Why do birds fly?

因为他们不喜欢走路。

That was a joke made up by my granddaughter Erin when she was three. She had learned the form of one kind of joke, without quite mastering the part about being funny. She made up jokes non-stop for about three hours, most of them even less funny than the above, regaling those trapped in the car with her, while turning blue from laughing so hard at them herself.

It probably wouldn't be that hard to program a computer to do as well as Erin did. If it spit out enough two-liners, maybe some of them would be funny. It might be cheaper for Jay Leno to hire someone to go through the corpus and pick out the funny ones than to pay the high wages of a talented joke-writer.

我们今天节目的嘉宾托尼·维尔希望能做得更好。他想通过计算机编程来编写笑话，为此他研究了一些主要的幽默理论，其中一些来自哲学家，想看看这些理论能有什么帮助。

大卫·卡普兰(David Kaplan)曾向我讲述过他在牛津大学讲授约翰·洛克(John Locke)课程时的经历。当大卫讲课时，他的哲学见解中总是掺杂着很多幽默。在这一点上，他在牛津的演讲让他灰心丧气;似乎没有人笑。当他在一家酒吧里思考这些事情的时候，一个人走到他面前，做了自我介绍，说他非常喜欢大卫的讲座。“这些讲座不仅在哲学上很有趣，”那人说，“而且是我听过的最有趣的讲座。唉，有好几次我差点笑出声来。"

David felt better. I'm sure that story illustrates an important point, although I'm not sure what it is. The same can be said for each of the following jokes. If you can figure out the important point, email us during the program.
*********
A married couple in their early 60s was out celebrating their 35th wedding anniversary in a quiet, romantic little restaurant. Suddenly, a tiny yet beautiful fairy appeared on their table and said, "For being such an exemplary married couple and for being faithful to each other for all this time, I will grant you each a wish."

"Oh, I want to travel around the world with my darling husband" said the wife. The fairy waved her magic wand and - poof! - two tickets for the Queen Mary II luxury liner appeared in her hands.

然后轮到丈夫了。他想了一会儿说:“好吧，这一切都很浪漫，但这样的机会不会再来了。我很抱歉，我的爱人，但我的愿望是有一个比我年轻30岁的妻子。"

The wife and the fairy were deeply disappointed, but a wish is a wish...

So the fairy waved her magic wand and - poof! - the husband became 92 years old.

**************

耶稣和撒旦一直在争论
谁的电脑技术更好。They had been going at
it for days, and frankly God was tired of hearing all the
bickering.

Finally fed up, God said, "THAT'S IT! I have had enough. I
am going to setup a test that will run for two hours, and from
看看结果，我会判断谁的工作做得更好。"

So Satan and Jesus sat down at the keyboards and typed
away.

They moused.
They faxed.
他们的电子邮件。
They E-mailed with attachments.
They downloaded.
They did spreadsheets.
They wrote reports.
They created labels and cards.
They created charts and graphs.
They did some genealogy reports.
他们做了人类能做的每一项工作。

Jesus worked with heavenly efficiency and Satan was
faster than hell.

Ten minutes before their time was up, lightning
suddenly flashed across the sky, thunder rolled, rain
倾泻而下，当然，停电了。Satan stared at his
blank screen and screamed every curse word known in the underworld.
Jesus just sighed.

Finally the electricity came back on, and each of them
restarted their computers. Satan started searching
frantically, screaming:

"It's gone! It's all GONE! _!@#@$!@%^#$^!@$%@!!@$_
^#$^!@$@!!@$ ," said Satan.

“停电的时候我失去了一切!”
#)*^%*#%#@!@%~!@#%!!!"

Meanwhile, Jesus quietly started printing out all
files from the past two hours of work.

撒旦看到了这一切，非常生气。"Wait!" he
screamed. "That's not fair! He cheated! How come he
has all his work and I don't have any?"

God just shrugged and said, "JESUS SAVES"

*********************
Breakfast for 'the' President

迷人的女服务员问切尼想吃什么，他回答说:“我要一碗燕麦片和一些水果。”

“我能为您做些什么……sir?" she asks George W.

He replies, "How about a quickie?"

"Why, Mr. President," the waitress says, 'How rude! You're starting to act like President Clinton!"

As the waitress storms away, Cheney leans over to Bush and whispers, "It's pronounced 'quiche".

*********************

And finally, two donkey stories:

The Smart Donkey

在多年饲养驴子之后，一位老农民发现了一种异常聪明的动物。他记得马通过跺脚学习加减法的故事。他认为他的驴比任何马都聪明，于是更进一步，教它乘和除。

The farmer was sure the public would pay to see his amazing donkey, so he sold his farm and went on the road, renting booths in fairs to show off the animal's mental prowess.

不幸的是，他永远找不到想看他的驴子表演的顾客。It seems that he learned the hard way that nobody likes a smart ass.

天下没有不散的筵席:这是驴儿最后的故事了。

...but you can't please all of the people all of the time"

An old man, a boy and a donkey were going to town. The boy rode on the
donkey and the old man walked. As they went along they passed some people
who remarked it was a shame the old man was walking and the boy was riding.
The man and boy thought maybe the critics were right, so they changed
positions.

Later, they passed some people that remarked, "What a shame, he makes that
little boy walk." They then decided they both would walk! Soon they passed
some more people who thought they were stupid to walk when they had a
decent donkey to ride. So, they both rode the donkey.

Now they passed some people that shamed them by saying how awful to put
such a load on a poor donkey. The boy and man said they were probably
right, so they decided to carry the donkey. As they crossed the bridge,
they lost their grip on the animal and he fell into the river and drowned.

The moral of the story?

If you try to please everyone, you might as well kiss your ass good-bye.

[all jokes from Seth Haber, but don't blame him]