When swearing is not only big and clever, but also downright useful

That muttered curse word (or in my case the several curse words, usually uttered at the top of my voice) that reflexively comes out when you stub your toe could actually make it easier to bear the throbbing pain, according to Live Science

While swearing is a common response to pain, no previous research had connected the uttering of an expletive to the actual physical experience. "Swearing has been around for centuries and is an almost universal human linguistic phenomenon," said Richard Stephens of Keele. "It taps into emotional brain centers and appears to arise in the right brain, whereas most language production occurs in the left cerebral hemisphere of the brain."

Stephens and fellow researchers John Atkins and Andrew Kingston sought to test how swearing would affect an individual's pain tolerance Because swearing can seem to overstate the severity of pain, the team thought that swearing would lessen a person's tolerance. Actually, the opposite seemed to be true.

The researchers had 64 volunteers submerge their hand in a tub of ice water for as long as possible while repeating a swear word of their choice. The experiment was then repeated with the volunteer repeating a more common word that they would use to describe a table. Contrary to what the researcher expected, the volunteers kept their hands submerged longer while repeating the swear word.

The researchers think that the increase in pain tolerance occurs because swearing triggers the body's natural “fight or flight” response. "Our research shows one potential reason why swearing developed and why it persists," Stephens said.

The results of the study are detailed in the Aug. 5 issue of the journal NeuroReport.

Well there you have it.....Anything that puts swearing in a positive light gets my vote!

Did Galileo beat Le Verrier to the discovery of Neptune?

Science Daily reports that a Melbourne physicist has put forward a theory that Galileo knew he had discovered a new planet in 1613, 234 years before its official discovery date.
Professor David Jamieson, Head of the School of Physics, is investigating the Galileo’s notebooks and believes that he discovered a new planet that we now know as Neptune.

Galileo was observing the moons of Jupiter in the years 1612 and 1613 and recorded his observations in his notebooks. Over several nights he also recorded the position of a nearby star which does not appear in any modern star catalogue.

"It has been known for several decades that this unknown star was actually the planet Neptune. Computer simulations show the precision of his observations revealing that Neptune would have looked just like a faint star almost exactly where Galileo observed it," Professor Jamieson says.
But a planet is different to a star because planets orbit the Sun and move through the sky relative to the stars. It is remarkable that on the night of January 28 in 1613 Galileo noted that the "star" we now know is the planet Neptune appeared to have moved relative to an actual nearby star."

There is also a mysterious unlabeled black dot in his earlier observations of January 6, 1613, which is in the right position to be Neptune. "I believe this dot could reveal he went back in his notes to record where he saw Neptune earlier when it was even closer to Jupiter but had not previously attracted his attention because of its unremarkable star-like appearance."

If the mysterious black dot on January 6 was actually recorded on January 28, Professor Jamieson proposes this would prove that Galileo believed he may have discovered a new planet.

"Galileo may indeed have formed the hypothesis that he had seen a new planet which had moved right across the field of view during his observations of Jupiter over the month of January 1613," Professor Jamieson says."If this is correct Galileo observed Neptune 234 years before its official discovery."

But there could be an even more interesting possibility still buried in Galileo's notes and letters."Galileo was in the habit of sending a scrambled sentence, an anagram, to his colleagues to establish his priority for the sensational discoveries he made with his new telescope. He did this when he discovered the phases of Venus and the rings of Saturn. So perhaps somewhere he wrote an as-yet undecoded anagram that reveals he knew he discovered a new planet," Professor Jamieson speculates.

Well there you have it.

Source: University of Melbourne (2009, July 9). Galileo's Notebooks May Reveal Secrets Of New Planet. ScienceDaily. Retrieved July 12, 2009, from http://www.sciencedaily.com¬ /releases/2009/07/090709095427.htm

When not to hyphenate surnames

A bit of light relief courtesy of CBS where you can find more amusing examples

Srebrenica victims buried, sometimes one fragment at a time

Today’s Independent poses a question: How many times can you bury your child without going mad? This is a question that we are unlikely to face but it IS a question that faces hundreds of Bosnian mothers. As researchers identify remains scattered around mass graves from the Srebrenica massacre, what would your choice be? Bury the first few bones or wait potentially years for a skeleton to come together?

