Funding for Giggles

You have heard, I imagine, the imperative 'publish or perish'? The nemesis of the academic community. 

What shall we research next? 

What hasn't been explored, studied, analyzed and examined in minute detail? Will we get funding? Will we be lauded in our community? 

What to do?

Not to worry. Laugh it off. 

Hows' about funding a study to examine the merits of a chuckle or two and find that there are additional benefits for the rest of us doom and gloom beings.

Or so found a group of University of Maryland scientists. Heart disease, you see, might be avoided if you have an active sense of humor. 

Here's what confounded me. "People", they observed, "with heart disease were 40 percent less likely to laugh in a variety of situations compared to people of the same age without heart disease." 

Really?

You have heart disease and now they want you to guffaw? You've lost your sense of humor? Your nails are blue and you are breathless, and you've lost your sense of humor?

Haven't you sat in a theater, heard gales of laughter around you and wondered, did I miss something? That really wasn't funny. So then, if researchers were determining responses to humor, what, I wondered, was their criteria for this measurement? 

One liners? A Jackie Mason monologue? Seeing someone trip and fall? Yeah, I am loathe to admit it...Don't know why, but I can be counted on to be both sympathetic and barely contain myself when observing someone slipping and sliding around.

Of course they added in that exercising, not smoking and eating foods low in saturated fat will reduce the risk of heart disease. That's good to know. After all, John Belushi, John Candy, Chris Farley, to name but a few, tragically died early, chuckling, snorting and guffawing their way through their lives and ours. 

So in addition to the other ditties we are taught to endure for a healthy life ( an apple a day comes to mind) remember to HO. HO. HO.