Now, have any of y'all ever looked up this word?
You know, in a dictionary?
(Laughter) Yeah, that's what I thought.
How about this word?
Here, I'll show it to you.
Lexicography: the practice of compiling dictionaries.
Notice -- we're very specific -- that word "compile."
The dictionary is not carved out of a piece of granite, out of a lump of rock.
It's made up of lots of little bits.
It's little discrete -- that's spelled D-I-S-C-R-E-T-E -- bits.
And those bits are words.
Now one of the perks of being a lexicographer -- besides getting to come to TED -- is that you get to say really fun words, like lexicographical.
Lexicographical has this great pattern: it's called a double dactyl.
And just by saying double dactyl, I've sent the geek needle all the way into the red.
(Laughter) (Applause) But "lexicographical" is the same pattern as "higgledy-piggledy."
Right?
It's a fun word to say, and I get to say it a lot.
Now, one of the non-perks of being a lexicographer is that people don't usually have a kind of warm, fuzzy, snuggly image of the dictionary.
Right?
Nobody hugs their dictionaries.
But what people really often think about the dictionary is, they think more like this.
Just to let you know, I do not have a lexicographical whistle.
But people think that my job is to let the good words make that difficult left-hand turn into the dictionary, and keep the bad words out.
But the thing is, I don't want to be a traffic cop.
For one thing, I just do not do uniforms.
And for another, deciding what words are good and what words are bad is actually not very easy.
And it's not very fun.
And when parts of your job are not easy or fun, you kind of look for an excuse not to do them.
So if I had to think of some kind of occupation as a metaphor for my work, I would much rather be a fisherman.
I want to throw my big net into the deep, blue ocean of English and see what marvelous creatures I can drag up from the bottom.
But why do people want me to direct traffic, when I would much rather go fishing?
Well, I blame the Queen.
Why do I blame the Queen?
Well, first of all, I blame the Queen because it's funny.
But secondly, I blame the Queen because dictionaries have really not changed.
Our idea of what a dictionary is has not changed since her reign.
The only thing that Queen Victoria would not be amused by in modern dictionaries is our inclusion of the F-word, which has happened in American dictionaries since 1965.
So, there's this guy, right?
Victorian era.
James Murray, first editor of the Oxford English Dictionary.
I do not have that hat.
I wish I had that hat.
So he's really responsible for a lot of what we consider modern in dictionaries today.
When a guy who looks like that, in that hat, is the face of modernity, you have a problem.
And so, James Murray could get a job on any dictionary today.
There'd be virtually no learning curve.
And of course, a few of us are saying: okay, computers!
Computers!
What about computers?
The thing about computers is, I love computers.
I mean, I'm a huge geek, I love computers.
I would go on a hunger strike before I let them take away Google Book Search from me.
But computers don't do much else other than speed up the process of compiling dictionaries.
They don't change the end result.
Because what a dictionary is, is it's Victorian design merged with a little bit of modern propulsion.
It's steampunk.
What we have is an electric velocipede.
You know, we have Victorian design with an engine on it.
That's all!
The design has not changed.
And OK, what about online dictionaries, right?
Online dictionaries must be different.
This is the Oxford English Dictionary Online, one of the best online dictionaries.
This is my favorite word, by the way.
Erinaceous: pertaining to the hedgehog family; of the nature of a hedgehog.
Very useful word.
So, webblaura@example.org.
Online dictionaries right now are paper thrown up on a screen.
This is flat.
Look how many links there are in the actual entry: two!
Right?
Those little buttons, I had them all expanded except for the date chart.
So there's not very much going on here.
There's not a lot of clickiness.
And in fact, online dictionaries replicate almost all the problems of print, except for searchability.
And when you improve searchability, you actually take away the one advantage of print, which is serendipity.
Serendipity is when you find things you weren't looking for, because finding what you are looking for is so damned difficult.
