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Got a few pounds to lose? Cancel the gym membership. An increasing body of research reveals that exercise does next to nothing for you when it comes to losing weight. A result for couch potatoes, yes, but also one that could have serious implications for the government's long-term health strategy

My mum used to complain that she couldn't lose weight. A size 18 and a couple of stone heavier than ideal, she tried in vain for years to shed the extra. Every week she headed to the gym, where she pounded the treadmill like a paratrooper, often three times a week. Most days she took the dog for a brisk, hour-long walk. She didn't eat unhealthily – the rest of the family ate exactly the same meals, and did a fraction of the exercise she did. She ought to have been the slimmest of the bunch: that she remained overweight was a frustration to her, and a mystery to all of us.

From StairMasters to kettlebells, Rosemary Conley to Natalie Cassidy, we understand and expect that getting in shape is going to require serious effort on our part – and the reverse is true, too, that we expect exercise to pay back the hours of boring, sweaty graft with a leaner, lighter body. Since the days of the Green Goddess, we've known that the healthiest way to lose weight is through exercise. It's science, isn't it?

Well, science has some bad news for you. More and more research in both the UK and the US is emerging to show that exercise has a negligible impact on weight loss. That tri-weekly commitment to aerobics class? Almost worthless, as far as fitting into your bikini is concerned. The Mayo Clinic, a not-for-profit medical research establishment in the US, reports that, in general, studies "have demonstrated no or modest weight loss with exercise alone" and that "an exercise regimen… is unlikely to result in short-term weight loss beyond what is achieved with dietary change."

It sounds faintly heretical, if not downright facetious. And it's a scientific discovery that most health professionals are, naturally, keen to downplay. After all, exercise is still good for us. It's just that, in defiance of decades of New Year resolutions, it's unlikely to make us slim.

Most of us have a grasp of the rudiments of weight gain and loss: you put energy (calories) into your body through food, you expend them through movement, and any that don't get burned off are stored in your body as fat. Unfortunately, the maths isn't in our favour. "In theory, of course, it's possible that you can burn more calories than you eat," says Dr Susan Jebb, head of nutrition and health research at the Medical Research Council, and one of the government's go-to academics for advice on nutrition. "But you have to do an awful lot more exercise than most people realise. To burn off an extra 500 calories is typically an extra two hours of cycling. And that's about two doughnuts."

From a practical perspective, then, exercise is never going to be an effective way of slimming, unless you have the training schedule – and the willpower – of an Olympic athlete. "It's simple maths," says Professor Paul Gately, of the Carnegie Weight Management institution in Leeds. "If you want to lose a pound of body fat, then that requires you to run from Leeds to Nottingham, but if you want to do it through diet, you just have to skip a meal for seven days." Both Jebb and Gately are keen to stress that there is plenty of evidence that exercise can add value to a diet: "It certainly does maximise the amount you lose as fat rather than tissue," Jebb points out. But Gately sums it up: "Most people, offered the choice, are going to go for the diet, because it's easier to achieve."

There's another, more insidious, problem with pinning all your hopes for a holiday bod on exercise. In what has become a defining experiment at the University of Louisiana, led by Dr Timothy Church, hundreds of overweight women were put on exercise regimes for a six-month period. Some worked out for 72 minutes each week, some for 136 minutes, and some for 194. A fourth group kept to their normal daily routine with no additional exercise.

Against all the laws of natural justice, at the end of the study, there was no significant difference in weight loss between those who had exercised – some of them for several days a week – and those who hadn't. (Church doesn't record whether he told the women who he'd had training for three and half hours a week, or whether he was wearing protective clothing when he did.) Some of the women even gained weight.

Church identified the problem and called it "compensation": those who exercised cancelled out the calories they had burned by eating more, generally as a form of self-reward. The post-workout pastry to celebrate a job well done – or even a few pieces of fruit to satisfy their stimulated appetites – undid their good work. In some cases, they were less physically active in their daily life as well.

His findings are backed up by a paper on childhood obesity published in 2008 by Boston academics Steven Gortmaker and Kendrin Sonneville. In an 18-month study investigating what they call "the energy gap" – the daily imbalance between energy intake and expenditure — the pair showed that when the children in their experiment exercised, they ended up eating more than the calories they had just burned, sometimes 10 or 20 times as many. "Although physical activity is thought of as an energy-deficit activity," they wrote, "our estimates do not support this hypothesis."





In the 1950s, the celebrated French-American nutritionist Jean Mayer was the first to introduce a link between exercise and weight reduction. Until then, the notion that physical activity might help you lose weight was actually rather unfashionable in the scientific community – in the 1930s, a leading specialist had persuasively argued that it was more effective to keep patients on bed rest.

Over the course of his career, Mayer's pioneering studies – on rats, babies and schoolgirls – demonstrated that the less active someone was, the more likely they were to be fat. Mayer himself, the son of two eminent physiologists, and a Second World War hero to boot, became one of the world's leading figures in nutrition and most influential voices in the sphere of public health. As an advisor to the White House and to the World Health Organisation, he drew correlations between exercise and fitness that triggered a revolution in thinking on the subject in the 60s and 70s. "Getting fit" became synonymous not just with healthier living, but with a leaner, meaner body, and the ground was laid for a burgeoning gym industry.

