Word: stepping
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NATO and U.S. forces have a new commander, General Stanley McChrystal. What are the first three or four things he needs to do to address this problem? I think the first step has to be identifying how the money and drugs flow, studying the maps and looking at the routes that narcotics take out of the country, identifying where the drug labs are, identifying the major players. This is going to require a lot more intelligence-sharing than has been going...
...slow charge" can take up to eight hours and may jack up an electric bill the equivalent of 2 kilowatts per month. Most e-car owners will eventually want to plug in their faster, highway-approved EVs into new rapid-charging, 220-volt garage chargers. But that requires another step: finding a certified electrician and several thousand more dollars to install the add-on feature to the home or garage...
...swear cathartically, says Steven Pinker, a Harvard psychologist and author of The Stuff of Thought, an exploration of the psychology of language. Pinker distinguishes cathartic cursing from using profanity descriptively, idiomatically, abusively or for emphasis, and points to similar behavior in animals that suggests its evolutionary roots. If you step on a dog or cat's tail, it will let out a sharp yelp of pain, for example. "Swearing probably comes from a very primitive reflex that evolved in animals," Pinker says. "In humans, our vocal tract has been hijacked by our language skills," so instead of barking...
...frontal lobes, which inhibit these responses," Sidtis explains. But in certain circumstances - either because we don't bother to inhibit them or because the shock of pain or discomfort momentarily surpasses the safeguards - our impulse for obscenity takes over. "In that way, it's like the dog when you step on his tail," Sidtis says...
...flight. But while it is typically fear that triggers the stress response, Stephens suggests the salient emotion in this case is not fear but aggression. "In swearing, people have an emotional response, and it's the emotional response that actually triggers the reduction of pain," says Stephens, whose next step is to research the relationship between induced aggression and reduction of pain. (In past studies, the opposite has been found: higher levels of pain tolerance predict heightened aggression...