Hell of a Question

HELL EXPLAINED BY    

A CHEMISTRY STUDENT

 

The following is an actual question given on University of Arizona chemistry mid term.  
 

The answer by one student was so 'profound' that the professor shared it with colleagues, via the Internet, which is, of course, why we now have the pleasure of enjoying it as well:  

Bonus Question: Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)?  

Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools when it expands and heats when it is compressed) or some variant.  

 One student, however, wrote the following:  

First, we need to know how the mass of Hell is changing in time. So we need to know the rate at which souls are moving into Hell and the rate at which they are leaving. I think that we can safely assume that once a soul gets to Hell, it will not leave. There fore, no souls are leaving. As for how many souls are entering Hell, let's look at the different religions that exist in the world today. 

Most of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there is more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all souls go to Hell. With birth and death rates as they are, we can expect the number of souls in Hell to increase exponentially. Now, we look at the rate of change of the volume in Hell because Boyle's Law states that in order for the temperature and pressure in Hell to stay the same, the volume of Hell has to expand proportionately as souls are added.

This gives two possibilities:  

 1. If Hell is expanding at a slower rate than the rate at which souls enter Hell, then the temperature and pressure in Hell will increase until all Hell breaks loose.  

2. If Hell is expanding at a rate faster than the increase of souls in Hell, then the temperature and pressure will drop until Hell freezes over. 

So which is it?  

If we accept the postulate given to me by Teresa during my Freshman year that, 'It will be a cold day in Hell before I sleep with you,' and take into account the fact that I slept with her last night, then number two must be true, and thus I am sure that Hell is exothermic and has already frozen over. The corollary of this theory is that since Hell has frozen over, it follows that it is not accepting any more souls and is therefore, extinct..... ...leaving only Heaven, thereby proving the existence of a divine being which explains why, last night, Teresa kept shouting

'Oh my God.' 

 THIS STUDENT RECEIVED AN A+.

Ikea's Manland

It's true.  Guys now have a place to go when our wives ask us to go shopping.

Typically when my wife asks me to go shopping I feign a burst appendix or try to think of something I have to do around the house.  

My wife loves to shop.  She is good at it.  She will spend hours wandering and looking.  She gets good deals. 

I like to commando shop.  No - that's not shopping without underpants.  It is knowing what single item you want before you go into the store, heading right to it without distraction, taking less than a minute to grab it and heading directly to the check out.  The mission is complete in 3 minutes and 15 seconds if the check out line is short.  If I am in the store for more than 5 minutes I expect my unit to come in on a rescue mission. 

Ikea, the Swedish furniture giant, has come up with a great idea.  They have a room for guys to play foosball or watch football.  Sort of like a daddy day care, only it is dad who is being watched. 

I can't wait for this to come to the US.  I will actually want to go to Ikea.  My wife can browse to her heart's content while I catch up on ESPN.  I wonder if I can show up in my pajamas?

Two dudes play a game of foosball in IKEA's Manland, an adult play area for those bored husbands and boyfriends. Photo: YouTube

Father of the Year

Late one night a truck was pulled over on the interstate outside Baton Rouge, LA.  The driver was 8 years old.  His very intoxicated dad was in the passenger seat along with his 4 year old sister. 

It seems dad had too much to drink and had instructed his 8 year old son to drive him home.  After all, dad shouldn't be driving, for safety reasons as well as the possiblity of getting a DUI ticket. 

My question is how does an 8 year old reach the pedals?  Did he tie bricks to his feet? 

You know, if you take the fact that the kid was 8 out of the equasion, the guy wasn't as dumb as you may think.  He didn't get behind the wheel himself, and he did get a designated driver.  I think kids should get special dispensation if they get caught driving underage when they are bringing their alcoholic parents home. 

Happy Anniversary

I was having a bad day.  I had this tussle at work last night and woke up to a crappy email.  I am still recovering from jet lag so I got up at 5:00 am this morning and I couldn't get back to sleep and I lost my prescription glasses. 

I got to work and closed my door.  Everyone knows this is code for leave me alone.  I took my pharmacy reading glasses and began researching who I needed to go to for replacement glasses.  The choices were meager and I had to make an appointment. 

I decided to look at my brother's websiteand there was a banner announcement for my anniversary.  I totally forgot it was today.  I immediately called my wife and wished her a happy anniversary and luckly she had missed it too.

My wife and I have been married for 35 wonderful years.  We have grown up together, raised 4 kids together and battled against the evil forces in the universe together.  She truly is my soul mate.  A few years ago we mutually agreed that we wouldn't make a big deal about our anniversary.  We don't have big parties, we don't do lavish gifts or trips and we don't expect each other to do anything secret.  It is just another reminder that we are both very lucky to have found each other so early in our lives.

So here is my best wishes to my other half - May you continue to enjoy my company as much as I do yours in the coming years, may you always feel safe in telling me anything and may you know that I am always thinking about you and your well being.  This is my commitment to you.  I love you.

Round and Round We Go

I'm here in England and finally I have a few minutes to myself.  I set off on Saturday to get to England on Sunday (they are 7 hours ahead of SLC time and it takes more than one day to get there for those who haven't done this).  I wanted to be ready to go on Monday for our meetings.

