It's really hard to be funny. It's even harder to be funny and get paid for it. But the cartoon editor of The New Yorker, Bob Mankoff, has made a living making people laugh for decades.
So where do you start? There are so many ideas one could use for a joke. He says there are two main topics that are always funny and here's why.
Produced by Sam Rega
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Last month, as part of our ongoing project The Success Series, we asked a group of high-profile people to describe their morning routines.
Scott Adams, the creator of popular comic strip "Dilbert," wrote a thoughtful and witty response that included the detail that his daily reading inspires his work:
"I prime my creative engine with external news," said Adams. "My news source of choice is Business Insider (true story) because it is more upbeat than most news sources, and the focus on business and technology is a good fit for my creative needs."
Adams said he looks for universal human patterns, the "silly things" that people do over and over again. "For example, a story about war in the Middle East might give me a joke idea about meeting etiquette," he wrote.
"When I read the news, I'm stripping out the concepts and the things and looking at how people are acting," he said in an interview. "These silly things play out in all kinds of situations, be it world affairs or a business meeting."
There's even humor to be found in the Iran nuclear deal, for instance. Adams read that the various parties involved in the negotiation came out of the meeting with different ideas of what they all had agreed on. "That's like every meeting you've ever been to," he said.
Adams added that the mistake people often make when writing humor is trying to write jokes about things and concepts rather than human behavior.
"You can't make the Iran nuclear deal funny, but if you write about people having different ideas of what they agreed on, you can make that funny," he said. "The 'stuff' can change, but the patterns that people lock into don't."
Here's an example of one of Adams' all-time favorite strips, written in 2009:
You can check out more of his favorite "Dilbert" comics here.
SEE ALSO: 'Dilbert' creator Scott Adams illustrates why 'goals are for losers and passion is overrated'
Sheldon Adelson is one of the 20 wealthiest people in the world, according to Forbes.
But the casino magnate thinks his employees get paid too much.
According to The Guardian, "while testifying on Wednesday in a civil suit rooted in allegations that his casino operation in Macao made improper payments to a Chinese official and had ties to Triad organized crime, Adelson unexpectedly enlightened the court on his feelings about the bonus culture."
The casino magnate thinks even his own executives working abroad are paid too much:
The billionaire complained that his expatriate executives, deployed to postings such as Macao or Singapore, were sending their children to school on the company shilling at $30,000 a year in fees for each child. Then some of them were getting Adelson's Las Vegas Sands company to pay $50,000 a year for college education. Adelson called that "offensive."
On top of that there's the housing allowance — $25,000 a month in Singapore, he stressed — and a car.
"Not a Toyota like they would drive here," he thundered.
The judge listened in what looked like bemused silence as Adelson shifted to the high cost of flying executives' families around the world.
"Sending whole families home four times a year is not acceptable," he said. "When it comes to flying, it has to be first-class when the whole family could fly coach."
Adelson also had an interesting answer to a question from the opposing counsel about a signature irregularity on a form, according to The Guardian: "You want to send me to jail? I just bought a big home. I don't want to move to smaller quarters."
Billionaires: You can't send them to jail because there isn't enough square footage.
SEE ALSO: A new app will solve the problem of irregular paychecks
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NOW WATCH: These Clinics In New York And Las Vegas Are Using IV Drips To Treat Hangovers
An Oxford, or serial, comma is the last comma in a list; it goes before the word "and."
Technically, it's grammatically optional in American English.
However, depending on the list you are writing out, omitting it can lead to some confusion.
A Reddit user found what could be the best three sentence arguments in existence for the use of the Oxford comma:
It's likely the book is dedicated to the author's parents, Ayn Rand, and also God — but then again, it could be that the author's parents are named Ayn Rand and God.
UPDATE: The source of the image on Reddit seems to be twitter user @alex_macdonald.
Reached by email, MacDonald told BI that the photo is of a page from Steven Pinker's "The Sense of Style." However, he added, "I have seen all of the sentences before over the years (I don't think he came up with them)."
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NOW WATCH: The 4 Most Persuasive Words In The English Language
If you don’t care about appearing smart in emails, you can stop reading now.
Oh good, we’re alone.
In the corporate world, there is no ground more fertile for appearing smart than the rich earth that is electronic communication.
Your email writing, sending and ignoring skills are just as important as your nodding skills, and even more important than your copying and pasting skills.
Here are 15 email tricks that will make you appear smart, passionate, dedicated and most of all, smart.