Many choose to bury whatever fragments turn up. If another bone is found then they reopen the grave. Perhaps months later another piece is found, and then another – and each time, the women say, it feels like another funeral.

International Commission on Missing Persons (ICMP) is undertaking the enormous task of identifying the remains of over 8,100 men and boys who were murdered by Bosnian Serb forces when they overran a United Nations-protected enclave in 1995.
Newly identified Srebrenica remains are buried at a memorial centre each year on the 11 July anniversary of the start of the 1995 massacre, Yesterday, the partial remains of 534 victims were buried.

The ICMP was established in 1996. It has collected over 87,000 blood samples from relatives of the missing. The DNA profiles of the relatives are compared with profiles extracted from the bone samples of exhumed victims. So far investigators have helped to identify 12,518 individuals in Bosnia. Out of those, 6,185 are Srebrenica victims. The agency also helped to identify victims of the 11 September 2001 attacks and the remains of those who died in the 2004 Asian tsunami. But Bosnia remains its biggest operation.

Ten years after a DNA lab took a drop of blood from Habiba Masic, researchers called her to say they had made a positive identification. The man at the lab said they had found 90 per cent of her husband's body. His bones had been dispersed among four different mass graves. "And the children?" she recalled asking. "The man went silent, and I knew something was wrong." She was told there was no trace of one of her boys but a small part of the other had been found. The problem was DNA analysis could not determine which one he was. "I couldn't breathe," she said. "I couldn't speak." Now, she cannot bury the precious fragment, for what would the gravestone say: Sadem Masic, 1976-95? Or Sadmir Masic, 1977-95? "Brother is now waiting for brother," she said.

General Mladic, indicted for genocide, is still in hiding, apparently in Serbia. Recently, television channels aired videos confiscated by Serbian police in one of his hideouts. They showed him dancing, singing at parties and cuddling his grandchild. "Mladic is holding his granddaughter in his arm at a birthday party. And how do we feel?" Habiba Masic said bitterly.

It is hard to imagine anybody would envy Madame Masic, but Rufeida Buhic, 68, does. Her husband was killed early in the war. Serbs caught her only son, Razim, 17, when he tried to escape from Potocari. Mrs Buhic returned to her pre-war home near Srebrenica to be where the three had lived together. "That's where they walked, where they worked. That's where I want to walk," she said.

Mrs Buhic can't sleep at night. No medication helps. Often she visits a neighbour's house, where her son's friend lived and where Razim once measured how tall he grew. She goes there just to look at the line carved in the wood of the doorway: 195 centimetres, or nearly 6ft 5ins. Constantly, she checks her mobile phone."Every time it rings, I think they are calling me to say they found him... even one bone," she said.

There is no comment I can add to this that can come close to expressing my sorrow for these women.

A bit of Bulgarian folk music

The beautiful voices of the Bulgarian state tv and radio choir.



Trio Bulgarka - I saw them perform in Brentford 20 years ago.

My thanks to A Doubtful Egg for giving me the notion to see what Youtube had to offer

Crap Michael Jackson simulacrum found in California

CBS reports that a Stockton family are claiming that an image of Michael Jackson appeared on his tree stump on the day he died.

Felix Garcia had never previously noticed any image in the birch tree stump in his front garden.

A neighbour gave a possible reason why the pop Peter Pan would choose to appear in Stockton "Because Michael Jackson was an icon to us," said one neighbor. "To Stockton, Michael Jackson meant more to us than Jesus, to some people. I think they're both about even."

And Jackson did visit the city 20 years ago, following a fatal school shooting.

Both readers of this blog will know I love a good simulacrum or even an outrageously bad one. Sadly, this one is just crap.

