You're Not So Funny

One of these days I would like to perform a social experiment whose purpose would be to discover if comedians are actually funny or we just perceive them to be funny because we are told that they are supposed to be. I'm not exactly sure how this would go down though. My initial thought is to have a person go to a social gathering and introduce himself as a regular Joe Schmoe accountant, or something boring like that, and proceed to tell humorous jokes through out the night and see what the crowds reaction is. Then have the same person go to another gathering and introduce himself as Joe Schmoe comedian and tell the same jokes and see if the reaction is any different. I thought this was a decent initial idea until Fred shot me down saying that the jokes told at gathering A might not apply to gathering B and therefore would not have the same reaction regardless of who told them. He has a good point and that's why I keep him around. In response Fred's plan was to place a person in front of a sitcom with a laugh track and another sitcom without a laugh track to see if the show with the laugh track gets more reaction from the subject than the one without. I have two problems with this, one is that laugh tracks submit the subjects to the influence of an "audience" and the reaction from the subject might not be a true reaction but just a response in possibly thinking that everyone else is laughing so I'm suppose to be laughing also. And two is that most of the time a sitcom makes situations humorous by conveying interaction between people. I want to know if one person is funny, not a group of people put into a scripted humorous situation.

I'm no scientist so I can't really begin to figure out how I would conduct an experiment that closed all the loop holes for erroneous data so I am more than willing to accept other ideas.

I also want to know if a dog's tail wag is involuntary or not. Anyone?

I swear we really do work around here sometimes.