Always complain about your email volume, but never be the first to say a specific number. I once complained because I had 200 unread emails and I was laughed out of the breakroom. Instead, find out how much email everyone else gets, and then double it. That’s how much email you get.
Use a “sent from my phone” signature, even when you’re not sending from your phone. This makes you look like you’re always busy and on the go, and also gets you out of proofreading.
It’s impossible to pay attention to every active thread all the time, but you must at least pay attention when your manager responds. Make sure you see the moment he responds, and then respond immediately with “Totally agree,” “Definitely,” or “Took the words right out of my mouth.”
Feature launched? Respond: W00t way to go! Baby on the way? Respond: Mazel tov! Peanut brittle on Brian’s desk? Respond: This is delicious! Whenever something good happens, always be the first to respond andalways reply all. This will make you seem like a highly engaged team player.
In addition, when you constantly point out how awesome everyone’s doing, you leave them feeling great and ignoring the fact that you haven’t done any real work in over a year.
Create a caché of short, random thoughts that you can auto-send in the middle of the night. These could be:
Whatever it is, you’ll have folks wagging their tongues about how dedicated you are to be thinking about the company at 3am.
Your subject line isn’t complete without some clarifying information contained in brackets. Some good ones to use:
Subject: [Update] Latest update
Subject: [Confidential] Please don’t share
Subject: [WE DID IT] We did it!
“Just a quick update on how things are going…”
Start every other email with this snippet and you’ll immediately impress your colleagues. They probably won’t read much past this, so feel free to follow it with a meaningless data point on this month’s returning users or the new engineer that’s joining the team in 4 months.
Going to the airport? It’s important to let everyone know when you’ll be in a cab, on the train, going through security, at the gate, on the plane, at baggage claim, in another cab, and back at the office — as well as the minute to minute status of your Internet access every step of the way.
Start every email with a bullet point summary, labeled “TL;DR” (Too long; don’t read). In it, summarize the main points of your email, using bold and italic formatting. The rest of the email can be a mistake-laden mess because it’s very long and most likely no one will read it.
Start every email with, “If you don’t care about [something you should care about], stop reading now.” Do this even for short emails. Some variations on this include:
LGTM, SGTM, FWIW, AFAIK, CIL. Use them all. Find more here.
When a thread gets past 25 replies, a contest of efficiency has begun and the first person to suggest a meeting is the winner. Be that winner. Suggest that meeting. Use abbreviation: F2F
Send a “friendly reminder,” “friendly follow-up,” or “friendly ping,” to old, outdated threads that everyone forgot about months ago. This will make it seem like nothing gets past you.
Never respond to direct requests right away. If your help is truly needed, that person will find you, but most likely he’ll just ask someone else. After 7 days has passed, respond with, “This got buried, still needed?”
If you’re unable to respond to email for even just a day, create an Out of Office auto-responder that includes several people to get in touch with for each of your projects. For extra points, create an entire document that details everything you’re working on and who to contact during your absence. Nothing you do will ever make you appear more smarter.
If you enjoyed this, sign up for Sarah Cooper's free weekly email for more smart tricks.
Check out more from Sarah at TheCooperReview. Follow @sarahcpr on Twitter and Facebook.
SEE ALSO: 10 sentences excellent speakers never say
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NOW WATCH: This ‘Shark Tank’ investor once made a $5 million mistake
Over the past few months, comedians in Venezuela have found it increasingly hard to get new gigs.
The bars and clubs they used to frequent are increasingly getting shuttered and their performances are getting canceled.
At first blush, this seems like another symptom of the oil-rich nation’s tanking economy, where even essentials have become so rare and expensive that procuring the basics has become almost a full-time job.
In this environment of scarcity, comedy might seem like a frivolity. But there’s a demand for comedians in Venezuela, where jokes about toilet paper shortages and the price of water versus the price of oil are seen as therapeutic.
The economy is not the problem for these comedians—instead, it’s a hyper-sensitive government, eager to quash criticisms of the once-beloved socialist system set up by the late Hugo Chavez, as it succumbs to external pressures andinternal corruption under the regime of his bumbling successor, President Nicolas “Mango” Maduro.
“They think that because we did jokes about Chavez or Maduro, we are going to bring down the government,” local comedian Alex Goncalves recently told National Public Radio.
Although Maduro and his government deny all charges of cracking down on comedians, local funny men like Luis Chataing, Goncalvas, and Laureano Márquezall insist they’re being shut out of government-run venues and denied performance permits in towns run by Maduro supporters. Most are getting by performing at private clubs, in opposition-held towns, and for corporate event audiences, but some have still suffered in incidents that directly seem to implicate the government.
