A Picture from a Recent Trip to Vienna I Somehow Forgot to Post

...before my residency's required psychoanalytic training ended and grades were in. This is the Freud Museum in Vienna, which used to be his flat and office, and is still a regular (nice) apartment building. (A hand-written sign taped to a current resident's door on the ground floor by the entrance explained in unsubtly annoyed German that the Freud Museum was upstairs.) I do have to admit a grudging admiration for Freud's self-promotion. At this point, I invite you to say pseudo-profound things in an Austrian accent about how my early life experiences led me to struggle against authority, I want to kill my father, etc. I loved Vienna and Central Europe generally, even including this museum. You will note I did grow a beard for the occasion, but at no point had a cigar.


The most interesting thing in the museum was the microtome on display, which he used to make brain sections. I imagine him thinking, "You can never get anywhere doing it this way...maybe I'll convince people I have the power to do the same thing by talking to people!" There was also a picture of him with fellow Viennese intellectual socialites, one of whom was an immediately striking and intense woman who turned out to be Ludwig Wittgenstein's sister. Also, in German the parts of the subconscious are just rendered in German (not Latin), as "Das Ich Und Das Es" ("The Ego and the Id") which somehow takes away some of the authoritative punch.

American English: Examples of Within-Our-Lifetime Language Change

I once saw a translation of Beowulf from the early twentieth century, which used "throve" as the past tense of "thrive." Interestingly, this means that even the "modern" translation is now outdated, since during the twentieth century "thrived" replaced "throve." Language waits for no one.

I have noticed one particular shift in American English: "buck naked" has become "butt naked." No doubt readers younger than mid-30s will have never heard "buck naked" and wonder what I’m talking about. The explanation for the shift is that in some varieties of Black American English, the "k" sound at the end of buck becomes a glottal stop, which is then heard and reproduced as a t in most accents of American English. In conclusion - it’s BUCK, not butt, and you kids get off my lawn.

Also, many Californians pronounce the "-ing" verb suffix as "-een"; it's more prominent the further south you go in the state (Think Blink 182 - they’re from San Diego), which suggests it's from language contact with Spanish. When asked about this, people who clearly produce the morpheme this way, some people have insisted to me that they say it it the same as an -ing; this is common for people who speak non-received dialects that differ subtly, since they actually cannot hear the difference between the two phones. I once saw a young student learning to spell, write out a verb phonetically that way, ie "bildeen" for building. I mention this because as California becomes more prominent in American culture, I expect its dialect to become more prestigious, and people elsewhere will start imitating it - so by mid-century, people in e.g. the Midwest may be saying -een instead of -ing.

GAME OVER, ANTI-ALTAIC SPLITTISTS!

These splitter linguists have had their say for long enough. The Japanese are clearly just the island branch of Altaic peoples, and the anthropological data is enough. In Mongolia, you're not supposed to whistle inside a ger because it will bring a windstorm. In Korea, whistling at night will bring spirits and snakes too. In Japan, you're not supposed to whistle indoors because either a snake will come - or Tengu will kidnap you. What are Tengu? I'm so glad you asked. Tengu are the indigenous, pre-Buddhist spirits that can create strong winds. By the way, what was the Altaic sky-god's name? Tengri. SPLITTER LINGUISTS, IT'S OVER! IT'S ALL OVER!

Alright. That may be overstating the case, but one has to admit it's otherwise an odd superstition to share.

Treasures in the Ghettoes of Pubmed

"Werewolves and physicians experienced their closest contact in the context of early modern witch and werewolf trials."

Best opening sentence of a paper ever. From Metzger N. Battling demons with medical authority: werewolves, physicians and rationalization. History of Psychiatry 24(3) 341–355, 2013.

Discovered in the same Pubmed search: Høyersten JG. The berserkers--what was wrong with them?. Tidsskr Nor Laegeforen. 2004 Dec 16;124(24):3247-50. Surprisingly, only in Norwegian.

