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Carrion Luggage  Native to the Americas, the turkey vulture (Cathartes aura) travels widely in search of sustenance. While usually foraging alone, it relies on other individuals of its species for companionship and mutual protection. Sometimes misunderstood, sometimes feared, sometimes shunned, it nevertheless performs an important role in the ecosystem. This scavenger bird is a marvel of efficiency. Rather than expend energy flapping its wings, it instead locates uplifting columns of air, and spirals within them in order to glide to greater heights. This behavior has been mistaken for opportunism, interpreted as if it is circling doomed terrestrial animals destined to be its next meal. In truth, the vulture takes advantage of these thermals to gain the altitude needed glide longer distances, flying not out of necessity, but for the joy of it. It also avoids the exertion necessary to capture live prey, preferring instead to feast upon that which is already dead. In this behavior, it resembles many humans. It is not what most of us would consider to be a pretty bird. While its habits are often off-putting, or even disgusting, to members of more fastidious species, the turkey vulture helps to keep the environment from being clogged with detritus. Hence its Latin binomial, which translates to English as "golden purifier." I rarely know where the winds will take me next, or what I might find there. The journey is the destination. |
| I'm more than a little pissed at Time right now because they reported the "dire wolf de-extinction" story as if it were true and not a steaming pile of bullshit. Don't know what I'm talking about? Use a search engine; I'll be damned if I'm going to give that crap any more boost by linking it. But I'm really hoping they got the science right on this article: "Surprising," I guess, if you're a prude. It makes me feel better to cuss, so I've always known it had health benefits (for me, not the people I'm cussing at). Still, it's good to have science backing me up. If it's true. After the "dire wolf" bullshit, I can't be sure. Many of us try to suppress the urge to blurt out an expletive when something goes wrong. And many of us try to hold sneezes in. That doesn't mean it's healthy. Research has found that using profanity can have beneficial effects on people’s stress, anxiety, and depression. In fact, there are numerous potential physical, psychological, and social perks related to the power of a well-timed F-bomb. "Social?" I guess it depends on the society. Cursing induces what’s called hypoalgesia, or decreased sensitivity to pain. Researchers have shown that after uttering a curse word, people can keep their hands submerged in ice water for longer than if they say a more neutral word. I get why they do the submerged in ice water thing. It's a low-risk means of inducing some level of pain in a test subject. Other kinds of pain may be unethical for scientists. But I wonder about the efficacy of low-risk pain inducement in a study such as this. For one thing, a big part of pain is the surprise. If you know you're going to get stuck with a needle at the dentist, you can control your reaction somewhat (though it's quite difficult to swear with your mouth wide open and the dentist's fingers in there). But here’s an interesting twist: “People who swear less often get more benefit from swearing when they need it,” he says. In other words, cursing all the time zaps the words of their potency. That's not surprising to me. I prefer to hold back the important words for when they can provide better emphasis. Swearing aloud is associated with improvements in exercise performance, including cycling power and hand-grip strength. This wouldn't surprise me either. I glanced at the study. Decent sample size, but restricted demographics (i.e. one of those studies that used students as swearing guinea pigs), and the control group used neutral language, presumably words such as "hit," "truck," or "bunt." A study in the European Journal of Social Psychology found that when people wrote about a time they felt socially excluded, then repeated a swear word for two minutes, their hurt feelings and social distress were significantly lower than for people who used a neutral word. Taken together with the findings about physical pain, this might lend more credence to the idea that physical pain and emotional pain are related in more ways than just being described with the same word. In another study, researchers found that when drivers cursed after being refused the right of way by another driver, or when they encountered a traffic jam caused by cars that were stopped illegally, cursing helped them tamp down their anger and return to a more balanced emotional state. I didn't look at that study. I've experienced this myself. And "cursing" in this context includes showing the offender my middle finger. There appear to be surprising social benefits associated with the well-timed use of profanity. “Some people believe that profanity can break social taboos in a generally non-harmful way, [which] can create an informal environment in which people feel like insiders together,” says Ben Bergen, a professor of cognitive science at the University of California, San Diego, and author of... This isn't on the same level as those other assertions. "Some people believe" is weasel words, which is why I'm not including the name of his book. I don't doubt that it does these things, but, as anyone who's been on WDC for a while can attest, cussing can also alienate some people. Of course, it is possible to overdo it. People who swear frequently are sometimes perceived as angry, hostile, or aggressive, so there’s a potential tipping point to using profanity. Again, I'm pretty sure that's true, but: what's the tipping point? I suspect it's different for different groups. Baptist church vs. biker bar, e.g. The article does address this qualitatively: It’s also important to know your audience. Swearing etiquette may depend on the social hierarchy and power dynamics in certain situations, such as the workplace, says Jay. Just because the boss uses curse words doesn’t necessarily mean you can get away with it. (You’ll also want to modify your language around young children.) Nah. I want young children to stay as far away from me as possible. If I cuss in public, their parents herd them away. I win. They win, too, because I have furthered their education. Not addressed in the article: whether writing "fuck" has similar benefits to saying it. I suspect not. Clearly, further study is needed. Can I get money for being a guinea pig in that study? |
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