So -- (Laughter) (Applause) -- now, when you think about this, what we have here is a ham butt problem.
Does everyone know the ham butt problem?
Woman's making a ham for a big, family dinner.
She goes to cut the butt off the ham and throw it away, and she looks at this piece of ham and she's like, "This is a perfectly good piece of ham.
Why am I throwing this away?"
She thought, "Well, my mom always did this."
So she calls up mom, and she says, "Mom, why'd you cut the butt off the ham, when you're making a ham?"
She says, "I don't know, my mom always did it!"
So they call grandma, and grandma says, "My pan was too small!"
(Laughter) So, it's not that we have good words and bad words.
We have a pan that's too small!
You know, that ham butt is delicious!
There's no reason to throw it away.
The bad words -- see, when people think about a place and they don't find a place on the map, they think, "This map sucks!"
When they find a nightspot or a bar, and it's not in the guidebook, they're like, "Ooh, this place must be cool!
It's not in the guidebook."
When they find a word that's not in the dictionary, they think, "This must be a bad word."
Why?
It's more likely to be a bad dictionary.
Why are you blaming the ham for being too big for the pan?
So, you can't get a smaller ham.
The English language is as big as it is.
So, if you have a ham butt problem, and you're thinking about the ham butt problem, the conclusion that it leads you to is inexorable and counterintuitive: paper is the enemy of words.
How can this be?
I mean, I love books.
I really love books.
Some of my best friends are books.
But the book is not the best shape for the dictionary.
Now they're going to think "Oh, boy.
People are going to take away my beautiful, paper dictionaries?"
No.
There will still be paper dictionaries.
When we had cars -- when cars became the dominant mode of transportation, we didn't round up all the horses and shoot them.
You know, there're still going to be paper dictionaries, but it's not going to be the dominant dictionary.
The book-shaped dictionary is not going to be the only shape dictionaries come in.
And it's not going to be the prototype for the shapes dictionaries come in.
So, think about it this way: if you've got an artificial constraint, artificial constraints lead to arbitrary distinctions and a skewed worldview.
What if biologists could only study animals that made people go, "Aww."
Right?
What if we made aesthetic judgments about animals, and only the ones we thought were cute were the ones that we could study?
We'd know a whole lot about charismatic megafauna, and not very much about much else.
And I think this is a problem.
I think we should study all the words, because when you think about words, you can make beautiful expressions from very humble parts.
Lexicography is really more about material science.
We are studying the tolerances of the materials that you use to build the structure of your expression: your speeches and your writing.
And then, often people say to me, "Well, OK, how do I know that this word is real?"
They think, "OK, if we think words are the tools that we use to build the expressions of our thoughts, how can you say that screwdrivers are better than hammers?
How can you say that a sledgehammer is better than a ball-peen hammer?"
They're just the right tools for the job.
And so people say to me, "How do I know if a word is real?"
You know, anybody who's read a children's book knows that love makes things real.
If you love a word, use it.
That makes it real.
Being in the dictionary is an artificial distinction.
It doesn't make a word any more real than any other way.
If you love a word, it becomes real.
So if we're not worrying about directing traffic, if we've transcended paper, if we are worrying less about control and more about description, then we can think of the English language as being this beautiful mobile.
And any time one of those little parts of the mobile changes, is touched, any time you touch a word, you use it in a new context, you give it a new connotation, you verb it, you make the mobile move.
You didn't break it.
It's just in a new position, and that new position can be just as beautiful.
Now, if you're no longer a traffic cop -- the problem with being a traffic cop is there can only be so many traffic cops in any one intersection, or the cars get confused.
Right?
But if your goal is no longer to direct the traffic, but maybe to count the cars that go by, then more eyeballs are better.
You can ask for help!
If you ask for help, you get more done.
And we really need help.
Library of Congress: 17 million books, of which half are in English.
If only one out of every 10 of those books had a word that's not in the dictionary in it, that would be equivalent to more than two unabridged dictionaries.
