i #i am #movement #neither

Every revolutionary idea seems to evoke three stages of reaction. They may be summed up by the phrases: 1- It's completely impossible. 2- It's possible, but it's not worth doing. 3- I said it was a good idea all along. ↗

— Arthur C. Clarke

#completely #doing #every #evoke #good

With the opening of the second decade of the twentieth century it seemed that the stage was set for the last act in an unquestioned evolutionary drama. ↗

— Ralph A. Cram

#century #decade #drama #evolutionary #last

And while national military forces have historically resisted the full participation of women soldiers, female talent has found plenty of scope in revolutionary and terrorist groups around the planet. ↗

— Katherine Dunn

#female #forces #found #full #groups

To be a revolutionary you have to be a human being. You have to care about people who have no power. ↗

— Jane Fonda

#being #care #human #human being #people