{"id":1166,"date":"2007-03-13T20:23:26","date_gmt":"2007-03-14T01:23:26","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/2007\/03\/13\/the-great-muffin-joke-debate\/"},"modified":"2007-03-13T20:23:26","modified_gmt":"2007-03-14T01:23:26","slug":"the-great-muffin-joke-debate","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/2007\/03\/13\/the-great-muffin-joke-debate\/","title":{"rendered":"The Great Muffin Joke Debate"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.portakalagaci.com\/oburcuk\/2005\/04\/klasik_muffin.html\"><img width='150' class='alignright' src='http:\/\/blogs.discovermagazine.com\/cosmicvariance\/files\/uploads\/muffin2.jpg' alt='Muffins' \/><\/a> Our current task, as Serious Bloggers, is to pass judgment upon whether the Muffin Joke is funny.  Here is the joke itself:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, &#8220;Wow, it&#8217;s hot in here!&#8221;\u009d<\/p>\n<p>And the other muffin replies: &#8220;Holy cow! A talking muffin!&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2007\/03\/13\/science\/13tier.html?ex=1331438400&amp;en=d38e4cf7a53719f3&amp;ei=5090&amp;partner=rssuserland&amp;emc=rss\">John Tierney<\/a> (<em>New York Times<\/em>) thinks the Muffin Joke is not funny.  <a href=\"http:\/\/delong.typepad.com\/sdj\/2007\/03\/the_muffin_joke.html\">Brad DeLong<\/a> (Berkeley) disagrees, claiming that the Muffin Joke is, in fact, funny, although he offers no argument to support his conclusion.  <a href=\"http:\/\/balkin.blogspot.com\/2007\/03\/repeat-after-me-muffin-joke-is-not.html\">Jack Balkin<\/a> (Yale) also finds the Muffin Joke funny, and does offer a rationale:<\/p>\n<blockquote><p>The muffin joke is funny because it is self-undermining. The punch line undermines the suspension of disbelief that the joke&#8217;s narrative presumes. It is kind of like breaching the fourth wall in drama. It&#8217;s like the line in Dr.Strangelove &#8220;You can&#8217;t fight in here. This is the War Room!&#8221; or the Atheist Hymn we came up with in high school: &#8220;There is no God, there is no God, He told me so himself.&#8221;<\/p><\/blockquote>\n<p>He admits, however, that by offering this explanation, he has thereby wrung all of the funniness out of the Muffin Joke.  That&#8217;s as may be.<\/p>\n<p>I come down on the pro-Muffin-Joke side of the debate.  To me, it&#8217;s quite funny.  Is this some sort of Ivory-Tower Academics vs. Hard-Nosed Journalists thing?<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Our current task, as Serious Bloggers, is to pass judgment upon whether the Muffin Joke is funny. Here is the joke itself: So there are these two muffins baking in an oven. One of them yells, &#8220;Wow, it&#8217;s hot in here!&#8221;\u009d And the other muffin replies: &#8220;Holy cow! A talking muffin!&#8221; John Tierney (New York [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1166","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-humor"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1166"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1166\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1166"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1166"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/preposterousuniverse.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1166"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}