I have heard having a good sense of humour often helps in breaking the ice. Also people remember you because of your humour. But I think I don't have a very good sense of humour. Could you suggest how to build on this? ——Radha Karnik

    This is a great question that is unfortunately difficult to answer. I can only give you my views on this topic, which may or may not be correct. I know that my sense of humour developed over time.

    When I was younger I was not funny at all, now I can easily make people laugh. At the same time, sometimes I say things that I think are very funny but others do not. Improving wit and humour, I believe, is an ongoing process.

    Now, there are various forms of humour and everyone has their individual style. Overall, I believe being fluent in a language is very important for being witty or funny. The way we play around with words adds the “funny” tag to an otherwise normal sentence.

    Also, seeing irony is very important. I think humour is often the link between two unrelated things.

    In my experience, laughing frequently and appreciating other people's jokes and wit are very important. Within these, finding humour in everyday normal situations is the key.

    I often notice what is going on around me and say funny things in my head and laugh to myself. That serves almost as practice for when I am in a group. I watch comedy shows and movies and I am sure that has some effect on helping me improve my sense of humour.

    And last, having confidence that you are witty is important. There will always be someone wittier or funnier than you, which is fine. Just work on building your own style.

    Remember, if you are trying to be funny and witty in order to break the ice at a business function, be careful.

    In those situations, humour has to be mild and politically correct.

Yours,

Brad

    The latest study by the University of Florida has found that eating from smaller, less beautiful, and even paper plates will help prevent overeating. Eating with a fork instead of a spoon can help you lose weight, the researchers say. Much to their surprise, they find that putting mirrors in the dining room will also help reduce weight.

    The researchers asked 185 college students to choose a chocolate cake or a fruit salad, and evaluated the taste. Those who ate in a room with a mirror scored the taste of junk food much lower than those in a room without a mirror. But the taste of fruit salad remained the same in any case.

    Lead scientist, Dr. Ata Jami, says that a glance in the mirror tells people more than just about their physical appearance. It enables them to view themselves objectively (客观地) and helps them to judge themselves and their behavior in the same way that they judge other people.

    The mirrors were found to push people to compare and match their own behavior with accepted social standards. The researchers believe it proves that people don't want to look in the mirror when they feel they are following the social standards. When they look in the mirror with mouths full of junk food, feelings of discomfort and failure can be increased. Therefore, the presence of the mirror lowers the taste of unhealthy food.

    However, researchers say this is only the case if people select the food they are eating, because they are responsible for that choice. The researchers suggest that mirrors be placed in dining rooms and other eating spaces, so that people will start eating more healthily.

    I had an experience some years ago, which taught me something about the ways in which people make a bad situation worse by blaming themselves. One January, I had to hold two funerals on successive (连续的）days for two elderly women in my community. Both had died “full of years”, as the Bible would say. Their homes happened to be near each other, so I paid condolence (吊唁）calls on the two families on the same afternoon.

    At the first home, the son of the deceased (已故的）woman said to me, “If only I had sent my mother to Florida and gotten her out of this cold and snow, she would be alive today. It's my fault that she died.” At the second home, the son of the other deceased woman said, “If only I hadn't insisted on my mother's going to Florida, she would be alive today. That long airplane ride, the sudden change of climate, was more than she could take. It's my fault that she's dead.”

    You see that any time there is a death, the survivors will feel guilty. Because the course of action they took turned out badly, they believe that the opposite course—keeping Mother at home, putting off the operation—would have turned out better. After all, how could it have turned out any worse?

    There seem to be two elements involved in our willingness to feel guilty. The first is our pressing need to believe that the world makes sense, that there is a cause for every effect and a reason for everything that happens. That leads us to find patterns and connections both where they really exist and where they exist only in our minds.

    The second element is the view that we are the cause of what happens, especially the bad things that happen. It seems to be a short step from believing that every event has a cause to believing that every disaster is our fault. The roots of this feeling may lie in our childhood.

    A baby comes to think that the world exists to meet his needs, and that he makes everything happen in it. He wakes up in the morning and summons the rest of the world to its tasks. He cries, and someone comes to attend to him. When he is hungry, people feed him, and when he is wet, people change him. Very often, we do not completely outgrow that childish view that our wishes cause things to happen.

    Girls who lack confidence in school have a new champion. She is only 10 years old. Alice Tapper, a fifth - grader says, that her goal is to encourage girls of all ages to “be more confident in raising their hands”. Alice cared so much about the issue (问题) that she helped create a Girl Scout badge (徽章).