Chataing for one, lost his beloved talk show the day after he mocked the government’s persistent claims—always backed up by iffy evidence—that sinister forces were plotting an imminent coup against them. And last year a major political cartoonist got sacked for jokingly depicting the national health care system in shambles—a bit of commentary that was dangerously (for him) on the nose.
This comedian crackdown may seem like just one minor element in a larger trend towards iron-fisted authoritarianism in Venezuela. Whether this trend is a desperate reaction by a nation beleaguered by destabilizing forces or just a sign of a failing, once-beloved socialist system under bad new management is a whole different debate.
But in truth, the decline of comedy in the nation is like the silence of a canary in a coalmine. Just about as long as we’ve had human society, comedy has been one of the great bastions of critique and dissent, capable of maneuvering even the most treacherous terrain. Its collapse robs people not just of a vital mental vent, but a necessary form of speech and protest.
Many of us have become used to seeing our “socially conscious” and overtly political comedy acts as a chance to withdraw, snarl, or roll our eyes, rather than a stirring call to action. Yet comedy’s original function, in the form of the foolarchetype, was expressly political and dissenting.
The role of the fool, epitomized in the medieval jester, was to voice concerns that others feared to make in otherwise oppressive societies. The insight of these fools became vital to decision-making processes, as well as the wellbeing and sanity of common peoples who might have otherwise felt themselves stymied and alone.
After all, while critiques from an opponent told point-blank can sound bitter and insulting, critiques coming from disconnected observers who take issue with everyone sting a bit less. And for those not directly involved in power structures, but just observing comedy, the spoonful of sugar that is a punch line can make a grim reality feel more amusing and convivial than depressing.
Historians like to note the direct influence of the jester Jenny von Stockach, who advised the Duke of Austria on war strategy in the 14th century, as an example of fools’ direct political power.
But individuals like Charlie Chaplin, whose works made salient-yet-slapstick points on the life of the industrial worker and fascism to wide audiences, had perhaps even more power via their ability to nudge entire societies’ viewpoints around.
Sometimes these bids for mass critique backfired, as when some Athenian nobles tried to persecute Aristophanes for his wry critiques of the local political climate in public performances. But throughout history, while occasionally a jester or two did get run through by a saber, a shocking number of fools managed to make important points while escaping any major danger.
While men jumping around in institutionalized motley faded with the decline of those antiquated court systems, modern comedians have carried on the tradition of providing unique insights and influencing the public sphere.
Just think of Jon Stewart and his creative progeny, whose contributions have become an indispensible facet of modern news culture, inveighing against and prompting activism on numerous social and political issues. And there are similar comedians tacitly but powerfully contributing to political dialogue and nudging the world of public policy left and right all over the world, even in places where public dialogue and influence seem weak in the face of government control.
“Humor is the last place of liberty,” Venezuelan funnyman Laureano Márquez told NPR. “When you lost freedom [sic] in other places, freedom can be alive in humor.”
Attempts to silence Venezuela’s comedians (or censor Brazil’s comedian pundits, Egypt’s Bassem Youssef, Myanmar’s Zarnagar, or any other political jokesters) don’t just constitute a petty move by thin-skinned rulers. The effort is an assault on a major pillar of public discourse, and one that becomes even more important in general environments of censorship and authoritarianism. It’s hard to predict what will happen in a given nation when you take that outlet for discourse and therapy away.
Given the overall crumbling of Venezuela, the crackdown doesn’t seem likely to relieve pressure on Maduro and company. Far more likely is that the attempt at censorship will prompt the kind of silenced desperation that spills over into less channeled, more direct, and even violent dissent. The regime probably would’ve been better off growing thicker hides and letting the comedians crack wise about them. But that’s a lesson they’ll have to learn the hard way.
SEE ALSO: Venezuela is going to sue the US and Spain over reports that it's a global cocaine hub
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NOW WATCH: Beautiful drone video of epic trip across South America
My family and I were driving along the Garden Route in South Africa, one of the country's many scenic wine routes, when we ran into some trouble with highway baboons.
I was on a road trip with my parents and sister, and the car showed signs that we had been driving for five days: the seats were sprinkled with crumbs from all the snacks we had enjoyed, and the contents of our bags — iPods, books, magazines — had spilled everywhere.
