I'm going to go with: Everyone likes a good echo chamber to hear their opinions uselessly amplified.

And thankfully, there are enough blogs out there to appeal to just about any disgruntled hack that lives primarily in their own head.

I thought going to war was the way to complain and get attention at the same time.

I thought joking was the way to spite death and get other mortals to share in the insanity.

Do comedy writers ever write about humor? I am actually curious. I am not asking about how-to books on writing comedy, but about what makes people laugh.

I've read clever stuff by Steve Martin but it doesn't go to the heart of the question. Why do people laugh?

There's a great essay by Bergson about it
(though, in my view, outdated, which itself might say something about the cultural relativism of humor.)

Or when the law of gravity applies only when you are aware of it. (Which could be a summary of the Bush administration.)

Bernard, Carla Bruni speaks good french? Does she look French when talking?

Your comment about Carla Bruni being the Cecile's upgraded version is funny, for example.

Where does the time go? Where does it come from, then we'll talk . . .

Time originated with the so-called big bang. Time and space are integral so as the universe expands time grows with it. This is called time’s arrow or entropy because time always grows with the expansion of space. So time came from a finite point and goes forever outward or at least as long as the universe expands. Most evidence points to either a flat universe or an open universe as there is not enough mass to close the universe and cause it to shrink back to a singularity. Of course the Planet Earth will be only able to support life for another 2 billion years as the sun gets hotter and expands into a red giant. Earth will then resemble the planet Venus after going through a runaway greenhouse effect. One could say that time will have run out for humanity. Moral of the story, enjoy life while you can.

Bernard:

I thought going to war was the way to complain and get attention at the same time.

That is the greatest comment ever on this site, out of 21,573. Seriously: that's truly profound, at least for for someone like me who's never thought about it like that before. That's absolutely right. So there are two ways of complaining while still getting other people to pay attention to you.

If I only I could start a really funny war, everyone would know my name! And all the terrible injustices I have suffered!!!

Labiche,

Thanks for the interesting link, fascinating stuff to think about. You might be interested in these books

The Origin of the Universe by John D. Barrow

and

The Five Ages of the Universe: Inside the Physics of Eternity by Fred Adams and Greg Laughlin

These are both fairly recent books and a good read -- they discuss inflation, the cosmic background radiation, and the possibility of multiple universes and how one universe can give birth to another universe also how inflation can give rise to multiple universes.