And I find an un-dictionaried word -- a word like "un-dictionaried," for example -- in almost every book I read.
What about newspapers?
Newspaper archive goes back to 1759, 58.1 million newspaper pages.
If only one in 100 of those pages had an un-dictionaried word on it, it would be an entire other OED.
That's 500,000 more words.
So that's a lot.
And I'm not even talking about magazines.
I'm not talking about blogs -- and I find more new words on BoingBoing in a given week than I do Newsweek or Time.
There's a lot going on there.
And I'm not even talking about polysemy, which is the greedy habit some words have of taking more than one meaning for themselves.
So if you think of the word "set," a set can be a badger's burrow, a set can be one of the pleats in an Elizabethan ruff, and there's one numbered definition in the OED.
The OED has 33 different numbered definitions for set.
Tiny, little word, 33 numbered definitions.
One of them is just labeled "miscellaneous technical senses."
Do you know what that says to me?
That says to me, it was Friday afternoon and somebody wanted to go down the pub.
(Laughter) That's a lexicographical cop out, to say, "miscellaneous technical senses."
So, we have all these words, and we really need help!
And the thing is, we could ask for help -- asking for help's not that hard.
I mean, lexicography is not rocket science.
See, I just gave you a lot of words and a lot of numbers, and this is more of a visual explanation.
If we think of the dictionary as being the map of the English language, these bright spots are what we know about, and the dark spots are where we are in the dark.
If that was the map of all the words in American English, we don't know very much.
And we don't even know the shape of the language.
If this was the dictionary -- if this was the map of American English -- look, we have a kind of lumpy idea of Florida, but there's no California!
We're missing California from American English.
We just don't know enough, and we don't even know that we're missing California.
We don't even see that there's a gap on the map.
So again, lexicography is not rocket science.
But even if it were, rocket science is being done by dedicated amateurs these days.
You know?
It can't be that hard to find some words!
So, enough scientists in other disciplines are really asking people to help, and they're doing a good job of it.
For instance, there's eBird, where amateur birdwatchers can upload information about their bird sightings.
And then, ornithologists can go and help track populations, migrations, etc.
And there's this guy, Mike Oates.
Mike Oates lives in the U.K.
He's a director of an electroplating company.
He's found more than 140 comets.
He's found so many comets, they named a comet after him.
It's kind of out past Mars.
It's a hike.
I don't think he's getting his picture taken there anytime soon.
But he found 140 comets without a telescope.
He downloaded data from the NASA SOHO satellite, and that's how he found them.
If we can find comets without a telescope, shouldn't we be able to find words?
Now, y'all know where I'm going with this.
Because I'm going to the Internet, which is where everybody goes.
And the Internet is great for collecting words, because the Internet's full of collectors.
And this is a little-known technological fact about the Internet, but the Internet is actually made up of words and enthusiasm.
And words and enthusiasm actually happen to be the recipe for lexicography.
Isn't that great?
So there are a lot of really good word-collecting sites out there right now, but the problem with some of them is that they're not scientific enough.
They show the word, but they don't show any context.
Where did it come from?
Who said it?
What newspaper was it in?
What book?
Because a word is like an archaeological artifact.
If you don't know the provenance or the source of the artifact, it's not science, it's a pretty thing to look at.
So a word without its source is like a cut flower.
You know, it's pretty to look at for a while, but then it dies.
It dies too fast.
So, this whole time I've been saying, "The dictionary, the dictionary, the dictionary, the dictionary."
Not "a dictionary," or "dictionaries."
And that's because, well, people use the dictionary to stand for the whole language.
They use it synecdochically.
And one of the problems of knowing a word like "synecdochically" is that you really want an excuse to say "synecdochically."
This whole talk has just been an excuse to get me to the point where I could say "synecdochically" to all of you.
So I'm really sorry.