The particular stretch of highway we were on, which led into Capetown, was bordered by cliffs. There were signs every few miles warning cars not to stop, and most importantly, not to open any doors or windows because of lurking baboons.
However, being curious tourists — and because it's physically impossible for my father to turn down a chance for a little adventure — we pulled over.
That was our first mistake.
Then we opened our doors.
That was our second mistake.
My dad, mom, and sister were already out of the car when I was still sitting in the back seat with the door open. Before I could get out, a baby baboon scurried over to our car, jumped inside, and plopped itself down onto my lap.
I was thrilled.
My sister was horrified.
My mom was slightly worried, but still smiling at that point.
My dad advised me to just stay calm and not move.
So that's what I did. I sat there and stared at my new friend as he/she looked around at the unfamiliar surroundings. Eventually the little baboon climbed off my lap, which is when my dad told me to slowly leave the car.
Meanwhile, mother baboon — who was a lot larger and more menacing-looking than baby baboon — had joined her baby baboon.
That's when things started to get bad.
The baboons along this South African highway might as well be humans. They know how to open car doors (yes, they know how to use the handle), and they know just how to sift through your belongings so that they find what they're ultimately looking for: food.
After finding and demolishing a pack of cookies in the back seat, mother baboon — who I think at this point had been joined by one or two other baboons — decided to take on my sister's travel bag. We all watched as the baboons sat on the side of the highway and carefully took out every single item in that bag. They tried her toothpaste, took her camera out of its case, but once they found out it wasn't food, they simply put it back in the bag or left it on the ground.
It was somewhat fascinating to watch, but I couldn't really concentrate amid the loud sounds of my sister sobbing in the background. Not that I blamed her; her possessions were in the hands of baboons and we weren't exactly sure if or when we were going to get them back.
After an exhaustive search, and having found no more food, the baboons abandoned my sister's bag — which one of us, probably my dad, quickly snagged back — but they didn't abandon our rental car. In fact, one of the baboons had pretty much declared the car its own by climbing onto the roof.
By now, since the family was all safe, my dad had started to brainstorm how we were going to get our car back unscathed. Baboons may have their human tendencies, but that doesn't mean they don't have their animalistic ones too. Coming into direct contact with adult baboons would be dangerous.
We had flagged down some fellow drivers who said they would help us out. The plan was that my dad would make a run for our car, hop into the driver's seat, speed off (which would force the baboon to jump off the roof), and then my mom, sister, and I (with my sister's bag) would follow in the other car. Once we caught up to our rental car, the three of us would transfer cars and both would then drive off.
Miraculously, the plan worked just like that, and all of us managed to escape the attack of the highway baboons safely. Although I think our rental car took a little bit of a beating.
My parents spent the next few hours coaxing my sister out of the horror coma she had slipped into during the incident, while I just reflected on how cool it was that a baboon had sat on my lap.
Needless to say, we didn't make any more pit stops along the highway.
SEE ALSO: Here's why a trip to South Africa was the best vacation I've ever taken
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NOW WATCH: How to skip long lines at the airport — just like the 1%
A NEW TV satire has become a hit in the Arab world by using dark comedy to mock some of the region’s most serious issues, from the Sunni-Shiite divide, to the brutality of the Islamic State group (ISIS).
The show, Selfie, has also brought a backlash. ISIS sympathisers have made death threats against its Saudi star and top writer on social media.
One mainstream Saudi cleric called the show heresy for mocking the country’s ultraconservative religious establishment.
All of which has made it the buzz of the current Muslim holy month of Ramadan, which is the peak television viewing season in the Middle East.
In one of the show’s episodes, lead actor Naser al-Qasabi plays a would-be “caliph” starting his own ISIS-style militia, but he’s surrounded by buffoons and hypocrites.
His “mufti,” or top cleric, never finished school. He struggles to find ways to make his group stand out — their flag is the same as that of ISIS, but with the black and white colors flipped.
When one of his cronies boasts of planning a mass beheading, the “caliph” complains that he wants a new form of execution.
“Behead, behead, behead. That’s all you got?” he groans, before suggesting the captives be put in a freezer.
Naser al-Qasabi, the series’ star, and its writer Khalaf al-Harbi told The Associated Press that they expected the backlash, but weren’t prepared for the popularity.
It’s one of the top shows on MBC, a privately owned Saudi TV network, and has been the talk of media in the region.
Saudi comedian Naser Al-Qasabi.Source: AP
Al-Qasabi says the series’ dark humour reveals just how tragic the situation across the Middle East has become.
