Letters Remain

Tag: humour

  • The Neuroscience of Comedy

    There is one essential condition required in comedy: “some kind of incongruity between two elements […], resolved in a playful or unexpected way”. That’s according to a fairly comprehensive article summarising the neuroscience research conducted to discover more about the phenomenon of why we find things funny (or not). Of particular interest was how we…

  • Comedic Writing Tips

    There are six essential elements of humour, suggests Dilbert‘s Scott Adams, as he looks briefly at how to write comedy: Pick a Topic: The topic does half of your work. I look for topics that have at least one of the essential elements of humor: Clever, Cute, Bizarre, Cruel, Naughty, Recognizable. Simple Sentences: Be smart,…

  • Ten Internet Laws

    You’ve definitely heard of at least one of them and maybe even laughed, groaned or plain ignored a few others. To help along that process Tom Chivers presents ten laws of the Internet: Godwin’s Law “As a Usenet discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1.” […] It is closely…

  • George Carlin’s Last Interview

    Shorty before his death last year, comedian George Carlin gave what was to become his last wide-ranging interview—with Jay Dixit, senior editor of Psychology Today. Carlin discusses many things in this interview; from detailing his method for coming up with material to his use of technology and this on the advantages of being an older…

  • Basic Laws of Human Stupidity

    Tongue-in-cheek, but parts of this ring true: the basic laws of human stupidity. Always and inevitably everyone underestimates the number of stupid individuals in circulation. The probability that a certain person be stupid is independent of any other characteristic of that person. A stupid person is a person who causes losses to another person or…

  • The History of Puns

    For The New York Times, Joseph Tartakovsky provides a short, surprisingly groanless, history of the pun. The inglorious pun! Dryden called it the “lowest and most groveling kind of wit.” To Ambrose Bierce it was a “form of wit to which wise men stoop and fools aspire.” Universal experience confirms the adage that puns don’t…

  • What Design Is

    Design is 70% dealing with people, 3% the idea, 2% selling the idea, 2% the brief, 2% being pig headed, 1% printing, 3% eye for detail, .6% invoices, 2% coffee, .7% tracking, .1% warm glow, .6% panic, 1% 4am, .6% staring, .2% checking, 1% letting go, .8% keeping hold, .7% estimates, .3% checking, .4% proofs,…

  • Get Your Own Eponymous Law

    Always wanted to achieve intellectual immortality? Now it’s possible thanks to Samuel Arbesman—a postdoctoral fellow at Harvard Medical School—who shows us how to get a theorem, formula or law named after yourself, in a few easy steps. Of course, before you go out and begin to grace the world with your newly minted eponymous idea,…

  • The Nerd Handbook and Caring for Your Introvert

    Rands In Repose’s Nerd Handbook is an essay on understanding geeks; from our insatiable appetite for knowledge to our hard-to-decipher social interaction ‘skills’. The Handbook is at times painfully precise. The nerd has based his career, maybe his life, on the computer, and as we’ll see, this intimate relationship has altered his view of the…

  • British, American, and German Senses of Humour

    The reason why Britons believe that the Germans have no sense of humour is a language problem, not a humour problem. One example: The German phenomenon of compound words also serves to confound the English sense of humour. In English there are many words that have double or even triple meanings, and whole sitcom plot…