But when you use a part of something -- like the dictionary is a part of the language, or a flag stands for the United States, it's a symbol of the country -- then you're using it synecdochically.
But the thing is, we could make the dictionary the whole language.
If we get a bigger pan, then we can put all the words in.
We can put in all the meanings.
Doesn't everyone want more meaning in their lives?
And we can make the dictionary not just be a symbol of the language -- we can make it be the whole language.
You see, what I'm really hoping for is that my son, who turns seven this month -- I want him to barely remember that this is the form factor that dictionaries used to come in.
This is what dictionaries used to look like.
I want him to think of this kind of dictionary as an eight-track tape.
It's a format that died because it wasn't useful enough.
It wasn't really what people needed.
And the thing is, if we can put in all the words, no longer have that artificial distinction between good and bad, we can really describe the language like scientists.
We can leave the aesthetic judgments to the writers and the speakers.
If we can do that, then I can spend all my time fishing, and I don't have to be a traffic cop anymore.
Thank you very much for your kind attention.
I'm going to be talking about designing humor, which is sort of an interesting thing, but it goes to some of the discussions about constraints, and how in certain contexts, humor is right, and in other contexts it's wrong.
Now, I'm from New York, so it's 100 percent satisfaction here.
Actually, that's ridiculous, because when it comes to humor, 75 percent is really absolutely the best you can hope for.
Nobody is ever satisfied 100 percent with humor except this woman.
(Video) Woman: (Laughs) Bob Mankoff: That's my first wife.
(Laughter) That part of the relationship went fine.
(Laughter) Now let's look at this cartoon.
One of the things I'm pointing out is that cartoons appear within the context of The New Yorker magazine, that lovely Caslon type, and it seems like a fairly benign cartoon within this context.
It's making a little bit fun of getting older, and, you know, people might like it.
But like I said, you cannot satisfy everyone.
You couldn't satisfy this guy.
"Another joke on old white males.
Ha ha.
The wit.
It's nice, I'm sure to be young and rude, but some day you'll be old, unless you drop dead as I wish."
(Laughter) The New Yorker is rather a sensitive environment, very easy for people to get their nose out of joint.
And one of the things that you realize is it's an unusual environment.
Here I'm one person talking to you.
You're all collective.
You all hear each other laugh and know each other laugh.
In The New Yorker, it goes out to a wide audience, and when you actually look at that, and nobody knows what anybody else is laughing at, and when you look at that the subjectivity involved in humor is really interesting.
Let's look at this cartoon.
"Discouraging data on the antidepressant."
(Laughter) Indeed, it is discouraging.
Now, you would think, well, look, most of you webblaura@example.org.
Right?
You thought it was funny.
In general, that seems like a funny cartoon, but let's look what online survey I did.
Generally, about 85 percent of the people liked it.
A hundred and nine voted it a 10, the highest.
Ten voted it one.
But look at the individual responses.
"I like animals!!!!!"
Look how much they like them.
(Laughter) "I don't want to hurt them.
That doesn't seem very funny to me."
This person rated it a two.
"I don't like to see animals suffer -- even in cartoons."
To people like this, I point out we use anesthetic ink.
Other people thought it was funny.
That actually is the true nature of the distribution of humor when you don't have the contagion of humor.
Humor is a type of entertainment.
All entertainment contains a little frisson of danger, something that might happen wrong, and yet we like it when there's protection.
That's what a zoo is.
It's danger.
The tiger is there.
The bars protect us.
That's sort of fun, right?
That's a bad zoo.
(Laughter) It's a very politically correct zoo, but it's a bad zoo.
But this is a worse one.
(Laughter) So in dealing with humor in the context of The New Yorker, you have to see, where is that tiger going to be?
Where is the danger going to exist?
How are you going to manage it?
My job is to look at 1,000 cartoons a week.
But The New Yorker only can take 16 or 17 cartoons, and we have 1,000 cartoons.
Of course, many, many cartoons must be rejected.
