*@&%# Yeah!

Cursing Relieves Pain, Research Shows

Richard Stephens, PhD
Keele University

Special from Bottom Line's Daily Health News
November 19, 2009

"S - - T!!!" Admit it, letting loose with an expletive somehow makes you feel better after you accidentally slice your finger or stub your toe. Now that research has confirmed that cursing does indeed reduce the sensation of pain, perhaps we can sometimes give ourselves permission to yell bad words even louder, without worrying about what anyone will think.

Swear When It Hurts

Richard Stephens, PhD, a lecturer in psychology and the director of the master’s degree program in psychological research methods at Keele University in Staffordshire, England, conducted a study exploring how cursing provides pain relief. It was published in the journal NeuroReport. His study involved a mixed-gender group of university students who were asked to repeat either a curse word or a neutral control word while their hands were submerged in icy water. Researchers found that swearing enabled participants to withstand the uncomfortably icy water for significantly longer. It brought about a measurable reduction in the perception of pain (calibrated with a pain perception questionnaire) and significantly increased heart rate (measured with an electronic heart-rate monitor).

Dr. Stephens told me that participants were asked to repeat their assigned word over and over again at a consistent pace. "By using the same word over and over, we were attempting to keep conditions consistent," he said. "We looked specifically at pain tolerance and perception. When the study participants swore while experiencing the pain stimulus, they found the cold water less painful."

Ladies First...

Women, in particular, experienced a greater drop in pain perception when they were swearing. "We know that swearing evokes certain emotional responses, and that, in general, men tend to swear more than women," Dr. Stephens explained. "We speculated that in people who swear frequently, the emotional response erodes, making it a less effective mechanism in reducing the perception of pain or the ability to tolerate it."

Dr. Stephens also found that swearing was less effective in male participants who had been identified as being predisposed toward catastrophizing pain. For example, he said that if a person is prone to thinking that a small cut on his hand is likely to result in a nasty infection or some other catastrophic outcome, swearing will be less effective as a coping mechanism.

I may not feel particularly proud of myself the next time I bump my head and blurt out a naughty word -- but at least I know there’s science to justify my reaction.

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Richard Stephens, PhD, is a lecturer in psychology and the director of the master’s degree program in psychological research methods at Keele University in Staffordshire, England.

Even Atheists Understand

A lot of people are talking trash about the New Atheism (and in some cases, rightly so). But I want to address the oldest atheism. The oldest atheism is the atheism that God's chosen people (under the old covenant, mostly national Israel; under the new covenant, the baptized) exercise when they disbelieve the gospel.

“The world does not consist of 100 per cent Christians and 100 per cent non-Christians. There are people (a great many of them) who are slowly ceasing to be Christians but who still call themselves by that name; some of them are clergymen. There are other people who are slowly becoming Christians though they do not yet call themselves so. There are people who do not accept the full Christian doctrine about Christ but who are so strongly attracted by Him that they are His in a much deeper sense than they themselves understand. There are people in other religions who are being led by God’s secret influence to concentrate on those parts of their religion which are in agreement with Christianity, and who thus belong to Christ without knowing it...”

C.S. Lewis, Mere Christianity
Ch. 10, “Nice People or New Men.”

How do you know if your a Christian Atheist or if you're a Christian? Let me pose some questions that can guide us on the path:

Is the law written in my heart?
Do I love God with all my heart, soul, mind and strength?
Do I love my neighbor as myself?
Do I live by the Spirit?
Do I love the brothers?
Do I kill sin?
Do I repent?
Do I believe?
Do I die to self?
Do I follow Jesus?
Do I love Jesus more than the world?

• More than family and loved ones?
• More than life itself?

Is Jesus my treasure?
Do I delight in him above all else?
Do I obey his commandments?
Do I treat suffering people as if they were Christ himself?
Is my faith working through love?
Do I forgive others as God forgives me?

• Am I aware enough of God's forgiveness that I can forgive myself & others?
  

