We all know about the placebo effect. Well, here’s its ugly brother.

nocebo (no-SEE-bo) noun: A substance producing harmful effects in someone because it is believed to be harmful, but which in reality is harmless. [From Latin nocebo (I will harm), from nocere (to harm). Modeled after placebo (I will please).]

Both groups who received nocebos showed elevated levels of the stress hormone cortisol in their blood.” James Morgan; Is Your Pain a Trick of the Mind? The Herald (Glasgow, UK); Jan 12, 2007.

An article with many interesting examples of nocebo effect.

From words at wordsmith.org

Emotion…

Zing!

P.S. This is one thing I love about English–it’s alive and growing, stealing from any language it can.

This from a gal I know who’s been touring Spain…

I ate a quarter of a suckling pig today. I feel like a monster for eating such a young animal; a rotund, content, sleepily sluggish, well fed monster.

If you’re going to kill an animal, kill it when it’s young. It so much more barbaric that way…

And she sends along these pictures.

Is that not the voice of a character speaking to you?

Zing, Baby!

I’m beginning a study of linguistics. Well, an author’s study, which is different from getting a degree or anything like unto it. I’m looking for what’s useful for a specific project. And when I want to know about a subject, I’ve found it’s best to start with the juveniles and encylopedias so I can get the big picture and the actual pictures (who said picture books were for kids?) and then move to more detailed and specific stuff. Well, I came across a marvelous quote within the first 30 seconds of Wikipedia’s entry on Linguistics:

Linguistic inquiry is pursued by a wide variety of specialists, who may not all be in harmonious agreement; as journalist Russ Rymer put it:

“Linguistics is arguably the most hotly contested property in the academic realm. It is soaked with the blood of poets, theologians, philosophers, philologists, psychologists, biologists, anthropologists, and neurologists, along with whatever blood can be got out of grammarians.”

Whatever blood can be got…

(grin)

That’s going in a story, somewhere, I gotta use that somewhere.

Zing, Baby!

Is this not delicious? I found it on istockphotos.com and couldn’t stay away. I want to be on that trail. I want to know what’s around that bend. Holy moly, the feeling of this photo is just marvelous.

So I bought a copy. It’s by stellalevi.

Zing, Baby!

Someone has managed to photograph the pot at the end of the rainbow

My wonderful wife just forwarded me this breaking photograph

Alas, another dream shattered.