Now, we could fit more cartoons in the magazine if we removed the articles.
(Laughter) But I feel that would be a huge loss, one I could live with, but still huge.
Cartoonists come in through the magazine every week.
The average cartoonist who stays with the magazine does 10 or 15 ideas every week.
But they mostly are going to be rejected.
That's the nature of any creative activity.
Many of them fade away.
Some of them stay.
Matt Diffee is one of them.
Here's one of his cartoons.
(Laughter) Drew Dernavich.
"Accounting night at the improv."
"Now is the part of the show when we ask the audience to shout out some random numbers."
Paul Noth.
"He's all right.
I just wish he were a little more pro-Israel."
(Laughter) Now I know all about rejection, because when I quit -- actually, I was booted out of -- psychology school and decided to become a cartoonist, a natural segue, from 1974 to 1977 I submitted 2,000 cartoons to The New Yorker, and got 2,000 cartoons rejected by The New Yorker.
At a certain point, this rejection slip, in 1977 -- [We regret that we are unable to use the enclosed material.
Thank you for giving us the opportunity to consider it.] — magically changed to this.
[Hey!
You sold one.
No shit!
You really sold a cartoon to the fucking New Yorker magazine.]
(Laughter) Now of course that's not what happened, but that's the emotional truth.
And of course, that is not New Yorker humor.
What is New Yorker humor?
Well, after 1977, I broke into The New Yorker and started selling cartoons.
Finally, in 1980, I received the revered New Yorker contract, which I blurred out parts because it's none of your business.
From 1980.
"Dear Mr. Mankoff, confirming the agreement there of -- " blah blah blah blah -- blur -- "for any idea drawings."
With respect to idea drawings, nowhere in the contract is the word "cartoon" mentioned.
The word "idea drawings," and that's the sine qua non of New Yorker cartoons.
So what is an idea drawing?
An idea drawing is something that requires you to think.
Now that's not a cartoon.
It requires thinking on the part of the cartoonist and thinking on your part to make it into a cartoon.
(Laughter) Here are some, generally you get my cast of cartoon mind.
"There is no justice in the world.
There is some justice in the world.
The world is just."
This is What Lemmings Believe.
(Laughter) The New Yorker and I, when we made comments, the cartoon carries a certain ambiguity about what it actually is.
What is it, the cartoon?
Is it really about lemmings?
No.
It's about us.
You know, it's my view basically about religion, that the real conflict and all the fights between religion is who has the best imaginary friend.
(Laughter) And this is my most well-known cartoon.
"No, Thursday's out.
How about never — is never good for you?"
It's been reprinted thousands of times, totally ripped off.
It's even on thongs, but compressed to "How about never — is never good for you?"
Now these look like very different forms of humor but actually they bear a great similarity.
In each instance, our expectations are defied.
In each instance, the narrative gets switched.
There's an incongruity and a contrast.
In "No, Thursday's out.
How about never — is never good for you?"
what you have is the syntax of politeness and the message of being rude.
That really is how humor works.
It's a cognitive synergy where we mash up these two things which don't go together and temporarily in our minds exist.
He is both being polite and rude.
In here, you have the propriety of The New Yorker and the vulgarity of the language.
Basically, that's the way humor works.
So I'm a humor analyst, you would say.
Now E.B. White said, analyzing humor is like dissecting a frog.
Nobody is much interested, and the frog dies.
Well, I'm going to kill a few, but there won't be any genocide.
But really, it makes me — Let's look at this picture.
This is an interesting picture, The Laughing Audience.
There are the people, fops up there, but everybody is laughing, everybody is laughing except one guy.
This guy.
Who is he?
He's the critic.
He's the critic of humor, and really I'm forced to be in that position, when I'm at The New Yorker, and that's the danger that I will become this guy.
Now here's a little video made by Matt Diffee, sort of how they imagine if we really exaggerated that.
(Video) Bob Mankoff: "Oooh, no.