Am I increasing in holiness?

Climategate: Exposing the Lie That Needs to Die

James Delingpole has been doing yeoman's work exposing the disgusting underbelly of the anthropogenic global warming sham. He recently exposed a massive conspiracy among climate 'scientists' to cover up data that undermined their hypothesis.

Sorry, Goracle, you're just going to have to find another way to make a living than jetting around the world telling people that they have to...stop jetting around the world.

Read it and keep an eye out. There are people who love to concoct a crisis so they can use it to take away your freedom. (Yes, GWB did this. Yes, BHO is doing it now. Yes, the one-worlders are still trying to use the dead horse of "climate change" to undermine the economies of the West.)

Here's my point. People are falling for the apocalypse now garbage coming from these groups because they've stopped listening to the one person who actually knows how the world is going to end. (Hint: it's the same person who actually knows how the world began.)

What is the Core?

"You may take away from us, if you will, every external ceremony; you may take away altars, and super-altars, and lights, and incense, and vestments; you may take away, if you will, the eastward position; you may take away every possible ceremony; and you may command us to celebrate at the altar of God without any external symbolism whatsoever; you may give us the most barren of all observances, and we will submit to you. If this Church commands us to have no ceremonies, we will obey. But, gentlemen, the very moment any one says we shall not adore our Lord present in the Eucharist, then from a thousand hearts will come the answer, as of those bidden to go into exile, "Let me die in my own country and be buried by the grave of my father and my mother!" to adore Christ's person in His Sacrament, is the inalienable privilege of every Christian and Catholic heart. How we do it, the way we do it, the ceremonies which we do it, are utterly, utterly indifferent; the thing itself is what we plead for..."

James DeKoven, DD in a speech before General Convention, 1874

Standing on the Promise in Advent

Scripsit +Doc Loomis:

Advent 1: A description of ugly things to come is followed by this...."when these things begin to take place, stand up and raise your heads, because your redemption is drawing near" I'm standing...anyone else?

Great...now I have to do a hymn parody.

	Clyde McLennan - Standing on the promises .mp3
	Found at bee mp3 search engine

Standing on the promise
after Christ the King!
Advent is upon us,
Carols we shall sing!
Gloria in excelsis
and the bells that ring
Go away until it's Christmas Day!
Waiting! Waiting!
Waiting for the Promised One who's Israel's Savior!
Waiting! Waiting!
I'm waiting for the coming Son of God!

It is very meat and very right and our bounden duty

The CHOW Bacon-Wrapped Turkey with Pear Cider Gravy recipe produces a fine, fine Thanksgiving dish. In this video, watch it evolve from bagged bird to bacon-striped, pear-sweet, glistening roast.

You'd better call a priest or a cardiologist to absolve you after this meat monster.

I Hate to Say I Told You So

But I told you so. Now the AU (arrogant Unitarians?) has its collective panties in a wad over the signing of the Manhattan Declaration.

At a press conference today, Religious Right leaders and Roman Catholic bishops unveiled a joint statement criticizing laws that allow reproductive choice and same-sex marriage.

Hmm...Roman Catholics acting catholic? That is news! I really wish AU could get their story straight.

Said the Rev. Barry W. Lynn, Americans United executive director, “This declaration is certain to be deeply divisive. These religious leaders want to see their doctrines imposed by force of law, and that goes against everything America stands for.

“I am optimistic that the people in the pews will not heed their leaders’ misguided call to action,” Lynn said. “Polls show that most church-goers do not want to see their faith politicized. But I am also well aware that religious leaders have vast lobbying power that cannot be ignored.”

Aww...I preferred it when they were saying that the Roman Catholics only wanted to stop helping people at all!

Lynn noted the House version of health-care reform was revised at the behest of the U.S. Conference of Catholic Bishops to curtail women’s access to abortion.

So which is it, AU? Should they have stayed out of politics altogether (when they energized their base to lobby for universal health-care)? Or is it only when they bring to their political activism who they are as people of faith?