I was just snacking on a bowl of nuts and it got me wondering how did nuts end up being a metaphor for crazy?  You know, like when people say he's a total nut or let's go nuts.  They seem like perfectly normal and rational objects to me.  I mean if they were jumping out of the bowl unpredictably and causing damage to your house I could see the association being made, but as it is I'm not sure how they got themselves tangled up in this.  Do they just have a bad P.R. person working for them?  

In the ongoing spirit of learning I think I'm going to go look up the origin of the term nuts.  I'll be right back...

Okay.  Here's what I learned.  Apparently at some point in the 1800's the word nut had become a slang word for head.  So at that point if someone said you were off your nut it basically meant you were out of your mind.  Somehow over the years it appears that was shortened to just you're nuts and that's where it came from.  Interesting.  Always fun to learn stuff.  

It also seems to me nuts have somehow become slang for a different body part over the years.  Hence saying I've got a nut ache would have a much different connotation today than it possibly would have in the the 1800's.