Each successive postwar generation was enjoying an increasingly sedentary lifestyle, and those lifestyles have been accompanied by an apparently inexorable increase in obesity. Three in five UK adults are now officially overweight. And type II diabetes, which used to be a disease that affected you at the end of your life, is now the fastest-rising chronic disorder in paediatric clinics.

But have we confused cause and effect? Terry Wilkin, professor of endocrinology and metabolism at the Peninsula Medical School in Plymouth, argues that we have. The title of his latest research is: "Fatness leads to inactivity, but inactivity does not lead to fatness". Wilkin is nearing the end of an 11-year study on obesity in children, which has been monitoring the health, weight and activity levels of 300 subjects since the age of five. When his team compared the more naturally active children with the less active ones, they were surprised to discover absolutely no difference in their body fat or body mass.

That's not to say that exercise is not making the children healthy in other ways, says Wilkin, just that it's having no palpable effect on their overall size and shape. "And that's a fundamental issue," he adds, "because governments, including ours, use body mass as an outcome measure." In other words, obesity figures are not going to improve through government-sponsored programmes that focus primarily on exercise while ignoring the behemoth of a food industry that is free to push high-calorie junk to kids (and, for that matter, adults).

For one thing, Wilkin believes he has discovered another form of "compensation", similar to Timothy Church's discovery that we reward ourselves with food when we exercise. Looking at the question of whether it was possible to change a child's physical activity, Wilkin's team put accelerometers on children at schools with very different PE schedules: one which offered 1.7 hours a week, and another that offered nine hours.

"The children did 64% more PE at the second school. But when they got home they did the reverse. Those who had had the activity during the day flopped and those who hadn't perked up, and if you added the in-school and out-of-school together you got the same. From which we concluded that physical activity is controlled by the brain, not by the environment – if you're given a big opportunity to exercise at one time of day you'll compensate at another."

Wilkin argues that the environmental factors we tend to obsess about in the fight against obesity – playing fields, PE time in school, extracurricular activities, parental encouragement – are actually less of a factor in determining what exercise we do than our own bodies. "An evolutionary biologist would say physical activity is the only voluntary means you have of varying or regulating your energy expenditure. In other words, what physical activity you do is not going to be left to the city council to decide. It's going to be controlled, fundamentally, from within."

His thesis has caused controversy among his peers – there have been cavils that his study sample is inconclusively small – and not all obesity experts appreciate the message. "We haven't had the sensitivity in the studies to really determine the longitudinal determinants of obesity in children yet," says Dr Ken Fox, professor of exercise and health science at Bristol University and advisor to the government's obesity strategy. "It's far too early to start discounting things as important as physical activity. Those who are saying it has no impact are neglecting a huge amount of the literature. I am suspicious of anyone who polarises obesity as one thing over another when there is strong agreement that it has multiple causes."

"Terry's point is right," says Paul Gately, "but it's not right in the context of public health promotion. In people who have lost weight and kept weight off, physical activity is almost always involved. And those people who just do diet are more likely to fail, as are those who just do exercise. You need a combination of the two, because we're talking about human beings, not machines. We know that dietary behaviour is quite a negative behaviour – we're having to deny ourselves something. There aren't any diets out there that people enjoy. But people do enjoy being physically active."

"What we want to avoid is people thinking they can control their weight simply by dieting," adds Jebb, who points out that this is the very scenario that encourages anorexia in teenage girls. "Just restricting your diet is not going to be the healthiest way to live." Traditional dieting clubs like Weightwatchers and Slimming World promote exercise as a key part of a weight-loss strategy: scientific studies show that exercise is an important factor in maintaining weight loss and, Jebb adds, some studies suggest it can help in preventing weight gain.

But it is still much harder to exercise when you're already overweight, and "high energy density" foods are quick to get us there – overeating by just 100 calories a day can lead to a weight increase of 10lb over a year. "Education must come first," says Wilkin. "Eating habits have to change to a much lower calorie intake, much lower body weight, and we would be fitter as a result because we would be able to do more physical activity." He would like to see higher levels of tax on calorie-dense food, similar to those levied on tobacco, which have proved effective in the campaign against smoking.

Does the coalition government – which will launch a White Paper on the subject this autumn – agree? Anne Milton, minister for public health, is not keen to commit to any particular strategy before its publication. "There's not a magic bullet here," she says. "Despite the best efforts of government actually the public's health hasn't improved hugely.Change4Life [the government's current healthy-living initiative] is doing a good job. But we think there's still lots more we can do with it."

Any drastic measures to curb the excesses of junk food marketing seem unlikely – both Milton and Secretary of State for Health Andrew Lansley stress the importance of working "with" industry – and much of her language is concerned with "individual choice". When it comes to losing weight, it seems there's only one real choice – stop eating so much food.