    The pink badge—Alice chose her favorite color—shows three hands reaching for the sky. It says, “Be brave. Raise your hand.”

    Alice's idea came during a fourth - grade field trip to Jamestown, Virginia. She found that boys raised their hands to answer questions even though they weren't sure of the answers. The girls just listened quietly.

    “Girls are afraid to raise their hands because they get shy. They have to be 90 percent sure, while boys just raise their hands and say, 'I know it,'” Alice said during a recent interview. She added that girls should have confidence, step up, and become leaders by raising their hands for women are equal to men.

    Alice's “Raise Your Hand” badge has become wildly popular, and not just in the United States. “People in Japan and China want to use the badge,” she said. “We sold out the badge quickly, but we're making more.”

    Alice wants to be a teacher when she grows up. But first, she wants to see a revolution in confidence for girls of all ages. She knows that won't happen overnight. “ It takes time,” Alice said, “but I can speed up the process.”

    Located in the checkroom in Union Station as I am, I see everybody that comes up the stairs.

Harry came in a little over three years ago and waited for the passengers from the 9:05 train.

    I remember seeing Harry that first evening. He wasn't much more than a thin, anxious kid then and I knew he was meeting his girl and that they would be married twenty minutes after she arrived. The passengers came up and I had to get busy. I didn't look toward the stairs again until it was nearly time for the 9:18 train and I was very surprised to see that the young fellow was still there.

    She didn't come on the 9:18 either, nor on the 9:40, and when the passengers from the 10:02 had all arrived and left, Harry was looking pretty desperate. He showed me the telegram he'd received: ARRIVE THURSDAY. MEET ME STATION. LOVE YOU. MAY.

    Harry met every train for the next three or four days, but in vain.

    Then came yesterday. I heard a cry and found that it was from Harry. He grabbed a girl who was small and dark. For a while they just hung there to each other laughing and crying and saying things without meaning. She'd say a few words like, "It was the bus station I meant" and he'd kiss her speechless and tell her the many things he had done to find her. What apparently had happened three years before was that May had come by bus, not by train, and in her telegram she meant "bus station," not "railroad station." She had waited at the bus station for days and had spent all her money trying to find Harry. Finally she got a job typing.

    "What?" said Harry. "Have you been working in town? All the time?"

    She nodded.

    "Didn't you ever come down here to the station?" He pointed across to a magazine stand. "I've been there all the time. I own it. I've watched everybody that came up the stairs."

    She began to look a little pale. Pretty soon she looked over at the stairs and said in a weak voice, "I never came up the stairs before. Harry, for three years, for three solid years, I've been right over there working right in this very station, typing, in the office of the stationmaster."

    You're out to dinner. The food is delicious and the service is fine. You decide to leave a big fat tip. Why? The answer may not be as simple as you think.

    Tipping, psychologists have found, is not just about service. Instead, studies have shown that tipping can be affected by psychological reactions to a series of different factors from the waiter's choice of words, to how they carry themselves while taking orders, to the billl's total.

Even how much waiters remind customers of themselves can determine how much change they pocket by the end of the night.

    "Studies before have shown that mimicry (模仿)brings into positive feelings for the mimicker, "wrote Rick van Baaren, a social psychology professor. "These studies show that people who are being mimicked become more generous toward the person who mimicks.

    So Rick van Baaren divided 59 waiters into two groups. He requested that half serve with a phrase such as, "Coming up!" Those in the other half were instructed to repeat the orders and preferences back to the customers. Rick van Baaren then compared their takehome pay. The results were clear-it pays to mimic your customer. The copycat (模仿者)waiters earned almost double the amount of tips to the other group.

    Leonard Green and Joel Myerson, psychologists at Washington University in St Louis, found the generosity of a tipper may be limited by his bill. After research on the 1,000 tips left for waiters, cabdrivers, hair stylists, they found tip percentages in these three areas dropped as customers' bills went up. In fact, tip percentages appear to plateau (稳定期)when bills topped $100 and a bill for $200 made the worker gain no bigger percentage tip than a bill for $100.

    "That's also a point of tipping," Green says. "You have to give a little extra to the cabdriver for being there to pick you up and something to the waiter for being there to serve you. If they weren't there, you'd never get any service. So part of the idea of a tip is for just being there."