Thoughtless for the Day

Yesterday afternoon Vienna and I lay in bed (I was still hung over from my visit to Fast, Cheap and Out of Control on Sunday night and she was wearing her Vladimir Putin pajamas) and watched Steven Pinker, author of The Stuff of Thought: Language as a Window into Human Nature talk about "taboo words" on Book TV (you can catch the entire lecture here). It seems that a good argument can be made for taboo words triggering a response in an early-mammalian portion of our brains. In other words, mammals evolved a process by which they would emit a harsh vocalization (think stepping on a cat's tail - let that remain a thought experiment) when harmed or threatened and a few million years later we humans let loose a torrent of obscenities whenever we hit our thumbs with a hammer. By the way, it seems that taboo words come in categories and sub-categories such as Supernatural (Oh Christ! Goddamn! Damn it!); Excretory/Urinary (Shit! Piss! Asshole!); Members of "Outsider Groups" (Nigger! Kike! Spick! Honky! Wog!); and, of course, Sexual (Fuck! [Masturbatory (Jerk Off! Wanker!)] [Incest (Motherfucker!)] [Bestiality (Kiss the Cunt of a Cow!- that's from the sixteenth century, just in case you wondered)])

How deep-seated are taboo words in the human brain? Here's a little experiment
(It's highly likely that you've seen the first two parts before); Say aloud
the color each of the following words appears in:

Now do the same for these words:

Not as easy as you thought it would be, eh? OK, try these (remember, just say the
color each appears in):

Almost as tough as the last batch, huh? Thanks to Michelle Malkin for that last one

All that aside, one of the best moments of Pinker's lecture had to be his comments about Bono running afoul with the FCC for saying "Fookin' brilliant" upon receiving a Grammy. It seems that the FCC was unable to fine Bono because he had used the word as an interjection. Congress (a homonym of which is a taboo word and who had allocated the funds for CPSAN 2 on which Book TV airs) acted quickly in order to protect Americans from the threat of foulmouthed Irish Rockers and attempted to amend the FCC's rulebook via the following section of the Clean Airwaves Act

"...the words "shit", "piss", "fuck", "cunt", "asshole", and the phrases "cock sucker", "mother fucker", and "ass hole", compound use (including hyphenated compounds) of such words and phrases with each other or with other words or phrases, and other grammatical forms of such words and phrases (including verb, adjective, gerund, participle, and infinitive forms)."