Sounds like you need a drink, papi

- Come on. Drinks are on me! It'll cheer you up.
- I'm not... uncheered.
- Oh, yeah? Tell that to your face!

When a psychoanalytic patient comes for the first time into the therapist's office there are a number of things that that therapist is going to do.

The first is to get an assessment of the symptom. What is the symptom? When does it happen? When did it begin?

You then wanna rule out biological problems. You wanna ask about this person's genetic history. You wanna find out about their biological relatives. Did they have similar problems? Is there depression, is there anxiety in the family? You wanna make sure that this person is amendable to primarily talking rather than to a medical therapy. Is this person someone who is experiencing some kind of delusions or hallucinations in which case you're going to be thinking in more of a biological direction. 

You wanna know about this person's history. How does this symptom fit into this person's life history? Where does this person come from? How do I understand what this person's mind is like now given what I know about this person's history, about the way this person experienced his/her history? 

A fourth thing you want to ask about after the symptoms, the biological history and the person's developmental history - you wanna essentially get some idea about this person's primary conflicts and defenses. You wanna know what's going on about the surface? What is it that's bothering this person as well as how does this person try to regulate that? And how does this person in general try to regulate their emotions?

Finally you try to get an assessment of their object relations. Is this a person that's capable of intimate relationships? Is this a person who has particular deficits in that respect? Who has particular conflicts which get in the way of relatedness. Is this a person who avoids relationships entirely because of fears that have developed a long time ago about relationships, that they're somehow threatening or that things aren't going to work out in them.

(There is, indeed, a great deal of evidence now suggesting that patterns of attachment that you see as early as 12 or 18 months in a laboratory are predictive of social behaviour in pre-school, in the elementary school years and we're starting to have some evidence suggesting that these patterns are passed on from generation to generation. Most of the studies have found particularly the primary caretaker which is usually the mother; that the way the mother appears to be attached to her own mother or her own parents as an adult is highly predictive of the way her child at 18 months or 6 years will be attached to her.) So that's the way a psychoanalytic assessment would proceed with the patient.

-- Drew Westen

Cum funcţionează _de fapt_ ceasul

Nu vom mai privi niciodată universul ca înainte. O mie de mistere au fost măturate imediat. Energia se converteşte mereu în masă şi invers. Când îţi întorci ceaasul deşteptător seara (desigur, acum nimeni nu mai întoarce ceasuri deşeptătoare), îi creşti de fapt masa, ce-i drept foarte puţin. prin energia înmagazinată în legăturile chimice deformate ale arcului. Când ceasul ticăie, arcul se destinde, convertind această cantitate imperceptibilă de masă înapoi în energie. Eergia ia formă de căldură, produsă de frecarea componentelor ceasului, şi de unde acustice produse de ticăit. Un fizician ar spune că, atunci când arcul este complet destins, ceasul se află în "starea lui fundamentală" -- stearea de cea mai joasă energie. Ceasul cântăreşte mai puţin în starea fundamentală, dar diferenţa este prea mică pentru a fi măsurată.

Judecătorul Thomas Penfield Jackson de la tribunalul districtual Columbia, recunoscându-şi limitele în chestiuni tehnice, a pasat problema unui specialist, William E. Schuyler Jr., inginer electrician şi fost membru al comisiei de patente. Spre teribila consternare a Biroului de Patente şi Mărci, raportul din 28 septembrie 1984 al lui Schuyler către Curte trăgea concluzia că existau dovezi copleşitoare că Maşina de Energie a lui Newman producea mai mult decât consuma. Suporterii lui Newman jubilau.

Judecătorul Jackson nu era totuşi convins. Ştia probabil că în viaţă nu capeţi niciodată nimic pe degeaba. Bazându-se pe propriul bun-simţ, judecătorul s-a apucat să înveţe puţină fizică. Peste opt luni, la 11 iunie 1985, judecătorul Jackson a susţinut că raportul lui Schuyler era evident greşit.

Who knew life could get so... unsimple?

Conga!

Interesting that the Hitler mustache offends people, but I’ve been secretly copying his eyebrow style for years and not a single person has noticed.

-- Rob DenBleyker, webcomic artist

Warning

The fictional news story you saw near the start of Test Your Morality may have influenced your responses to the moral scenarios in the test. This story was designed to arouse moral concerns specifically related to one of the functions that keep the ‘human superorganism’ working properly.
You were shown a story about set-backs in a war with a neighbouring country. This may have artificially increased your sense of wrongness.
This news story was included in the test to help our scientists discover more about what influences a person’s response to moral scenarios. Your story was randomly selected from a group of stories.
Thank you for participating!

 [...]

Your score suggests that you do not generally feel anger when someone goes against your personal view of what is right. This means you are less likely to react in a confrontational manner towards people who do not share your values.

Your score suggests that you do not experience a strong emotional response to issues of right and wrong. You probably rarely feel physically sickened by the immoral actions of other people.

The desire to avoid is thought to be a consequence of being disgusted by someone’s behaviour. Your score suggests that while you may find some actions morally disgusting, you are less likely to have concerns about interacting with those involved. You may be more tolerant than others in terms of your desire to avoid.

This.

Has gotta be one of the worst fucking lives I've had.

True story.

"Ştii ce visam mai-nainte?
Visam că tu vrei să devii scriitor. Iar eu îţi spuneam că nu poţi fi artist, pentru că nu iubeşti."

pentru că nu iubeşti.
nu iubeşti.
nu

A logician rides an elevator. The door opens and someone asks:
— Are you going up or down?
— Yes.

(this one comes with an addendum: )

The logician should be fired for incompetency!
When the elevator doors are open, the elevator is stationary, therefore the right answer is “No”.

Care sare în evidenţă?