And a final gem, where I present to you the abstract: Psychopharmacology of lycanthropy (Davis et al 1992) (do note that there is an actual full paper behind this abstract:

OBJECTIVE: To develop pharmacotherapies for the orphan disease lycanthropy through the pursuit of the etiologic hypothesis of a genetically determined hypersecretion of endogenous lycanthropogens. DESIGN: Quadruple-blind, Rubik's Cube matrix analysis. SETTING: Community practice and malpractice. PARTICIPANTS: Subjects selected from inbred Ruficolla populations in Mississippi, Georgia, North Carolina and Minnesota. All who entered the study finished it. INTERVENTIONS: Chemical screening of blood samples over a hypothesized secretory cycle of lycanthropogen peaking on the day of maximum lunar illumination. Administration of synthetic lycanthropogens for behavioural testing. Experimental lycosomatization through the illumination method of Kirschbaum. OUTCOME MEASURES: None were post hoc, but some are still in hock. MAIN RESULTS: Two putative lycanthropogens were isolated from the blood samples. Structural elucidation and synthesis permitted animal and clinical trials; in each of these, behavioural dysfunction was observed. Antilycanthropogen strategies included application of the principle of caged compounds and generation of a therapeutic immunoglobulin. The effects of a newly developed antihirsutic agent seemed promising. An interaction of the lycanthropogen-secretion system and ethanol was noted, which may explain behavioural aspects of alcoholism. CONCLUSIONS: The incidence of lycomania in North America is underestimated. Soon-to-be-available pharmacotherapies should promote its early detection and treatment. Full control may depend upon advances in gene therapy.

U is for Utility, That's Good E-Nough For Me

Learn more here. If this makes you laugh out loud you are an enormous nerd.

Scorpion Peppers, and Partial Agonists in Molecular Gastronomy

Above: pain

Trinidad scorpion peppers are the hottest peppers in the world, and will actually blister your skin if you touch the oil. If Clive Barker bred his own pepper, these would be it. (1,500,000 Scovilles; compare to a jalapeno's 8,000.) Back in May, for some sadomasochistic reason, my friend had a party where he invited people to a feast of these Lovecraftian abominations. Surprisingly, some idiots accepted his invitation. Not surprisingly, all of them had Y chromosomes. Even less surprisingly I was among them.

The reason I'm posting this here is because my otherwise inexplicable behavior afforded me a chance to test a theory. Years ago, I'd noticed that when I'd put too many jalapenos on something, a minute later I ate some spicy but not really hot barbecue sauce, and thought I noticed that the heat abated quickly. If the heat is caused by different capsaicinoids (a critical assumption as it turns out!) it's possible the barbecue sauce capsaicinoid acted as a partial agonist at the receptor, decreasing the heat from the jalapenos. The agonist for the current experiment would be the scorpion pepper, and the partial agonist, Tabasco sauce. Many of the people at the party were medicinal chemists who were interested in this hypothesis; specifically, in watching someone else test it. Medicinal chemists are bad people.

The stakes were high: if I failed, not only would my theory be falsified (in front of a bunch of medicinal chemists no less) but I would be in considerable pain. As if to highlight the risks, when I got there the host was walking around with an ice pack under his shirt, and the only guy that ate a whole one was actually crying from the pain. (Warning, language. Trust me, if you did this you would have language too.)

Drumroll:



But I don't think this can be considered a valid result until it's replicated. Perhaps you would be interested in being a subject?

"Of Course!"

Road Signs for Meditation

To One-Beer or Two-Beer on Newcomb's Paradox

This is a bit of an inside joke for Less Wrongers, so my apologies if it doesn't make you smile. (More on Newcomb's problem here.)



Newcomb's Ranch is a (very isolated) bar on Angeles Crest Highway (CA Route 2) in Angeles National Forest, maybe an hour and a half from downtown LA. One might ask if I one-beered or two-beered at Newcomb's. My good madame or sir, why are one or two the only options? Anyway by the end of the night I thought I was pretty smart but then Omega in his function as omniscient bartender cut me off.

Forget Expected Utility, I Like *This* Kind

Public Health Ads Look Cooler in Basque

Taken Donostia, Spain, June 2001.

John Searle Must Be Spamming Me

Because with all the comment-spam, the waiting-to-be-moderated comments list looks like a Chinese chat-room. I have yet to see any Hindi. And anyway I'm sure the machine producing the spam doesn't understand the symbols.

Croatian Girl Wakes Up from Coma Speaking German

This is more dramatic than "foreign accent syndrome", although the story is short, the source suspect, and even without those two de-weighting considerations I would highly doubt it's real. I would put money down that we're going to find one of the following:

1) It's exaggerated, and at most she has some form of foreign accent syndrome.

2) The girl spoke German before she was in a coma.