Running on empty: fat is a feminine issue

The good news The latest scientific findings from the US suggest that an intense workout in the gym is actually less effective than gentle exercise in terms of weight loss. Barry Braun, associate professor of kinesiology at the University of Massachusetts, says that the evidence emerging from his research team shows that moderate exercise such as "low-intensity ambulation" (ie walking) may help to burn calories "without triggering a caloric compensation effect" – ie without making you reach for a snack the moment you're done. In one experiment, Braun showed that simply standing up instead of sitting used up hundreds more calories a day without increasing appetite hormones in your blood.

The bad news Perhaps offering one reason for a multi-billion-pound weight-loss industry aimed almost exclusively at women, research has confirmed that it is more difficult for women to shed the pounds than men, because women's bodies are simply more efficient at storing fat. In one of Braun's experiments, in which overweight men and women were monitored while walking on treadmills, the women's blood levels of insulin decreased while appetite hormones increased; the men's, meanwhile, displayed no such change. "Across the evidence base, it seems that it's tougher for women to lose weight than men," affirms Ken Fox, professor of exercise and health sciences at Bristol University.





<span>Humor is something that thrives between man's aspirations and his limitations. There is more logic in humor than in anything else. Because, you see, humor is truth. ~ Victor Borge </span>



Having a funny disposition can prove a positive way of viewing life and your place in the world. A good sense of humor has many benefits, from personal happiness to making you the life and soul of a party, to helping you see the lighter side of life and sharing your irreverent sense of challenging situations with those more seriously inclined. Being funny is recognized as an important part of job hires too – a survey of 737 CEOs found that 98 percent of them favored hiring someone with a sense of humor over someone who didn't display such a sense.[1]

Being funny is not about being flippant or frivolous – it's about being genuinely humorous and encouraging other people to have a good laugh. And while it might be a little challenging changing your outlook about the role of good humor in your life, being funny is something innate, and wanting to be funnier is the first fabulous step to becoming that way! Shuck off your stern self and tickle your funny bone with the following fun steps!

Steps






Funny is innate!Trust in your innate sense of humor. Being funny doesn't come in "one-size-fits-all"; what makes you funny is unique to you and the way you observe the world. Focus first on what you find funny in life and learn from your own reactions to the things that make you laugh. Trust that you do have a funny bone – as babies we laugh from 4 months of age, and all children express humor naturally from kindergarten age, using humor to entertain themselves and others, with riddles, knock knock jokes, laughing at themselves, and even using physical slapstick humor.[2] So it's already in you – you just need to bring it forth again!
Find the things that make you laugh. Search for books, movies, TV shows, photos, stories, words, poems, people, work incidents, pet follies, near catastrophes, etc., that you've found funny. Keep a note of them.
Do funny things and enjoy the things that make you laugh more often. Indulge in reading a comic strip, share jokes with the kids, give in to "silly things" just because they're funny, and laugh as often as you can.






Friends are a great source of funnyLearn a little about what makes us laugh. Laughter is generally the desired result of anyone seeking to be funny, and usually this is because we view laughter as a sign of happiness or as a release of tension. Laughter itself is unconscious – while it is possible for us to inhibit our laughter consciously (although not always successfully!), it is very hard for us to produce laughter on demand, and doing so will usually seem "forced".[3][4] Fortunately, laughter is very contagious (we're about 30 times more likely to laugh in the presence of others),[5] and in a social context, it's easy to start laughing when others are laughing.[6] Getting people to laugh, therefore, requires genuine humor, which is definitely about more than reciting hackneyed jokes!
What makes us laugh foremost includes feeling a sense of superiority over someone else behaving "dumber" than us, or being surprised by the incongruity of something, or by feeling a welcomed relief from an anxiety.[7] And for many of us, seeing our own frustrations reflected back at us by someone who clearly understands a familiar predicament or situation and injects levity into responding to it nearly always improves our mood!
Keep in mind that while good joke-telling is an art form in and of itself, it is not a requisite for being funny. Not being able to remember jokes does not doom you to being humorless! Indeed, research by scientists at Washington State University has shown that a joke poorly told can be funny in its own right depending on who you tell it to; it's possible we have a tendency to find being let down by bad humor cause for amusement too![8]
Different things make different people laugh – it's important to keep this in mind when it doesn't seem that someone is responsive to your being funny.