Ehhh.
Oooh.
Hmm.
Too funny.
Normally I would but I'm in a pissy mood.
I'll enjoy it on my own.
Perhaps.
No.
Nah.
No.
Overdrawn.
Underdrawn.
Drawn just right, still not funny enough.
No.
No.
For God's sake no, a thousand times no.
(Music) No.
No.
No.
No.
No.
[Four hours later] Hey, that's good, yeah, whatcha got there?
Office worker: Got a ham and swiss on rye?BM: No.
Office worker: Okay.
Pastrami on sourdough?BM: No.
Office worker: Smoked turkey with bacon?BM: No.
Office worker: Falafel?BM: Let me webblaura@example.org.
Eh, no.
Office worker: Grilled cheese?BM: No.
Office worker: BLT?BM: No.
Office worker: Black forest ham and mozzarella with apple mustard?BM: No.
Office worker: Green bean salad?BM: No.
(Music) No.
No.
Definitely no.
[Several hours after lunch] (Siren) No.
Get out of here.
(Laughter) That's sort of an exaggeration of what I do.
Now, we do reject, many, many, many cartoons, so many that there are many books called "The Rejection Collection."
"The Rejection Collection" is not quite New Yorker kind of humor.
And you might notice the bum on the sidewalk here who is boozing and his ventriloquist dummy is puking.
See, that's probably not going to be New Yorker humor.
It's actually put together by Matt Diffee, one of our cartoonists.
So I'll give you some examples of rejection collection humor.
"I'm thinking about having a child."
(Laughter) There you have an interesting -- the guilty laugh, the laugh against your better judgment.
(Laughter) "Ass-head.
Please help."
(Laughter) Now, in fact, within a context of this book, which says, "Cartoons you never saw and never will see in The New Yorker," this humor is perfect.
I'm going to explain why.
There's a concept about humor about it being a benign violation.
In other words, for something to be funny, we've got to think it's both wrong and also okay at the same time.
If we think it's completely wrong, we say, "That's not funny."
And if it's completely okay, what's the joke?
Okay?
And so, this benign, that's true of "No, Thursday's out.
How about never — is never good for you?"
It's rude.
The world really shouldn't be that way.
Within that context, we feel it's okay.
So within this context, "Asshead.
Please help" is a benign violation.
Within the context of The New Yorker magazine ...
"T-Cell Army: Can the body's immune response help treat cancer?"
Oh, goodness.
You're reading about this smart stuff, this intelligent dissection of the immune system.
You glance over at this, and it says, "Asshead.
Please help"?
God.
So there the violation is malign.
It doesn't work.
There is no such thing as funny in and of itself.
Everything will be within the context and our expectations.
One way to look at it is this.
It's sort of called a meta-motivational theory about how we look, a theory about motivation and the mood we're in and how the mood we're in determines the things we like or dislike.
When we're in a playful mood, we want excitement.
We want high arousal.
We feel excited then.
If we're in a purposeful mood, that makes us anxious.
"The Rejection Collection" is absolutely in this field.
You want to be stimulated.
You want to be aroused.
You want to be transgressed.
It's like this, like an amusement park.
Voice: Here we go.
(Screams) He laughs.
He is both in danger and safe, incredibly aroused.
There's no joke.
No joke needed.
If you arouse people enough and get them stimulated enough, they will laugh at very, very little.
This is another cartoon from "The Rejection Collection."
"Too snug?"
That's a cartoon about terrorism.
The New Yorker occupies a very different space.
It's a space that is playful in its own way, and also purposeful, and in that space, the cartoons are different.
Now I'm going to show you cartoons The New Yorker did right after 9/11, a very, very sensitive area when humor could be used.
How would The New Yorker attack it?
It would not be with a guy with a bomb saying, "Too snug?"
Or there was another cartoon I didn't show because actually I thought maybe people would be offended.
