You may have heard it said that you'll never eat sausage again after you see how it's made. I don't see how that could be true. There's nothing disgusting about stuffing ground-up meat parts into a tightly stretched tube of animal intestines--nothing disgusting at all.

Likewise, talking about the evolution and history of humor is a guaranteed laugh riot. Or is it?

For example, the Roman orator Cicero advised budding speakers that physical deformity is always a great source of comic material.

Perhaps the Romans got this nasty habit from the Greeks, who liked to make fun of their leader Pericles for having a head shaped like an onion. Some thanks poor Pericles got for having the Parthenon built, and for transforming Athens into a center for art and literature. (You won't get to see Pericles's head here, by the way. Sculptors hid the point on his head with a helmet.)

Over time, our definition of what is funny has changed. Today, people do not find birth defects and other physical differences to be a laughing matter.

Then what do we find funny? If you believe the scientists at Britain's Laugh Lab, the following joke is number one--according to the nearly 2 million people from around the world who visited the site and rated jokes:

A couple of New Jersey hunters are out in the woods when one of them falls to the ground. He doesn't seem to be breathing, his eyes are rolled back in his head. The other guy whips out his cell phone and calls emergency services. He gasps to the operator: “My friend is dead! What can I do?” The operator, in a calm soothing voice says: “Just take it easy. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead.” There is a silence, then a shot is heard. The guy's voice comes back on the line. He says: “OK, now what?"

This joke, on the other hand, was rated "fowl":

Q. Why are chickens considered good employees?

A. Because they work around the cluck.

Maybe the chicken joke isn't the funniest in the world, but I laughed as hard at it as I did at the one about the New Jersey hunters. Which is to say, not very hard.

This just goes to show that we all have different tastes when if comes to humor, and also that the people who liked this joke are idiots.

Oops--now I've done it.