Incongruity is funny!Learn the key foundations of being funny. In a nutshell, as good comedians already know, being funny boils down to good timing and taking the best advantage of the context. This is why learning long lists of jokes won't necessarily make you "funny" because you still need to grasp the levity of a situation as it's unfolding before you, within the context of those present and the precise facts of each situation. Here are some of the basic components of being funny:
Misleading the mind, surprise, or cognitive incongruity: Verbal jokes use this element to the greatest level possible, trying to misdirect your attention much the same as a magic trick seeks to do.[9] Basically, this technique relies on cognitive processing errors, turning assumptions upside down, and word confusion. For example: "What happens to liars when they die?" Answer - "They lie still." This joke works because you have to interpret the joke in two ways, and the brain is temporarily confused by its inability to draw on usual experience.[10] All of this happens quickly and unconsciously, and humor becomes your brain's "graceful" way of coping with the mixed signals; if you "get" the joke, you'll be laughing.
When writing, you can still use this technique – write something that appears to be headed in one direction but end up somewhere else totally, such as Groucho Marx' clever one-liner, "Outside of a dog, a book is man's best friend. Inside of a dog, it's too dark to read", or Rodney Dangerfield's line, "My wife met me at the door the other night in a sexy negligee. Unfortunately, she was just coming home." The aim is to keep what's coming up a total surprise![11]
Surprise where it's least expected: On the plus side for you as an improving funny person, it's good to know that the least funny a place is, the easier it becomes to spring the element of humorous surprise (for example, a dour workplace), while it is far harder to maintain the element of surprise where humor is expected (for example, a comedian doing stand-up comedy).[12]
Timing: Apt timing is as important as surprise, because if you give the brain too much time to work out a situation or joke, the funny moment will pass by. This is probably why jokes people have heard before don't work, as recognition dulls humor because the brain is already primed by experience.[13] React quickly and strike while the humorous moment exists.
Serious: Much humor derives from very serious events and situations in our daily lives. The sooner you grasp this reality and learn to bend it to your sense of humor, the better! (See below for qualifications on making humor out of "serious" moments!)






Be a little silly sometimes!Think silly: This is about taking serious stuff and being not-so-serious with it. Try to find the funnier, lighthearted side of what you're observing and think like a kid.
Status change: Changing a person's status, or the status of something long held to be true, can be very funny. For example, having a CEO of a company ask the receptionist for advice on how to run the company. Or, as Stephen Colbert did, taking a tried and true saying such as "Be the change you want to see in the world" and telling people "[P]lease don’t do that. Some of us like it the way it is. Personally, things are going great for me right now.”[14] can be very amusing.
Know your audience: Have a reasonable idea of what those around you find funny. When you're in a group of people you don't know, for example, just listen to what subjects they're talking about and what's making them laugh. Generally the better you know someone, the easier it will be to make them laugh.






Find funny things in everyday lifeBroaden your factual knowledge or joke material. It is much easier to find funny moments in material you know well – your workplace attitudes, your amazing knowledge of 17th century poetry, your familiarity with fishing trips that went wrong, etc. Whatever the material, though, it also needs to resonate with your audience, meaning that your concise ability to deconstruct a 17th century poem might not hit its mark with somebody not familiar with the piece! As a general rule, people who are very focused on one hobby, occupation, or sitcom can be very funny to other people who are also wrapped up in that particular pursuit. When they try to be funny around people who are not "in the loop," however, their humor often falls flat. In other words, they may come off as "geeks" or "nerds." How do you avoid this?
Broaden your horizons so that you are tuned-in regardless of who you're speaking to. If you can find the humor in physics and Paris Hilton, for example, you're well on your way.
Work your smarts. In a way, being funny is simply showing that you are intelligent enough and know enough about something (hopefully a great many things) to find the humorous nuances that others miss.
Be observant. While knowing a lot can increase your capacity for humor, there's no substitute for seeing a lot. In fact, many very knowledgeable people fail to see the humor in things. Look for the humor in everyday situations, and see what others don't.






Use yourself as fodder for the funnies!Be prepared to put your own foibles in the spotlight. Good comedians tend to use themselves as the principal target for humor, presumably because they know their own foibles so well, but also because it is a means by which they show others the warts-and-all side of their personality which instantly connects with our own warts-and-all side. George Bernard Shaw summed it up well when he stated: "When a thing is funny, search it carefully for a hidden truth." We all spend so much time trying to be better people, often trying to smother up unpleasant truths about our appearance/abilities/thoughts, etc., that it's great to use humor to release the tension this brings about, to let out a collective sigh of relief that we're all in this crazy rat race together, all feeling the same inadequacies and all thinking the same thoughts about things that bug us.
Don't take yourself so seriously. Remember the most embarrassing moments in your life so far, the monumental stuff-ups, the times you refused to make changes, the breakdowns in communications that you played a major part in, etc. Instead of seeing their serious, reputation-wounding side, start seeing what was funny about these moments and how you can share the funny side of it with others. Being able to laugh at yourself in a healthy, non-defensive way is good for you.
Be self-deprecating and humble. These traits can make you appear approachable and when you're being funny, it shows other people that you're like them, you've been through the same trials they have, and that you're a "regular" person. Just make sure to play down the right things in your life though, and not make yourself appear self-destructive or low in self-esteem - these do not make you seem funny but pitiable, and sometimes, pathetic. If you think your humor is self-mortifying, then it's not funny but painful for your listeners – and you.[15]
Be an active listener (and therefore lifelong learner). Listen carefully to others and really hear them, and understand what they're about. When you're busy focused on people other than yourself, you'll get a better sense of how to help others through humor, and it will also enable you to observe and relate the small joys of life too – making your funny self more believable and empathetic.
Be prepared to make daily adjustments to your perspectives of the world and of other people. Your own leaps of faith and changes of heart can be very warming tales of saving face through humor for others to learn from.






