In a ten-year study of married couples, researchers John Gottman and Sybil Careere of the University of Washington found that they were able to predict the success of a marriage with 88% to 94% accuracy based on the presence of romance, humor, and affection in the marital partners' communication style. This may be why "his sense of humor" is so often given by women to explain their attraction to a particular male.

Some 69% of couples have perpetual problems, like different attitudes toward finances, which can kill a marriage unless the communication style that frames the discussion reflects those three factors. While the Gottman and Careere study identified criticism, contempt, defensiveness, and stonewalling as destroyers of marriages, an effective funny bone can ameliorate their effect.

In social situations, humor is a powerful tool to help people get to know one another, to bond teams, to overcome cultural differences, and bring newcomers into the fold. In business, humor improves performance, encourages positive thinking, energizes meetings, promotes creativity, and gets more work done. Humor is the bonding agent that creates trust and strengthens relationships.

Humor is a proven antidote to stress, a key to good communications, and contributes to healthy relationships. Are lawyers better known for their humor skills or for being offended by lawyer jokes? Jokes about lawyers aside, developing your humor skills is sure to make you healthier and happier. And humor is a skill that can be developed.

Work on it
Don't worry if you're not a stand-up comic: the Humor Project has been operating since 1977, and while 80% of its seminar participants think they have good senses of humor, 98% of them say they can't tell a joke to save their life.

Here are some hints for developing your funny bone:

1. Don't even try to be a stand-up comedian if you are shy or you can't remember punch lines. Or give it a try by joining a comedy workshop at a local community college or center. The truth is often funnier than fiction.

2. Tell your own true-life stories. Didn't "Seinfeld" show us the success of that approach?

3. Freely share your witty or wry observations about daily life. Just remember humor only works when it meets the AT&T Test: Appropriate, Timely & Tasteful.

4. Collect other people's personal stories or anecdotes to share in future. Just don't forget the lawyer's commitment to confidentiality—keep the characters unrecognizable.

5. Watch Comedy Central.

6. Subscribe to an emailed daily joke or purchase a desk calendar with a daily joke.

I'll never forget the effect of pasting on my office door this quip from Henry Kissinger that was taken from my desk calendar: "There can simply be no crises next week, my schedule is already full." Everyone who considered bringing a problem to me reconsidered, upon reading the note, whether they truly had a crisis needing my intervention and some decided that bothering me was not really necessary. The power of a joke!

Or maybe the words "public awareness" so close to the word "contraception" may simply be code words for teaching abstinence to female bears (known as "sows") who may no longer have the Constitutional right to contraception if the case Sow v. Wade is reversed. But do not offer contraception to bears and then only give them abstinence literature ("bait and switch"), because in New York bear baiting is illegal (Agriculture and Markets Law §351).

That bears have constitutional rights cannot be denied. We know that the Second Amendment guarantees them the right to their own brand of weaponry when it speaks of the right to bear "arms." In New York we have from time to time had a bear hunting season in which the bears are given a season to hunt with those armaments. In New York State the bears have a right in the Adirondack forest preserve "to be kept forever wild" (New York State Constitution Art. XIV, §1). This has provided certain sows with the ability to make lucrative videos such as "Spring Break: Sows Gone Wild" shown on the cable channel Animal Planet as part of its reality TV shows like "Bear Survivor: Bergen County." You can order "Sows Gone Wild" on their web site or just make out a check payable to "Bears Err," or issue promissory notes, which are instruments which bear interest to bears. Arranging fights between bears is illegal in New York (Agriculture and Markets Law § 351) but apparently not in California when the University of California Bears play the U.C.L.A. Bruins.

However, there is a large conservative bear lobby opposed to certain contraception information being given to bears without also discussing abstinence. The presence of this large contingent is often seen on toll roads where the signs that read "Rest Area—Bear Right" attest to the strong presence and sponsorship of the rest areas by the Bear Right. They also attempt to confuse hunters by trying to mislead them into thinking the bears have vacated an area when they post signs that say "Bear Left."

The Times article also quotes Priscilla Feral (an appropriate name for an animal rights advocate—and I'm not kidding—you can look it up), president of Friends of Animals, that her organization would go to court to block the hunting of bears. Bear in mind, "life" is obviously one of the rights Ursine advocates (people who bear witness) assert that bears have. Indeed, they say it is it is a bear necessity.