North Pole Rescue Mission (research base has sunk)

[The Sushi Bandit]

http://7am.com/cgi-bin/wires02.cgi?1000_2004030405.htm

11:51 am PST, 4 March 2004

Russia is preparing to launch a rescue operation to save a group of scientists whose North Pole research base has sunk. The 12 researchers were left stranded without equipment and supplies after an ice floe beneath the base collapsed.

The station's leader says that huge walls of ice up to 10 meters high had smashed most of the station, leaving just two small buildings standing. The research station was set up on the permanently moving Arctic ice last April, and has since almost completed a full circle around the North Pole.

[plurality]

1. a product of melting ice caps? n/t

[BlueEyedSon]

2. More global warming?

[htuttle]

3. Sounds like the North Pole has gotten a little 'slushy'

[mike1963]

8. Look at the bright side. Sno-cones for everybody!

:eyes:

[Commie Pinko Dirtbag]

4. SANTA'S FACTORY! MY TOYS! OH NO! (nt)

[Gman]

5. LOL!

[pinto]

6. don't think this is funny

[DarkPhenyx]

7. If we don't laugh we'll start screaming.

If we start screaming we may not be able to stop. Personally, I'm all for laughing. Hell, I was cracking jokes as the Twin Towers went down. hawkeye Pierce was a childhood hero of mine.

[UpInArms]

9. perhaps we need a new thing

called ROFWMEO

for Rolling on the Floor Weeping My Eyes Out?

[leftchick]

10. perfect UIA...

for all of the daily black humor/irony we have to endure.

[Steven_S]

11. Cracking jokes while the Towers went down?

Only an imbecile or a sociopath would have done that.

Which is it?

You need help.

[DoYouEverWonder]

12. Oh please

It was a normal human reaction.

[kskiska]

13. Holocaust victims in concentration camps

had their own brand of humor, too.

[Steven_S]

14. Maybe you could enlighten me...

Maybe you could tell me what it is that you find so funny about holocaust victims? Or about the thousands that died in the towers?

Perhaps you could share with us some of those great jokes they were telling each other?

I don't suppose you had any friends or loved ones in the rubble? How about relatives in the gas chambers?

Like I said, imbecile or sociopath. Prove my point for me.

[kskiska]

15. Try Google

I take it you haven't seen "It's a Beautiful Life," with Roberto Benigni.

Start here:

Humor in the Holocaust: Its Critical, Cohesive, and Coping Functions
by John Morreall, Ph.D.

This paper was presented at the 1997 Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, Hearing The Voices: Teaching the Holocaust to future Generations. It is available on a CD-ROM of all Scholars' Conference papers 1990-2000 published by Vista-Intermedia and edited by Marcia Sachs Littell.

The very idea of humor during the Holocaust may at first seem jarring—incongruous but not funny! In Western culture there is a long tradition of prejudice against humor, especially in connection with anything as tragic as the Holocaust. Tragedy, on stage or in real life, is serious, even sublime, while humor and comedy are "light." In drama, when comedy appears within tragedy, it is usually discounted as mere "comic relief."

But the ancient Greeks, Shakespeare, and other dramatists took their comedy more seriously than that. They realized that comedy is not "time out" from the real world; rather it provides another perspective on that world. And that other perspective is no less valuable than the tragic perspective. As Conrad Hyers has suggested, comedy expresses a "stubborn refusal to give tragedy . . . the final say."1

more…
http://www.holocaust-trc.org/holocaust_humor.htm

or here:
http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/h/e/hershey/www/humor/random/random13.html

Examples of jokes they told:
http://web.mit.edu/afs/athena/user/h/e/hershey/www/humor/random/random13.html

[PartyPooper]

19. Excellent post. Thank you!

:thumbsup:

[kskiska]

20. You're welcome, PartyPooper!

Some people don't want to face reality and attack the messenger.
I visited Dachau in 1971 and there were exhibits on the humor in the camp. There was also a prisoners' band.

My father was a POW in Germany for over a year in WWII. The situation was the same there. They had all sorts of activities and exhibited quite a bit of humor.

[JohnOneillsMemory]

16. Humor is a coping mechanism, not just belittling or indifference.

Look at bartcop.com

The guy running that blog frequently uses juvenile scorn to deal with the relentless abuse coming from the current maladministration.

I understand your indignation but understand that we all have to somehow cope with the relentless waves of bad news crashing against our psychic shores without dissolving.

It's healthy. Try it.

[UpInArms]

17. a piece of my favorite black humor

is the question and answer:

What are they going to do, eat me? After all, you know cannibalism is against the law.

This presupposes that murdering me would be okay, but cannibalism is illegal.

[DarkPhenyx]

22. Know what Al Gore was saying on 9/11?

YEAH! I fucking lost! WOO-HOO!

[maggrwaggr]

18. people react to sudden shock in odd ways

in some cultures it's not that abnormal to laugh at sudden shocking events like car wrecks.

Happens here too sometimes.

One time my stepdaughter was in the backseat of the car, and my wife was getting in the car and she smashed the shit out of her head. My stepdaughter burst out laughing, a weird kind of shouting laugh. Later she said she didn't know why she did it.

Stress can make people do odd things.

[DarkPhenyx]

21. Honestly?

Sociopath. It's one of my finer, but lesser known, traits.