Reading humor can improve your humor!Learn from funny people. This is a delightful part of seeking to be a funnier person – you get to watch comedians! Whether they're professional comedians, your parents, your kids, or your boss, learning from the funny people in your life is a key step to being funny yourself. Watch the methods that they use and see what you can adapt to your own situation and personality. Keep a note of some of the funnier things these people say or do. And find what you admire most in these people – even if all you do is cobble together your own funny plan based on one admired trait from each person, you'll be improving your sense of funny tremendously. Immersing yourself like this will help you to develop a toolbox of techniques you can use to be funny:
Read funny books, comics, poems, etc. Read works by people like James Thurber, P.G. Wodehouse, Stephen Fry, Kaz Cooke, Marian Keyes, Woody Allen, Zadie Smith, Bill Bryson, Bill Watterson, Douglas Adams, etc. – and don't forget children's books by good authors; they can be a terrific source of good humor! There are many excellent authors writing funny literature – do a search online for lists of humorous authors, or check out the authors in book stores.
Read joke books. It can't hurt to have a few good memorized jokes up your sleeve; and reading jokes can inspire you to start making up your own witticisms. When reading them, try to dissect the elements that make them such good jokes. Equally, try to work out why some jokes do not work and you'll be learning what to avoid!
Read one-liners. One liners can steal the show. Dorothy Parker was brilliant with one-liners; for example, when told that Calvin Coolidge had died, she replied: "How can they tell?". You need quick wit and readiness for delivering good one-liners but studying other people's can inspire your own.
One liners can be an excellent means for opening and sustaining a dry presentation – for example, stating "If we are what we eat, most of us are in danger of becoming French fries", before proceeding to talk about dry nutritional figures can set the audience at ease that you're funny underneath all those stats.[16]
Watch funny shows. There are so many TV shows and movies with excellent comedians. Just do yourself a favor and watch them, lots!
Read speeches by good comedians or people who have a wonderful sense of humor. Note the ways in which they move or involve the audience using humor, even for serious topics.
Watch improvisers. All good comedians are improvisers but some people choose to improvise for a living and the experience can be hilarious! Attend an improvisation performance and take part in it as much as you can – you'll laugh a lot and observe exactly how they take instant unknown situations and turn them into something very funny.






Being funny can help with learningFocus on the benefits of being funny. From a motivational point of view, as you travel along the path to becoming funnier, it is helpful to understand the extensive benefits of being a funny person. There are benefits both for yourself, and to bestow on those amused by your humor:
Being funny can break down barriers between people and cause us to bond. Laughter itself is considered to be a "universal language".[17] Steve Allen said that humor acts as a "social lubricant and humanizing agent",[18] giving it an important place during even the most serious of times. For example, during both World Wars, comedians and cartoonists formed an important part of maintaining morale among both troops and citizens.
Humor can energize you and leave you feeling a lot more alert. It's like a "mind-break" without having to travel.
Being funny can make you seem a lot less scary. Have you ever experienced a moment where you've frightened a small child but you've quickly turned the situation around by telling a joke, or making fun of your scary height or appearance? It's a natural reaction when we want to make ourselves seem less frightening to others.
Humor can reduce anxiety. Using humor before an exam, test, presentation to the board, etc., is the ideal way to defuse tension and reduce anxiety levels.
Laughter can relieve pain. Numerous studies attest to the ability of laughter to relieve serious pain and illness for defined periods of time.[19] Being funny when you visit a friend in hospital can be a breath of fresh air for them.
Being funny can help people to learn. Whenever you're in a position to teach people, using humor can be a fantastic tool for easing the learning process. Defusing anxiety in a classroom or workplace so that those learning are more receptive to what is being taught is an age-old tradition that works.[20]
Being funny can boost creativity. David M Ogilvy recognized this when he said: "The best ideas come as jokes. Make your thinking as funny as possible." Use humor to solve problems creatively.






A little fun at work livens things upSee being funny as a positive way up the corporate ladder. Peter Ustinov made a very insightful comment that "comedy is simply a funny way of being serious." Having a humorous side at work is beneficial for you and understanding this can help overcome any reservations you might feel about not being taken seriously if you're funny. In fact, if you're known as a good worker and funny, you'll be the person others want to spend time around. Being funny at work can help build teams and relieve workplace stress. In addition, funny people tend to be creative thinkers, intent on keeping an open mind about work challenges, as well as seeking new ways to fix them.[21]
Give a thought to being a funny leader. A leader who loosens up allows the team to loosen up too. If you're in a leadership or management role, set a tone that encourages good humor around the workplace and encourages fun to be a part of workplace life. Find out from your employees what their idea of fun is and start to build relationships of trust based on allowing fun into the workplace.
Consider creating fun ways of tackling hard problems. Taking difficult work situations and turning them into funny ones might seem frivolous at first but it can be an amazing way to turn around a bad situation. For example, a team suffering from low morale can be bolstered by adding humor to the solution, as occurred when a Pennsylvanian bank started a "Worst Customer of the Week" award, complete with champagne given to the employee who told the worst tale of customer behavior each week. This resulted in every teller going out of their way to serve the difficult customers![22]






