The great irony

 

I have been a bit of a comment nazi lately. I haven't published that many of those that I have received because some haven't necessarily been that good or on target.

I miss Millard's rapier wit. He has been too busy or disinclined to respond. Sanoguy, MMWB, all missing in action. Many are content to merely read and not to contribute and that is of course, fine. I can always set it on auto shpiel.

Grumpy is always willing to pitch in, of course  but I am uncomfortable with a running dialogue and it gets too reflexive at times. Of course the danger of not publishing everything and instituting censorship is that I will lose readership so I have to toe a fine line. But the blast wants your a game.

KJ is great but he also plays too mean for some.

New York Stan thinks that everybody west of Amsterdam Avenue is meshugina.

I have learned that I also play too rough for both some good friends and a few family members. And I hope that they will sincerely accept my apologies if and when they ever decide to start speaking to me again.

Some of the writing on the Blue Heron Blast is actually meant to be taken with "tongue in cheek." However my research has shown that some folks actually do not have the brain physiology to understand irony or sarcasm. Interesting Israeli study here about post frontal damage and the perception of irony. Also see this abstract, by Dennis.

The ability to perceive sarcasm actually is centered in an area of the right brain previously thought to have a minor role in observing contextual background changes in visual tests called the right parahippocampal gyrus. You can read about the science of sarcasm in this interesting article  in the New York Times. We have all  met people who could not get the joke. Perhaps there is a humor gene waiting to be discovered?


Unfortunately, if you do not have the capacity to recognize sarcasm or smarm, I am afraid that it becomes a fruitless clinical exercise to read about it.  Like stupidity, it tends to have a rather exclusive frame of reference. I hope to devise a glyph or cipher for the blog to alert the reader whenever I indulge in either pursuit, so that it can be more easily followed from home.

Hope that everyone is doing well. Rest assured that I say this without a hint of insincerity.