Things so horrible you never want to be in the situation to find them out #167

[andrewducker]

Collecting your own stool sample is _exactly_ as unpleasant as you'd imagine.

Comments

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

quite how irredeemably perverted by language we are.

Something I am thinking about again at the moment actually (in my own, brute-force kind of way).

You can end up right up your own arse (he heh) with considering language though. That's a philosopher's job :-) I'm a scientist, gimme repeatable results :-) (which I am aware there are, and have read up on a few more really fascinating effects recently...)

[thishardenedarm.livejournal.com]

(which I am aware there are, and have read up on a few more really fascinating effects recently...)

go on, share, or at least point...

[channelpenguin.livejournal.com]

I'd have to go and reference-comb/spend some time hunting stuff down. Some is quite old, some I only vaugely recall - a couple of bits I know are mentioned in a book that's under my bed, so that'll be easy.

Stuff like reading/hearing/watching sexist/racist material affecting results of intelligence tests, Association tests (you now is this word 'X or negative', Y or positive' where X and Y have sterotypical associations - now try it vice versa and watch the reaction times skyrocket, can be done with all sorts of categories) differences in perception of the same thing between people who speak different languages which vary in their descriptive range/power/variety. People walking slower down the corridor after a seemingly random word test that sprinkled terms associated with being old...

And I really wonder about deaf people in the days before and after widespread literacy/teaching of sign language...

Might be a mission for me. Not to sure I have the time, though...