My thanks to FeeFiFoto for the link

Photo Hunt - Rubbish

The theme for this week's Photo Hunt is garbage. This was an easy one given the thoughtlessness of so many people. This rubbish was photographed in Battis Walk near Romford Station

Our soldiers in Afghanistan are dying for this?

The Times reports that two more British soldiers have been killed in Afghanistan, bringing the death toll in the last nine days to nine, The Ministry of Defence said that the two soldiers were killed yesterday in separate incidents in Helmand Province. This means that a total of 178 British servicemen and women have now been killed in Afghanistan since 2001.

Lieutenant-Colonel Nick Richardson, a spokesman for Task Force Helmand, said: "These fine British soldiers paid the ultimate sacrifice and their memory will live with us forever. We mourn their loss and our thoughts and prayers are with their families and friends at this very sad time. "We know that their deaths were not in vain.”

Or are they?

Today’s Independent report that an Afghan law which legalised rape between husband and wife has been sent back to parliament with a new clause letting husbands starve their wives if they refuse to have sex.

According to civil society groups, the law, which regulates the personal affairs of Afghanistan's Shia community, also includes clauses which allow rapists to marry their victims as a way of absolving their crime and it tacitly approves child marriage. The law sparked demonstrations in Kabul where hundreds of Shia women took to the streets in protest. They were attacked by mobs of angry men who launched counter demonstrations outside the capital's largest Shia madrassa.

The law is due to be ratified by parliament, which first passed the legislation in March with hardly any debate. Critics claim that Mr Karzai signed the law to appease Shia leaders, ahead of presidential polls on 20 August.

Women's rights activist Wazhma Frough, who was involved in the review, said that conservative religious leaders had pressured the Justice Ministry to keep many of the most controversial clauses."There have been a few little changes, but they are not enough," she said. "For example, if the wife doesn't accept her husband's sexual requirements then he can deny her food."

Violence against women is already endemic," said Razia Jan, who is building a women's community centre in Afghanistan's Shia heartland, Bamiyan. "Men pay thousands of dollars for young girls and they are treated like slaves. Women here are already so vulnerable."

Forces went into Afghanistan, inter alia, to rid the country of the Taliban, an evil rabble of misogynists from the 8th Century. it seems that their replacements are little better.. The report states some (unnamed) NATO countries have threatened to withdraw their troops unless the legislation was drastically re-written. Perhaps it is time for them all to leave.

Robyn and Bebe

The tabby twosome on the not-wife's lap. This week's entry for the Friday Ark and Carnival of the Cats.

The Virgin Mary tree stump

Ah there’s nothing like reporting on a good simulacrum story be it a nun in a bun or Alahu Akbar spelled out in the seeds of an aubergine, So here’s one from Ireland.

The Irish Times reports that almost 2,000 people have signed a petition seeking to prevent the removal of a tree stump on the grounds of a Co Limerick church. The stump is said to depict the Blessed Virgin Mary.

People from the town organised the petition in an effort to have the stump, which was due to be dug out of the ground yesterday (Wednesday 8 July) , made into a permanent fixture at the church. “We have almost 2,000 signatures on the petition already and we are going to continue getting more,” said shopkeeper Séamus Hogan.

“People have been coming from Kerry and Clare to see this tree, which we believe shows a clear outline of Our Lady,” he continued. Mr Hogan said the discovery was bringing people from all walks of life to Rathkeale to pray.It’s doing no harm and it’s bringing people together from young and old to black and white, Protestant and Catholic, to say a few prayers, so what’s wrong with that? There’s enough violence and intolerance going on in the world,” he said.

Local parish priest Fr Willie Russell said on a Limerick radio station that people should not worship the tree. “There’s nothing there . . . it’s just a tree . . . you can’t worship a tree.” Meanwhile a spokesman for the Limerick diocesan office said the “church’s response to phenomena of this type is one of great scepticism

Well I’m convinced. Those rosary beads around the neck are a dead giveaway