What’s coming is darker. Maybe I am a bit pessimistic, and I hope that I am wrong, but I don’t think I am.
In another episode, two Saudi men meet at an airport in Europe and bond over their love of women, alcohol and hard partying.
Though neither is religious, their budding friendship takes a nosedive when they discover that one is Sunni and the other Shiite.
They argue until airport security arrests them, and when police find out they’re fighting over a split that happened 1,400 years ago, they send them both to a mental hospital.
And in the show’s most popular sketch, al-Qasabi plays a Saudi father whose son has run off to join ISIS. He smuggles himself into Syria, pretends to be a jihadi joining ISIS and tries to convince his son to return home.
It’s a more serious episode, showing his horror at ISIS’ “perversions” of Islam and at the group’s atrocities — and his torment as he tries to avoid committing atrocities himself in his disguise.
But it has comic moments as well, as he fumbles his way through militant training and is chased around the bed by a militant bride who is forced on him by the group and who has dedicated her life to pleasing jihadis as a means of going to heaven.
Another sketch lampooned Saudi Arabia’s powerful, ultraconservative religious establishment and its stance against music. That was the episode that prompted cleric Saeed bin Mohammed bin Farwa to accuse al-Qasabi and MBC of heresy.
In response, Al-Qasabi told the Associated Press he views his acting career as his own form of “jihad” — which in Islam means any struggle in the path towards God.
Offering something positive that raises awareness of issues, I see this as jihad.
Jihad is that you raise your children well. Jihad is that you work and are on a path to doing things well. Jihad is that you are good at your work…Life is one great jihad.
Al-Harbi explained the title, saying the show is trying to give a snapshot of Arab society today.
Selfie’s biggest success, he said, is in exposing how extremist groups manipulate religion.
He added that the show would deliver that message to the Arab public more effectively than lectures or government-controlled newspapers.
I felt this is a weapon that will reach the audience. If it was just something comical, we would have focused on easy societal issues that aren’t dangerous and are guaranteed safe.
SEE ALSO: ISIS is pulling straight from the playbook of Mexican drug cartels
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NOW WATCH: Kids show us the best way to take a selfie — and it's hilarious
Artificial intelligence can do a lot of things, like recognizing your face or identifying good art.
But it still can't tell a joke.
And though humor has a reputation for being subjective and changing over time, researchers have long suspected that there might be a few basic elements of humor.
Researchers from the University of Michigan, Columbia University, Yahoo! Labs and the New Yorker have teamed up, channeling the power of big data to help identify some of those building blocks of humor. The study was published in the online journal arxiv.
Every week, the New Yorker runs a caption contest in the back of the magazine. 5,000 people enter submissions, then readers vote on which of the top three is the best fit for the cartoon. That has created an enormous database of captions—more than two million captions for more than 400 cartoons in the past decade.
The researchers wanted to use this data to create an algorithm that can distinguish the funny and unfunny captions. The researchers picked 50 cartoons and the 300,000 captions that corresponded to them and used a program to analyze and rank the captions linguistically, looking at whether the captions were about people or dealt with positive or negative emotions. They also created a different ranking using network theory, which connected the topics mentioned in each. Then they got real people to weigh in on the humor, asking seven users on Amazon's Mechanical Turk to rank which of two caption options is funnier.
They found a few trends when they compared all the rankings to one another. "We found that the methods that consistently select funnier captions are negative sentiment, human-centeredness, and lexical centrality," they write.
Those conclusions aren't that surprising, given the New Yorker's readership, they note. But it's hard to know what these conclusions mean for people trying to develop a funny robot. As MIT Tech Review writes:
It's easy to imagine that one goal from this kind of work would be to create a machine capable of automatically choosing the best caption from thousands entered into the New Yorker competition each week. But the teams seem as far as ever from achieving this. Did any of these automatic methods reliably pick the caption chosen by readers? Radev and co. do not say, so presumably not.
This kind of work in itself won't help a functional joke-writing machine. But the team is also releasing the cartoon data they used to the public. So, as MIT Tech Review notes, "if there's anybody out there who thinks they can do better, they're welcome to try."
This article originally appeared on Popular Science.
This article was written by Alexandra Ossola from Popular Science and was legally licensed through the NewsCred publisher network.
NOW READ: Scientists discovered what makes something funny
Robots are funny, but historically most of that humor has derived from them being the "straight man." Their ability to be oblivious to the joke often makes them natural comedians. But now Microsoft and The New Yorker are trying to teach a robot to be intentionally funny — specifically so it can help with its popular caption contest, Bloomberg reports.