The great Sam Gross cartoon, this happened after the Muhammad controversy where it's Muhammad in heaven, the suicide bomber is all in little pieces, and he's saying to the suicide bomber, "You'll get the virgins when we find your penis."
(Laughter) Better left undrawn.
The first week we did no cartoons.
That was a black hole for humor, and correctly so.
It's not always appropriate every time.
But the next week, this was the first cartoon.
"I thought I'd never laugh again.
Then I saw your jacket."
It basically was about, if we were alive, we were going to laugh.
We were going to breathe.
We were going to exist.
Here's another one.
"I figure if I don't have that third martini, then the terrorists win."
These cartoons are not about them.
They're about us.
The humor reflects back on us.
The easiest thing to do with humor, and it's perfectly legitimate, is a friend makes fun of an enemy.
It's called dispositional humor.
It's 95 percent of the humor.
It's not our humor.
Here's another cartoon.
"I wouldn't mind living in a fundamentalist Islamic state."
(Laughter) Humor does need a target.
But interestingly, in The New Yorker, the target is us.
The target is the readership and the people who do it.
The humor is self-reflective and makes us think about our assumptions.
Look at this cartoon by Roz Chast, the guy reading the obituary.
"Two years younger than you, 12 years older than you, three years your junior, your age on the dot, exactly your age."
That is a deeply profound cartoon.
And so The New Yorker is also trying to, in some way, make cartoons say something besides funny and something about us.
Here's another one.
"I started my vegetarianism for health reasons, Then it became a moral choice, and now it's just to annoy people."
(Laughter) "Excuse me — I think there's something wrong with this in a tiny way that no one other than me would ever be able to pinpoint."
So it focuses on our obsessions, our narcissism, our foils and our foibles, really not someone else's.
The New Yorker demands some cognitive work on your part, and what it demands is what Arthur Koestler, who wrote "The Act of Creation" about the relationship between humor, art and science, is what's called bisociation.
You have to bring together ideas from different frames of reference, and you have to do it quickly to understand the cartoon.
If the different frames of reference don't come together in about .5 seconds, it's not funny, but I think they will for you here.
Different frames of reference.
"You slept with her, didn't you?"
(Laughter) "Lassie!
Get help!!"
(Laughter) It's called French Army Knife.
(Laughter) And this is Einstein in bed.
"To you it was fast."
(Laughter) Now there are some cartoons that are puzzling.
Like, this cartoon would puzzle many people.
How many people know what this cartoon means?
The dog is signaling he wants to go for a walk.
This is the signal for a catcher to walk the dog.
That's why we run a feature in the cartoon issue every year called "I Don't Get It: The New Yorker Cartoon I.Q. Test."
(Laughter) The other thing The New Yorker plays around with is incongruity, and incongruity, I've shown you, is sort of the basis of humor.
Something that's completely normal or logical isn't going to be funny.
But the way incongruity works is, observational humor is humor within the realm of reality.
"My boss is always telling me what to do."
Okay?
That could happen.
It's humor within the realm of reality.
Here, cowboy to a cow: "Very impressive.
I'd like to find 5,000 more like you."
We understand that.
It's absurd.
But we're putting the two together.
Here, in the nonsense range: "Damn it, Hopkins, didn't you get yesterday's memo?"
Now that's a little puzzling, right?
It doesn't quite come together.
In general, people who enjoy more nonsense, enjoy more abstract art, they tend to be liberal, less conservative, that type of stuff.
But for us, and for me, helping design the humor, it doesn't make any sense to compare one to the other.
It's sort of a smorgasbord that's made all interesting.
So I want to sum all this up with a caption to a cartoon, and I think this sums up the whole thing, really, about The New Yorker cartoons.
"It sort of makes you stop and think, doesn't it."
(Laughter) And now, when you look at New Yorker cartoons, I'd like you to stop and think a little bit more about them.
Thank you.
(Applause) Thank you.
(Applause)