…Understanding Pain and Ancient Wit. Plus: This isn’t how a jet pack is supposed to look, is it?

Tracing the World’s Oldest Joke
A new University of Wolverhampton research project reveals that a gag about a woman passing gas is the world’s oldest witticism.

The ancient Sumerian proverb, which dates back to 1900 BC, goes: “Something which has never occurred since time immemorial; a young woman did not fart in her husband’s lap.” The Sumerian version of this joke occurs in tablets dating to the Old Babylonian period and possibly even dates back to 2300 BC.

The saying, which heads the world’s oldest top 10 joke list published by the University of Wolverhampton yesterday, along with other jokes and gags suggest toilet humor was as popular with the ancients as it is today.

Rise and Shine with Pork
Responses to sensory stimuli vary. For example, whereas I may rise-and-shine better to auditory stimulation — right now it’s Elvis Costello — you may wake better to, say, the smell of brewing coffee.

Or pork.

That’s what Matty Sallin, Daniel Bartolini and Hsiao-huh Hsu seem to have been thinking when they designed the Wake n’ Bacon alarm clock for people who wish to wake up to the aroma of bacon.

Wired’s Gadget Lab blog explains the alarm clock’s relatively simple method:

You stick a strip of frozen bacon into its tray before you go to bed; then you set the alarm. Ten minutes before the alarm is set to go off, the Wake n’ Bacon turns on two halogen bulbs that slowly cook the bacon.

Ten minutes later, you awake to the smell of cooked pork in your bedroom.

If that doesn’t do the trick, then a backup alarm sounds off to wake the individual, notes Geek.com.

Did You Know?
Scientists don’t understand pain. When you’re in pain, you usually know it. But pain is actually hard to define because it’s a subjective sensation, and scientists don’t fully grasp how it works and why, according to LiveScience.

“Pain is complex and defies our ability to establish a clear definition,” says Kathryn Weiner, director of the American Academy of Pain Management.

The American Academy of Pain Medicine defines pain as an “unpleasant sensation and emotional response to that sensation.” Pretty vague.

Pain sensation is felt when electrical signals are sent from nerve endings to the brain, which in turn can release painkillers called endorphins and generate reactions that range from instant and physical to long-term and emotional.

Some pain is the result of an obvious injury; other times, it is caused by damaged nerves that are not so easy to pinpoint. Physicians and neuroscientists generally classify pain in three ways: acute pain, which is caused by an injury to the body; chronic pain, which persists long after the trauma has healed (and in some cases occurs in the absence of any trauma); and cancer pain, which is associated with malignant tumors.

Beyond that, scientific understanding is kinda fuzzy.

“Pain is far more than neural transmission and sensory transduction,” Weiner tells LiveScience. “Pain is a complex mixture of emotions, culture, experience, spirit and sensation.”

Funding for Rethinking/Rebuilding the Internet
Many researchers say a “clean-slate” approach to the Internet’s underlying architecture is the only way to truly address security and other challenges that have cropped up since the Internet’s birth in 1969. Now a ginormous project to redesign and rebuild the Internet from scratch is gradually moving forward with $12 million in government funding and donations of network capacity by two major research organizations.

The Associated Press reports:

On behalf of the government, BBN Technologies Inc. is overseeing the planning and design of the Global Environment for Network Innovations, or GENI, a network on which researchers will be able to test new ideas without damaging the current Internet. The $12 million in initial grants from the National Science Foundation will go to developing prototypes for the GENI network.

Is it even worth rebuilding? The strokers of beards have all but predicted that this “Internets” thingy is just a phase . . . give it another year and it’ll be about as present and popular as mutton chops, clackers and the Sports Illustrated shoe phone.

Jet Packs, Pt. 628
We’ve been waiting for commercial jet packs for waaay too long. Now, while an inventor’s new device may not quite be The Rocketeer, it’s another valiant effort to get a jet pack in every home.

In this case, though, it would have to be kept in the garage rather than the hall closet.

Glenn Martin’s invention is a 250 lb., piano-sized jet pack that “people settle into rather than strap on.” Earlier this week, at AirVenture Oshkosh 2008, the annual aviation convention of the Experimental Aircraft Association, the inventor’s 16-year-old son tested a prototype Martin jet pack, the engine for which “sounded like a motorcycle,” according to the Associated Press (via Wired’s Geekdad).

Credit: AP Photo/Morry Gash

Harrison Martin eased about three feet off the ground and hovered for 45 seconds before setting the device down. “The Martin jet pack can — in theory — fly an average-sized pilot about 30 miles in 30 minutes on a full 5-gallon tank of gas,” says AP.

Cheers