Humor about the serious stuff needs careful treatment - know the context well!Know when not to be funny. Steve Allen noted that anything could be dealt with humorously, including religion, death, cancer, oppression, etc., but he stressed that this doesn't make it socially appropriate to do so.[23] Getting the balance right is important when you're trying to be funny; there are times when being humorous about something solemn or tragic will fall flat and insult people. Rely on your common sense and the fact that your least favorite member of the family is starting to glare at you with deep malice.
Assess and know your audience before treading forth. If they're likely to take a dim view of your humor under any circumstances, know this beforehand!
Do the "how would I feel?" test. Will Rogers once said: "Everything is funny as long as it is happening to Somebody Else." Would it be so funny if you were the target of the humor? This is aside from the fact that all good humorists should be able to laugh at themselves – know the difference between good, healthy humor and poor taste, or hurtful insults.
Be extremely careful about cracking jokes or pulling pranks in the following situations: workplace, funerals and weddings, places of worship (or religious events), whenever your humor could be mistaken for harassment or discrimination, or if your humor might physically harm somebody (for example, a prank).






Not all funny stuff hits the target - swallow your embarrassment and try again!Spring back. Every well-rounded, self-confident funny person knows how to take a failed funny – forgive yourself. Sometimes a joke will fall flat, or an observation that cracks you up will just make others groan. Don't be discouraged. Learn from your comedic errors, and keep trying. Even the highest paid comedians don't always get a laugh, and no one expects anybody to be funny all the time. If you feel like you're temporarily off your game, just don't try to force humor.

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Tips
Gender matters. Men tend to tell more jokes, tease and disparage (hostile humor), and enjoy slapstick humor, whereas women tend to prefer telling a story, usually in a self-deprecating manner, that elicits a response of group solidarity from other females. [24] Interestingly, the roles reverse when you stick men and women together – men tend to tone down the teasing while women turn it up and target it at men, losing much of their self-deprecation in the process![25]
Remember to include non-verbal funny cues, such as doing a funny dance, or making a funny noise, where these are appropriate.
Keep it fresh: staying on one subject can grow tiresome quickly; learn to flip to new topics to keep your humor fresh during an occasion of repartee!
Practice callbacks. You may have noticed that many comedians will tell a joke and then bring it back in one version or another, usually getting as big a laugh (or bigger) on the second time than on the first. This is called a callback, and you can use this technique, too. If you come up with a joke or observation that gets a big laugh, subtly bring it back a little later. As a general rule, though, don't try to call something back more than 3 times.
Fake it till you make it. This adage counts for being funny as much as for confidence. You can smile even when you don't feel like it, and the result is an improvement in mood.[26] Try being funny too, even when you don't feel like it; you'll notice an appreciable improvement in your mood!
Practice being funny. Everything improves with practice but it's important to practice in a low-risk environment first and to build up your funnier self to wider audiences as you improve. Your family and friends will be most forgiving, while your staff will be apprehensive if you're suddenly shape-shifting into a funnier person, and a large audience will expect you to be good from the start. Practicing with people you trust and who can give you constructive feedback is a good way to start.
The use of sarcasm needs to be treated with kid gloves. If you're good with the deadpan delivery and humorous cutting remark, by all means go for it; but for most mere mortals, many a sarcastic comment falls very, very flat and is not at all amusing!
Did you know that laughter is not dependent on sight or sound? Those born deaf and blind know how to laugh instinctively.[27]

Warnings
Some people will always take themselves overly seriously – while they're riper for being a source of humor than anyone else, on the whole, it pays to not over-target them. All the same, don't let their arrogance, insecurities, or stubborn attachment to solemnity bring you down. Recognize that terribly serious people can be very difficult to work and live with, and keep a good distance from them if your humor is rubbing them the wrong way. Alternately, if you're a strong enough person, don't give in and be the perennial funny thorn in their side!
Don't try too hard. The harder you try, the more serious it gets, and the less fun it is. Let down your defenses and be receptive to whatever may come.
Be very careful with being funny about sacred cows, from religion to politics. Everything can be funny but sometimes if you go "too far" in someone else's eyes, they'll call you on it. Be ready for that, and be armed with your reasons. All the same, keep in mind that not all calls on you for "insulting" someone or "beliefs" are good calls – sometimes your humor will have a touched a raw nerve that deserved to be exposed – remember that humor often exposes truth.
Don't laugh at your own jokes until everyone else is laughing. It will not only make it seem you're trying too hard to be funny, but it can also spoil the funny moment and nobody else will feel inclined to laugh. Avoid "canned laughter" for individuals.
Don't repeat jokes. If you think your friends might have heard it before, find something else to be funny about.
Avoid overloading people with jokes or funny quips. Sometimes you can overdo a good thing.
Don't linger over people who don't get your sense of humor. They might be attuned differently because of culture, gender, interests, etc., and you're marching to a different beat. Just respect it for what it is – a difference of humor!
If you wait too long, even very funny comments will lose their impact. For example, if someone says something to you and you think of a witty comeback two hours later, you're probably better off just keeping it to yourself. It won't be funny anymore, and you'll look slow, and possibly daft.
What is funny has cultural overlays. Something funny in the USA may be perplexing in France, for example. Keep this in mind, and try to find universally shared funny stories.