Since it was introduced in 2005, the caption contest has become a cult favorite among New Yorker readers. The premise is simple: The New Yorker publishes a black-and-white cartoon without a caption and readers send in their best attempts to finish it. The winner's caption runs in the next issue.
But the contest has become perhaps too popular, and now cartoon editor Bob Mankoff is inundated with 5,000 contest entries every week, according to Bloomberg. And it’s been hard on his assistants. “The process of looking at 5,000 caption entries a week usually destroys their mind in about two years, and then I get a new one,” Mankoff tells Bloomberg.
Who could possibly go through that many entries without becoming completely numb to humor? Microsoft’s answer is: a robot. Microsoft researchers have partnered with The New Yorker to try and build a robot capable of telling which of the captions are funny, and which will elicit only crickets.
Researchers fed The New Yorker cartoon and caption information to the robot, trying to teach it how to tell the difference in humor between similar jokes. Though the "top captions" lists of the human editors didn’t completely align with the robot's, all the editors' favorites did appear in the top 55.8% of the robots choices, according to Bloomberg.
Maybe the robot couldn’t pick the absolute funniest caption, but it seems that it could cut out the majority of the awful ones. And even this could save half the workload for Mankoff’s assistants.
Of course, Microsoft’s ambitions aren’t just limited to helping people at The New Yorker have more free time. The researchers told Bloomberg that they hope to one day train the robots to come up with their own jokes, not just know when to laugh. They think this would make digital assistants like Cortana and Siri more “pleasant” to use.
SEE ALSO: Here’s why it’s so hard to make a funny robot
We all have our favorite jokes, but which one is considered the funniest in the world?
To find out, psychologist Richard Wiseman ran an experiment — a huge one. In 2002 he launched a website called LaughLab where anyone around the world could submit a joke and rate other people's jokes. He got over 41,000 entries and about 1.5 million votes.
Here is the joke that got the most votes, winning the title of the funniest:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"
The person who submitted it, psychiatrist Gurpal Gosall, said. "I like the joke as it makes people feel better, because it reminds them that there is always someone out there who is doing something more stupid than themselves."
Part of what makes the joke work, according to LaughLab, is its universal appeal:
The joke is interesting because it works across many different countries, appeals to men and women, and young and old alike. Many of the jokes submitted received higher ratings from certain groups of people, but this one had real universal appeal.
Also, we find jokes funny for lots of different reasons — they sometimes make us feel superior to others, reduce the emotional impact of anxiety-provoking events, or surprise us because of some kind of incongruity. The hunters joke contains all three elements — we feel superior to the stupid hunter, realize the incongruity of him misunderstanding the operator and the joke helps us to laugh about our concerns about our own mortality.
And if this joke doesn't strike you as all that funny, that's ok too. It's important to note that we need to take studies like these with a grain of salt.
"There's a tendency toward mediocrity when you ask a million people anything," Neuroscientist Scott Weems said during an episode of NPR's Science Friday discussing the joke experiment.
And of course, everyone who voted on the website self-selected, Bill Nye the Science Guy pointed out. So those who responded weren't a perfect representation of the global population.
Interestingly, the joke that was submitted to LaughLab the most times was: "What's brown and sticky? A stick." So the winning joke could have easily been a lot worse.
The experiment also yielded a couple of interesting insights into the types of jokes people find funny:
1. According to the data, jokes containing about 103 words are the funniest.
2. Many of the jokes submitted included animals, and those that mention ducks were rated the funniest.
So, to make people laugh make sure to keep your jokes relatively short, and if it involves an animal, make it a duck.
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NOW WATCH: 4 ways to stay awake without caffeine
Dilbert, the well-known comic strip by cartoonist Scott Adams about the office everyman and his crew of incompetent colleagues, was the first syndicated comic that focused primarily on the workplace when it launched in 1989. Five years later, it had become so successful that Adams quit his corporate career to work on it full-time.
It wasn't a straight line to success. Early versions of the comic were rejected by several publications, including The New Yorker and Playboy. It wasn't until an editor at United Media saw it and recognized her own husband in the character that it finally got its start, says Adams in his book, "How to Fail at Almost Everything and Still Win Big."
Ever since, the comic has explored topics like the inefficiency of meetings, the uselessness of management, and the absurdity of office politics.
Exclusively for Business Insider, Adams looked through the archives of Dilbert.com and shared his 10 favorite comics. Below, he explains why he chose each and counts them down to his absolute favorite of all-time.
