fetching a fork

Starting a blog is easy – sign up with blogger, choose your name and hammer out the first post in a burst of exuberance. Keeping it going is much harder. It requires dedication, passion and, when that's not enough, sheer dogged persistence, the bloody will to pull narratory rabbits out of nonexisting hats. With this approach, I've turned this blog from a fitful curiosity that would make unannounced visits into a rather well-fed regular, and I'm enjoying myself.

At the same time, I'm sometimes wondering what I'm writing for or, to pose the reverse question, what I could gain if I wrote differently. My experience in life is obviously science. That's what I've been doing for more than ten years now, that's what I spend most of my waking hours thinking about. And every once in a while, in a lull in my cerebral activity, the same thought pops into my mind. Shouldn't I be writing about science?

Science writing is a grislier beast than leisurely personal blogging, and I've shied away from it thus far. I have an account with Nature Network and could set up a targeted science blog just as easily as I opened the one you're reading, but I haven't done it. I'm held back by the impossibility of the double commitment and, to a lesser extent, the seriousness of the endeavor, a double-edged sword. I couldn't help but take science blogging very seriously indeed. Among the readers that Nature Network attracts are potential future employers, in the fields of academic science or scientific writing, and representatives of grant-giving bodies. Fear-inducing and motivation-boosting, this is not something to take lightly.

It would also be no place to indulge in the gratuitous use of the word fuck, which is indeed what the rest of this post is about.

Fuck, the audience thinks, is a clear sign of a limited vocabulary and a frightening lack of eloquence. Shut up already. But I won't shut up, and I'm not saying fuck because I can't think of something better, something more precise or descriptive. Each word in this post has been picked with utmost care, and fuck does in fact describe astonishingly well what I'm going to say.

The other day I read about a research project whose goal it was to test whether there was any inherent benefit to inspired swearing. Specifically, a bunch of college students were asked to stick a hand in a bucket of ice water and leave it there until they couldn't take it no longer. The first time around, they were only allowed the power of their will and required to sit in silence as the pain increased and quickly became unbearable. For the second experiment, the volunteers were encouraged to swear as loudly and passionately as they could.

The results were unambiguous. Swearing helped the students endure the pain of a freezing hand much longer. Better yet, it made them feel the pain less. Directly responsible for this was the act of swearing. Yelling neutral words had no effect at all. Digging a bit deeper, the researchers found that their subjects' heart rates increase when they started swearing. They seemed to enter a state of heightened alert.

Fuck, then, is nothing else but a sophisticated (and you'd never thought you'd read this adjective describe the word fuck) articulation of the warthog's grunt when it jumps in panic to escape a hunting lion or the lion's roar when he explodes into a merciless chase after the unfortunate warthog. Fuck is an evolutionarily developed way of coping with extreme stress and pain.

But while the judicious use of swearwords can be extremely beneficial, the authors are quick to point out that the effect wears off. Men, who tend to swear more than women, especially when repairing cars or watching football, gained less from uttering profanities in the study. Their freezing hands hurt nearly as much as when they were silent. The benefits of swearing had most likely been stunted by overuse.

So far, so good. Interesting little bit of research, but only good enough for NeuroReport, a rather obscure journal. I got my Ph.D. at the University of Utah, and reading about this study I immediately had an idea of how to take it to the next level. With some luck, there might even be an IgNobel Prize around the corner.

In Salt Lake City, I was surrounded for six years by Mormons, fellows so gentle and friendly that I couldn't help but start considering myself a honorary member of their cult. There was only one thing that always disturbed me. Mormons swear like sailors, but in disguise. Open expletives are against Church policy and apparently the Lord's will, and never heard. Instead, young Mormons turn innocuous words like fork and fetch into offensive curses. When they use these words, it's obvious from the context that they're swearing, no matter what they say.

The notion that God could be tricked so easily always elicited convulsive laughter in me, but the really interesting question is whether the Mormons manage to trick themselves. Take volunteers in Utah or from your local LDS ward house and perform the same experiment as above. Ask them to scream fork and fetch. Does their heart rate rise. Does the pain stay bearable? Is it swearing?

Alternatively, if you believe in doing things yourself, you can just scream the word fork in quick repetition. What do you hear? Don't say it. It's not something that's fit for my blog.