Facebook is an amazing success as a social network. Anyone who can get 500 million people to connect, share photos, and click on little cows in Farmville deserves major kudos.

But the bullshit monopoly-money valuation merry-go-round has to stop. It’s getting beyond ridiculous and when even serious publications like Forbes jump on for a ride. It’s time to take deep breath and take a look at reality.

Minority investment valuations aren’t real Facebook is now supposedly worth $33,000,000,000, but that number is entirely based on what star-struck minority investors have paid for a tiny slice of the company.

The company has supposedly taken just under a billion dollars in venture capital and small secondary-market sales of stock. So the actual money that has changed hands is just 3% of the total valuation of the company!

In other words, the valuation is resting on the flawed assumption that Facebook could actually ever get 33 times as much money to change hands if they wanted to. There’s just no way, no how that’s happening right now. If it could, they’d IPO tomorrow.

So the Facebook valuation based on minority investments is in my mind a complete joke in the sense that there was $33,000,000,000 dollars on the table. Irrational investor exuberance indeed.

You’re only worth something if you can make money to keep If you boil it down to what valuations really should be about, discounted future cash flow, it gets completely bizarro-world funny. The rumor is that Facebook will be generating a billion dollars in revenue. That’s certainly real money, right?

Wrong. Real money is what’s left over after you pay your expenses. If the supposed billion dollars Facebook is allegedly pulling in this year was happening at anywhere a decent margin, they wouldn’t have needed a series E round of $120 million from Elevation Partners just three months ago.

But let’s be charitable. Let’s imagine that Facebook miraculously made $200 million this year — a 20% margin. (I don’t think that’s true, otherwise why take another $120 million from Elevation Partners, but hey, let your imagination roam). That would put Facebook’s P/E at some 165.

That’s about 7.5 times as much as Google, the golden cash cow of the internet world. Would you seriously think that Facebook is 7.5 times as good or as promising a business as Google? Get outta here.

No outrageous profits after seven years and half a billion users Oh, well, but maybe Facebook just needs to mature, you say. If we give them just a few more years, the profit fairy might drop by and sprinkle her billions all over Facebook and its shareholders. I call fat chance.

Facebook has been around for seven years. It has 500 million users. If you can’t figure out how to make money off half a billion people in seven years, I’m going to go out on a limb and say you’re unlikely to ever do.

Now this was all fun and games until somebody promised the Newark schools $100 million in stock based on the fantasy valuation of his under-profiting company. But now it’s real. They’re selling the skin before they shot the bear or peeing their pants to get to the hut or whatever you want to call it. It’s just not good, alright?

Maybe it's a significant other, friend, or other person you regularly see or spend time with but you're unsure if your relationship or friendship with them is for the right reasons, or whether it's just because you're feeling lonely. If you feel that this applies to you, here are some steps for figuring out whether or not you genuinely like spending time with this person or only do so because you don't want to be lonely.

Steps


Question your initial motives for choosing to know this person. At the start, maybe you were genuinely interested in this person's qualities or had something in common with them when you first met. On the other hand, maybe you felt you should be nice to them just because your other friends liked them, or you were on the rebound from a break-up, or something in the other person's life made you feel sorry for them. Try to go back to the start of your relationship and think of as many different reasons as you can for why you became involved with them. Doing this will help you to decide how you truly feel towards this person.



Consider how you usually feel in this person's company. Think about what you personally gain from the experience of spending time with this person. Do you get bored, feel anxious, or uncomfortable? On the other hand, perhaps you often feel happy, cheerful, loving, or warm when spending time with them. Take some time to think through as many different memories as you can to build up a pattern – have you experienced enjoyable times or is it hard to even remember the last time you experienced any positive feelings around them – if ever?