SEE ALSO: The 10 funniest Dilbert comic strips about idiot bosses
DON'T MISS: ‘Passion is BS’ and other life advice from Dilbert creator Scott Adams
"This comic causes the reader to imagine a funny future in which Wally will only pretend to do the assignment. Humor sometimes works best when one suggests what is coming without showing it. People laugh harder when they need to use their imaginations to complete the joke.
"I also like comics in which characters are unusually happy about something trivial, evil, or selfish. That juxtaposition is always funny to me.
"Another technique I often use involves characters saying things that should only be thought. That creates the inappropriateness that gives it an edge."
"Management-by-slogan usually comes across to employees as ridiculous and condescending. That, in part, is what makes the staff in this comic so uncaring about the boss's house burning down. The ordinary evil of regular people is always funny to me. It's easy to relate to it."
"A common humor technique involves juxtaposing something of immense importance with something trivial. The pairing of things that don't belong together makes your brain 'sneeze' in the form of a laugh. In this comic, Wally is comparing his digestive system to Jesus rising from the dead. A dash of spiritual inappropriateness gives it some seasoning."
Microsoft's new operating platform Windows 10 is packed with their version of Siri, Apple's voice command tool; and just like Siri, Cortana is chock full of funny responses.
Produced by Corey Protin and Chris Snyder.
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The fact that I struggled to come up with a joke to open this article is somewhat disconcerting, given the multiple studies that link being funny to above-average intelligence.
In one 2011 study, researchers at the University of New Mexico asked 400 psychology students to complete measures of abstract reasoning ability and verbal intelligence before writing captions for a series of New Yorker cartoons.
Sure enough, captions that were rated funnier belonged to students who scored higher on the tests of cognitive ability. In particular, students who scored high on the test of verbal intelligence were likely to produce funny captions.
Another study out of the University of New Mexico used a group of comedians to complete a similar procedure. Results showed that comedians not only produced more and funnier caption ideas than the students had, but also scored higher on the test of verbal intelligence, which generally correlates with overall intelligence.
Other research, published in the 1970s, looked at 55 male and 14 female comedians, and found that they scored significantly higher on IQ tests than the average population. Specifically, male comedians scored on average 138; female comedians scored on average 126. The average IQ score is between 90 and 110.
At least on some level, people may be aware that humor is a potential sign of intelligence, and may therefore be drawn to funnier mates. The University of New Mexico study that focused on students also found that funny people reported having had more sexual partners than their duller peers.
Of course, if you don't have a knack for cracking people up, that doesn't necessarily mean you're not intelligent — or that you'll never attract a romantic partner. A good sense of humor is just one trait among many that can signal above-average smarts.
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Produced By Matt Johnston. Video courtesy of Reuters.
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Any wildlife photography competition whose terms and conditions say "you must have taken the picture yourself within the last 99 years" and "you must think Bohemian Rhapsody one of the greatest pieces of popular music ever written," will turn some heads.
These requirements are quips, of course, but that's the point. The Comedy Wildlife Photography Awards are all about honoring exceptional field photography that also happens to be hilarious — planned or not.
The final images from the contest do not disappoint. Don't believe me? Take a look at this baby hippo having a conniption fit over being besieged by these birds.
The contest was founded by photographer Paul Joynson-Hicks. He is passionate about conservation and, therefore, is adamant that no animals are harmed during the photo shoot. Entrants also must not submit photographs of their pets, farm animals, or captive animals.
Here are some of the most hilarious photos from this competition we've seen.
Exercise. Read more. Save money. Travel. Those are the staple resolutions.
But if it’s not that complicated, why are there so many fat, dumb, poor people who don’t even have passports?
So, forget about all of the tired, regurgitated resolutions that you recycle unfulfilled year in and out. Here are twenty practical and realistic goals for 2016 that will fundamentally make your life better:
John LeFevre is the creator of @GSElevator on Twitter, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book, Straight To Hell: True Tales of Deviance, Debauchery, And Billion-Dollar Deals
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We all have our favorite jokes, but which one is considered the funniest in the world?
To find out, psychologist Richard Wiseman ran an experiment — a huge one. In 2002 he launched a website called LaughLab where anyone around the world could submit a joke and rate other people's jokes. He got over 41,000 entries and about 1.5 million votes.
