@Azazello

The chef died yesterday at the age of 91. - Wikipedia
The Dakar rally ended yesterday after 14 stages.
Peugeot won the car class, Kamaz won the trucks, again.
Best of cars:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RITKlxMRg78 width:500 height:300]
Best of Trucks:
[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=34E4inDqKEU width:500 height:300]

@hecate @hecate
Made me recall an incident with my grandmother:

I was visiting her years after my grandfather passed away. And all of a sudden it just dawned on me that besides the hug and kiss we'd always exchange, there was not very much touching involved from my side. Of course for her it was different. As her firstborn grandchild her maternal instinct was such that she'd cover me with a blanket just moments after I began to doze on her couch, maybe take off my shoes also, or run her hands through my hair as she walked by. It was deep relaxation for me to be so cared for. I can still feel it when I think of it.

So there we were in her condo. I'm thinking, aside from the obligatory family greeting upon entering and leaving, she probably hasn't been touched at all anywhere for so long. So when I walked in back of her sitting on a chair I impulsively reached from her shoulder to her earlobe to sort of massage it. She laughed, thought it was strange and then seemed to enjoy it - all in a few split seconds. I thought later, she probably hadn't had anyone touch her ear in decades, if not ever, because it's not where we think to massage. But moreover, men, especially from my grandfather's era (and he was also incapacitated on workers comp), probably never thought to massage their women. It's likely she had never had anyone even touch her earlobe.

I get a warm feeling when I think of that.

is important for the humans. Particularly the male ones. Without it, they suffer, become sick, think sick thoughts, engage in sick behaviors, vote for The Hairball.

Touch is the first, and perhaps most profound, language we learn when we’re very young. Touch might have a more immediate impact than words, “because it is physical and leads to a chain of bioelectric and chemical changes that basically relax the nervous system.”

The benefits of nonsexual touch read like a 19th-century tonic advertisement, except that the outcomes have been scientifically vetted. Touch has been found, among other things, to reduce stress, heart rate and blood pressure. Touch has even been found to lower the level of cortisol in the body which, when elevated, impedes our working memory and, most critically, the immune system’s resiliency.

The psychologist Ofer Zur notes that for most 20th- and 21st-century American men, physical contact is restricted to violence or sex. The fear that girds the lack of platonic touch among American men also fuels the destructive force of their hands. “The cultures that exhibited minimal physical affection toward their young children had significantly higher rates of adult violence. Those cultures that showed significant amounts of physical affection toward their young children had virtually no adult violence.”

When faced with stressors, men tend to turn cowboy, growing stoic, emotionally withdrawn and, too often, isolated. If this cowboy approach strengthened men mentally and emotionally, it wouldn’t be a problem. But the weight of having to suppress stress and the resulting emotions that are perceived as unmanly doesn’t make men more resilient. It makes them more vulnerable, triggering anxiety and depression. A 2000 study by U.C.L.A. researchers finds that “Men are more likely than women to respond to stressful experiences by developing certain stress-related disorders,” such as hypertension, alcohol and drug abuse.

They are a population Kory Floyd, a professor of communication at the University of Arizona, had in mind when he wrote about “affection deprivation." Dr. Floyd studied the effects of what he calls “skin hunger,” discovering that people who experience this phenomenon were, among other things, more lonely, depressed, had less social support, experienced more mood and anxiety disorders and an inability to interpret and express emotions. This lack of affection correlated with a “fearful avoidant attachment style,” the same reaction so common in affection-deprived children from orphanages—and in many men.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bvibrk9xqoM]

Humans do not need the words. They can say what needs to be said, through touch.

We have an innate ability to decode emotions via touch alone. In a series of studies, Hertenstein had volunteers attempt to communicate a list of emotions to a blindfolded stranger solely through touch. Participants communicated eight distinct emotions—anger, fear, disgust, love, gratitude, sympathy, happiness, and sadness—with accuracy rates as high as 78 percent. Previous studies by Hertenstein and others have produced similar findings abroad, including in Spain and the U.K. Research has also been conducted in Pakistan and Turkey. "Everywhere we've studied this, people seem able to do it," he says.

"With the face and voice, in general we can identify just one or two positive signals that are not confused with each other," says Hertenstein. For example, joy is the only positive emotion that has been reliably decoded in studies of the face. Meanwhile, his research shows that touch can communicate multiple positive emotions: joy, love, gratitude, and sympathy. Scientists used to believe touching was simply a means of enhancing messages signaled through speech or body language, "but it seems instead that touch is a much more nuanced, sophisticated, and precise way to communicate emotions," Hertenstein says.

Psychologist Michael Kraus tracked physical contact between teammates during NBA games (consider all those chest bumps, high fives, and backslaps). The study revealed that the more on-court touching there was early in the season, the more successful teams and individuals were by season's end. The effect of touch was independent of salary or performance.

Mom's touch even seems to mitigate pain when infants are given a blood test.

Seemingly insignificant touches yield bigger tips for waitresses, people shop and buy more if they're touched by a store greeter, strangers are more likely to help someone if a touch accompanies the request. Call it the human touch.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C5NLfQ3u358]

Some of the humans touch more than others.

Psychologist Sidney Jourard observed friends chatting to each other in cafes across the world. Jourard found that in the space of an hour, people in Puerto Rico touched each other an average of 180 times. In Paris, it was 110 times. Jet over to Florida and the averaged dropped to twice an hour. In London the average was zero.

This is why the British sailed all over the world, thrusting themselves into all the other peoples and cultures. They were searching for somebody to touch.

[video:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p124Fa_kTE8]