Give yourself some space. This step may be difficult for you if you really dislike being alone but it is important to try. Being apart from the person about whom you're not sure can give you a clearer perspective on whether or not it's purely loneliness that motivates you to keep communicating with this person, or whether there are genuinely good reasons for staying connected. Try to remain apart for at least two weeks; this amount of time will help you figure out whether or not you really miss the person in question, or whether you're just bored when they're not around. While apart, consider whether:
You miss specific things about them. If so, it's probable that you genuinely care for this person.
You find it hard to recall anything in particular that you're missing, or there is only a vague sense of missing their company. You might even feel a sense of relief that you're not having to "put up" with certain behaviors and attitudes this person has when you're together. In this case, it's possible that you're only keeping this person in your life to fill a gap.
You find yourself making comparisons with ex-friends or ex-dates in your life. Some time apart can sometimes reveal a negative pattern of similar issues, personality traits, and habits arising. In this case, you have probably made the same error again, repeating a relationship that is unlikely to fulfil either of you.
Give yourself time for self-reflection and self-discovery. If you don't know yourself very well, you're vulnerable to seeking affirmation of your worth in relationships with others and are under the spell of expecting others to "raise you from the ground up". If you feel that this is what you've been doing, allow yourself time to figure out who you are and what you care about so that you can grow to like yourself more. In doing so, you'll replace feelings of loneliness with liking yourself, creating a strong foundation for healthy relationships with other people.



Maybe you've been expecting too much of this person?Ask yourself if your expectations for the relationship are too high. Sometimes you might question whether you want someone in your life because you constantly butt heads with them. But it might not be that you actually dislike this person. It could simply be that you like them well enough, but that there are habits or personality traits of theirs you find it hard to relate to or handle over any extended period of time, indicating that you're just not all that close or that when you're together, it needs to be only in "small doses". For example, it could be because they're an introvert while you're an extrovert. Or, maybe their interests don't coincide that much with yours but they insist on telling you all about theirs while not returning you the same courtesy of listening about yours. If you're thinking by this point "yes, that's exactly it!", this is likely to be a sign that you'd benefit by spending more time with other people – as well as still some (perhaps less) time with this person – rather than a sign you dislike this person and only spend time with them to avoid being alone.


Spend time with other peopleExpose yourself to as many other people as you feel you can. Spending time with other people might give you a better idea of the kinds of people you'd prefer to know. Seeing other people in different contexts might help to give you an idea of whether or not the person you've been spending a lot of time with fits into this category, or whether you might have outgrown them.
If you're feeling nervous about spending time with other people (especially if your time has greatly revolved around this one person), trying out this step doesn't have to mean spending time with family or close friends (though these things do help) only. Just saying a cheerful "hi" or seeking to make small talk with a few acquaintances (whether it be a shop assistant, colleague, or someone you regularly pass in the street) can be a start.
If you've allowed this person to take over a lot of your life and shut you off from other people, you might like to consider volunteering with people who are feeling lonely, such as senior citizens, or down and out youth. This will help to put your own feelings of loneliness into perspective and will bring into contact with many other people, thinking of their needs rather of your own neediness.
If you feel bad about spreading your wings, see this as an altruistic act. Your spending time with a wider range of people can help break the loneliness cycle not just for you, but for the other person; a recent study undertaken by the University of Chicago, the University of California-San Diego and Harvard found that loneliness is contagious and can be passed on to others, meaning that you could transmit your loneliness to this person without even meaning to do so.[1] In increasing your exposure to other people, you may be breaking the cycle of loneliness for both of you.


How do you really feel around them?Monitor your ongoing thoughts and emotions. Another approach you can use to test the relationship's value to you is by making plans to do something with this person and following through with the plans. All the while you are carrying out this plan, monitor your automatic thoughts and emotional reactions. If, prior to and during this time, you find your head is full of negative thoughts such as "This is going to be awful," or "I wish I had something nicer/more interesting/better to do," or you experience strong negative emotions such as dread, disgust, boredom, etc., then these are likely warning signs that you don't truly like being with or appreciate this person as someone who connects with you.


End the friendship or relationship if appropriate. If you feel after trying these steps that you truly don't like this person, and only see them to avoid being alone, consider ending the relationship and finding other people or activities to fill your time. Not only will this bring relief to you but doing this will be fairer on the other person rather than dragging out the lackluster relationship any longer. Accept that sometimes we have to let go in order to grow.

Knowing how to invert colors on Windows 7 is useful for improving your reading experience according to personal preference. Doing this can enable you to change the appearance of Windows 7 on your computer screen so that it might be easier to read online. Or, just for fun, you may simply be keen to see how your computer looks when the colors have been inverted. This article explains what to do to invert the colors on Windows 7.

Steps
Click on the "Start" menu. Type "Magnifier" in the search box. Click on the magnifier application to open it.
When the magnifier application opens, your screen will be zoomed in. Click the negative button (-) until you're zoomed out all the way.



Once you're zoomed out, click on the gray gear to open the "Preferences". Put a check in the box that says "Turn on color inversion". Then click "OK". Your screen colors should now be inverted!


The options for the magnifier do not change if you leave the application so you will only need to do this once.



Example of inverted white screen to black Right click on the magnifier application on the task bar. Click "Pin to taskbar" you'll now be able to invert your screen colors with one click of the mouse. Just right click and choose "close window" to un-invert the colors and click the icon once to invert. Enjoy your inverted screen colors!
A typical end result will enable you to read a document online with a black background rather than a white one, with the text changing to white. This can be a lot easier on some people's eyes when reading PDFs, emails, long textual documents, and even Facebook.

Video

Things You'll Need
Windows 7