Here is the joke that got the most votes, winning the title of the funniest:
Two hunters are out in the woods when one of them collapses. He doesn't seem to be breathing and his eyes are glazed. The other guy whips out his phone and calls the emergency services. He gasps, "My friend is dead! What can I do?" The operator says "Calm down. I can help. First, let's make sure he's dead." There is a silence, then a shot is heard. Back on the phone, the guy says "OK, now what?"
The person who submitted it, psychiatrist Gurpal Gosall, said. "I like the joke as it makes people feel better, because it reminds them that there is always someone out there who is doing something more stupid than themselves."
Part of what makes the joke work, according to LaughLab, is its universal appeal:
The joke is interesting because it works across many different countries, appeals to men and women, and young and old alike. Many of the jokes submitted received higher ratings from certain groups of people, but this one had real universal appeal.
Also, we find jokes funny for lots of different reasons — they sometimes make us feel superior to others, reduce the emotional impact of anxiety-provoking events, or surprise us because of some kind of incongruity. The hunters joke contains all three elements — we feel superior to the stupid hunter, realize the incongruity of him misunderstanding the operator and the joke helps us to laugh about our concerns about our own mortality.
And if this joke doesn't strike you as all that funny, that's ok too. It's important to note that we need to take studies like these with a grain of salt.
"There's a tendency toward mediocrity when you ask a million people anything," Neuroscientist Scott Weems said during an episode of NPR's Science Friday discussing the joke experiment.
And of course, everyone who voted on the website self-selected, Bill Nye the Science Guy pointed out. So those who responded weren't a perfect representation of the global population.
Interestingly, the joke that was submitted to LaughLab the most times was: "What's brown and sticky? A stick." So the winning joke could have easily been a lot worse.
The experiment also yielded a couple of interesting insights into the types of jokes people find funny:
1. According to the data, jokes containing about 103 words are the funniest.
2. Many of the jokes submitted included animals, and those that mention ducks were rated the funniest.
So, to make people laugh make sure to keep your jokes relatively short, and if it involves an animal, make it a duck.
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Following the shock-baton 'TR-8R' memes and parody of the saddest Sith Lord in the galaxy, Luke Skywalker himself has finally joined Twitter. The @VeryLonelyLuke account shows what the Jedi hero, who appears only briefly in "Star Wars: The Force Awakens," has been up to since we last saw him.
Despite 128,000 followers, Hermit Skywalker follows no one.
Of course.
Warning: If you haven't seen the film, there are some spoilers ahead.
I'm going to stand in this spot and stare at the ocean for 20 years so I can turn around dramatically if someone ever shows up.
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) December 30, 2015
My water planet Yelp review:
Lots of water.
Some rocks.
Too many stairs. Not handicap accessible
Nearest toilet light years away
1 star
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 4, 2016
Staring at the ocean isn't always the same.
One time I thought I saw something.
It turned out to be nothing.
It was an exciting day.
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 4, 2016
I’m sad today because no one remembered my birthday.
I don’t even know what the current date is.
I’m sad every day just to be safe.
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 5, 2016
Probably the worst date I've ever been on was the time I almost died rescuing the girl of my dreams and she turned out to be my sister.
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 5, 2016
I met my dad & sister on the same day
We didn’t recognize each other
Dad tried to kill me
I blew up his house
Worst family reunion ever.
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 4, 2016
At least I’ve done some cool stuff that makes me unique.
Like sneaking onto the Death Star to rescue a girl
No one will ever do that again
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 4, 2016
I haven't seen Kylo Ren in years.
I wonder if he's outgrown his Dark Side phase yet.
I bet he and Han worked things out.
Good for them.
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 3, 2016
Before I left I called Kylo Ren a Sith
And he goes "I'm a Knight of Ren"
So I said "Same Sith different day"
I planned it. It was awesome
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 3, 2016
Vader wore a mask because his face was disfigured by lava.
Kylo Ren wears a mask because his face was disfigured by Han's DNA.
— Very Lonely Luke (@VeryLonelyLuke) January 1, 2016SEE ALSO: Disneyland is making a 'Star Wars' land
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Jon Ritzheimer, one of the armed men occupying a wildlife building in rural Oregon, apologized to his family in a video for participating in the occupation instead of being there for the holidays.
"Your daddy swore an oath. He swore an oath to protect and defend the Constitution," he said tearfully.
After that video was widely circulated, some opponents of the Oregon militiamen chose to respond with mockery instead of outrage. The result is a series of parody videos, first spotted by Deadspin, under the hashtag #DaddySworeAnOath that mimic Ritzheimer's original.
Story by Tony Manfred and editing by Kristen Griffin
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