A recent science tidbit was that the humor center of the brain has been discovered. Doctors had noticed that people injured or suffering a stroke in a certain part of the frontal cerebrum lost their sense of humor. To test the hypothesis they hooked people up to machines and told them jokes to see if that part of the brain was involved. Sure enough! Presto! Now we know where the funnybone is really located.

Picture the lab where the research was done. I see this dude sitting in a chair and his head is all wired up to machines. The door opens and in walks … John Cleese! He's wearing a white lab coat and carrying a clipboard, and doing one of his silly walks. (If you haven't seen the Monty Python sketch, "Ministry of Silly Walks," then you've missed one of the biggest laughs since Alley Oop slipped and fell face first into a pile of brontosaurus poop, thereby inventing the entire concept of humor.) Cleese sits down on a whoopee cushion. He looks at his clipboard and says, with a perfectly straight face: "Take my wife … please!" then makes a note of the guy's reaction.

There are other scientists present (and all scientists always wear white lab coats and carry clipboards, just like in a Gary Larson "Far Side" cartoon, but these guys are wearing Groucho glasses over their regular, Coke-bottle-lens ones). These guys are peeling bananas and carefully positioning them in front of the experimental subject, making note of the size of the peel and its position, then one scientist strolls along, oblivious, slips on the banana peel and falls on his ass.

It seemed to me that a concrete way of measuring comedy was needed. I mean, they can measure just about anything, so why not humor?

Turns out there is such a scale. It's called the Jester scale, and it's been in use since Sir Percival the Peculiar tried to liven things up around the Round Table in Camelot. ("How many knights does it take to screw in a chastity belt?" "Ha! Nobody screws in a chastity belt!") But the Jester Scale is cumbersome, difficult to use. Four titters in a giggle, two giggles in a guffaw, three guffaws in a whoop. Or was it whoops in guffaw? Who could remember the difference between a cackle, a chuckle, and a chortle? Between a hoot and a howl?

Scientists decided it was time for humor to go metric. They set out to develop an index of funniness. It needed a name, like the Celsius and Fahrenheit scales. They decided to call it the Kaufman scale, after the late comic Andy Kaufman, who spent his career exploring the limits of humor, trying to discover how far he could push a concept before it stopped being funny (and finding out, usually, that the distance was all too short). Then you need units of measurement, which are frequently named after people prominent in the field: coulomb, newton, curie, faraday, ohm, amp. … was there a guy named Amp? Was it Ambrose Amp? Can't remember.

They thought of using "caesar" as the basic unit of mirth, but decided that was more fitting to measure salads. So they settled on the "berle."

Currently, the smallest measurable unit of jollity is the milliberle, one thousandth of a berle. One mb is roughly equal to a joke from Readers Digest, for instance, or a knock-knock joke told by a second-grader.

(The scale allows for incredibly tiny measurements, such as the nanoberle, but we currently can’t measure such micro-snickers, and probably won’t unless fleas start doing stand-up comedy.)

The Kaufman Scale is open-ended, like the Richter Scale for earthquakes, so there is no "funniest" rating. There can always be a funnier joke.

Any episode of "Fawlty Towers" would assay as between five and six kiloberles. The "Chuckles The Clown Is Dead" episode of Mary Tyler Moore has been measured at seven point five kiloberles.

The Kaufman scale allows the measurement of larger amounts of humor than Sir Percival the Peculiar ever imagined. There is the Megaberle (Mb, or one million berles), and the Gb, one billion berles, or one giggleberle. An example of a Gb might be a really good comedian cracking really good jokes at a venue the size of the Hollywood Bowl.

Modern technology has allowed the creation of even vaster amounts of humor, in the virtual realm. Billy Crystal doing his best routine at the Oscars before a worldwide audience of over a billion might score one or two GOb, or googleberles. (The gaggleberle is, of course, reserved for measuring levity among geese.)

Unlike the Richter scale, the Kaufman scale can be negative. Some people erroneously think that a negative berle is a measure of sadness. Not true. Sad is not the opposite of funny, just as humor is not the same as happiness. If you don’t believe me, I ask you to consider Woody Allen.

No, the opposite of "funny" is "not funny." Negative numbers on the Kaufman scale indicate something that could have been funny, but wasn’t, such as me slipping on a banana peel and breaking my neck (you slipping on a banana peel is always funny, no matter what the consequence), or someone else telling a joke that lays an egg. To envision a negative berle, think of any Adam Sandler movie. "Little Nicky" has been rated at minus eight megaberles, breaking his own previous record.

The idea of your reaction versus my reaction to a given stimulus brings us into the exciting and evolving area of humorous relativity. Humor varies according to the position of the observer relative to the comic situation.

The classic illustration of the principles of comic relativity and parity is the Lampooned Minority Group (LMG) joke. It can be any minority group: Polish, Aggies, Blondes, etc. Take any LMG joke and put it on the Kaufman Scale: "Did you hear about the LMG expedition to the sun? They’re going to land at night, so they don’t burn up!" (This joke rates a precise 4 on the K Scale; a good way to calibrate your silliometer at home!) However, if you happen to be a member of that particular LMG, the K Scale reading would be –4!

The central datum so far discovered in humorous relativity is the equation:

Sadly, Zero took the heavenly pratfall, caught that heavenly pie in the face many years ago. Relativity risibility researchers have been stymied ever since, and probably will continue to be until another Zero comes careening out of the comedic Catskills.

But despite this setback, there are still horizons to explore! Here are some of the fascinating questions facing chuckleology in the 21st century:

1. A quantum theory of humor. We speak of "gales" of laughter, and "waves" of laughter. Are there particles of humor? Are there basic, indivisible units of jollity, and if so, how do they interact? The search for the ha-haon continues.

2. Why is Steven Wright funny? ("It’s a small world … but I wouldn’t want to paint it." "You can’t have everything. Where would you put it?" "I bought a house with a circular driveway. I can’t get out.") Is the Zen one-liner the new frontier of humor?

3. Whatever happened to Pauly Shore? And if we don’t look for him, will he stay lost?

4. Why do the French think Jerry Lewis is a comic genius?

5. Just what is it with that Adam Sandler asshole, anyway?

(I was going to rate this very essay on my mirth-o-meter, but it broke while trying to measure some very dark humor on "The Sopranos." Sorry. My estimate is that it would weigh in at around 13 berles … but that may just be wishful thinking.)

Say goodnight, Gracie.