I got on the plane from JFK to Manchester on Saturday night.  About a half an hour into the flight there was this loud rushing noise.  The pilot put down the landing gear.  It turned out the landing gear wasn't going up properly and they had to return to JFK to fix it.  We circled for 2 hours to lighten the load, they couldn't just dump fuel over Long Island - or could they?

We landed and they said they would book us into a hotel and get us on the next flight out.  This was 10:30 in the evening. 

That's when the fun started.  They had one gate agent doing the rebooking for all 250 of us.  We finally got through with the ticketing about 12:30 in the morning.

I went down to the taxi stand to get a taxi to the hotel.  In most airports taxi stands are orderly and move along relatively quickly, time is money.  Not at JFK.  The airline had booked us with a certain car service so we couldn't give our vouchers to anyone else.  There wasn't a line so every time a car arrived impatient passengers waiting for a ride jumped at the driver before he got out of the car.  Rather than taking the first ones in line, since there was no line, the cabbies took the shortest routes, time is money.  Of course I was at one of the farthest hotels.  This was about 1:00 am.

I finally got a taxi by getting 4 other people who were going to the same hotel together and we attacked a cabbie in unison and brought him to his knees.  We climbed into the cab before he could say no and we locked ourselves in.  He had no choice.  This was about 1:30 am.

As we were careening along the Long Island Expressway toward Brooklyn the cabbie missed a turn and tried to cut across the merge area, the right front tire blew.  This was 2:00 am. 

It was amazing how many people were up blasting along the L.I.E. at this time of night.  I don't think we see that much traffic on Friday afternoon in Salt Lake. 

The cabbie got the spare out and proceeded to demonstate why he was a cabbie.  He knew nothing about changing the tire.  After a half an hour of this I jumped in and essentially changed the tire.  He cranked on the jack while I took the tire off and put the spare on (I know, there is a joke in there but I am trying to keep this clean).  This was about 2:30 am.

We finally got to the hotel and I got checked in and to my room after 3:00 am.  What a blast.

Down and Out

Today I went out for a bike ride.  I was coming along a street waiting for the red light to turn green.  I wanted to go straight and there was a right turn lane.  I was slowing to get behind the car in the straight lane when a tow truck driver came along side me to turn right.

The driver didn't see me and since I was between lanes he pulled up to the cross street and waited to turn left.  The only trouble was I was attached to the side of his truck.  Since he didn't see me when he pulled up, he took me with him.  I couldn't get away so I fell against the truck and down to the ground.  He was pulling a Subaru on a dolly so I fell between the truck and the car.  The truck didn't stop - although it was going slow.

I was yelling to stop but he kept moving up to the cross street.  I tried to push away from the car since the wheels of the dolly were coming up.  I got away just in time but the dolly wheels ran over my bike seat and my back tire doing significant damage to the bike.

At this point my wife, who was behind me, was yelling also, so the truck driver stopped.  The police came and interviewed us.  The tow truck driver wasn't at fault since I was in-between lanes.  I got a lecture from the cops about following the rules of the road.  I should have been squarely in the straight lane and taking up a space like a car. 

I am physically OK but I have my ego bruised.  Yeah, I could have done things better but the driver of the tow truck could have cared less that he ran over a bicyclist.  He yelled at me when I got up off the ground and he kept yelling at the cops about the accident until one cop had to tell him to shut up.  I even went over after the accident to tell him I had no hard feelings but he continued to chastise me for being in the wrong place. 

I feel run over, not physically, but like I was just in everyone's way.  I know I need to take personal responsiblity for things and we are so litigious as a society that no one wants to say anything for fear of being sued later, but as soon as the cops and the guy saw that I wasn't bleeding internally, the whole experience was so blazee.  Write up the report, file this, etc. 

I feel like a big dork.  If I had just followed the rules of the road and taken up a space in the line going straight this probably wouldn't have happened.  My wife and I were both scraped up, she fell too.  No one was injured, but I could have been killed.  

My scrapes will heal and my bike can be fixed I think. I hope the frame is OK.  Everyone else can feel good about not doing anything wrong.  I guess the moral of this story for me is respect the car.  I would also ask that drivers double and triple check when bikes are traffic. 

Violent Video Games - I Can Die Now

I appear to have committed the ultimate liberal sin.  My brothers are going to disown me.  I agree with something Gayle Ruzika said.

Gayle Ruzika is the neo-nazi, ultra right wing liberal bashing fundamentalist at the center of the Eagle Forum here in Utah.  If it involves guns, freedom and liberty for all (those who are entitled to it) she is for it.

Given my natural tendancy toward a more liberal and/or moderate view of life it would seem that Ms. Ruzika and I would never see eye to eye on anything.  It appears that I should never say never.

Yesterday the US Supreme Court struck down a California law prohibiting violent video game sales to minors.  The Court said that this was an infringement of the rights of minors.  Aside from the fact that minors really don't have rights, it would seem in contrast to their views on obscenity.  You are a criminal if you sell a kid a nudie magazine (I'm not advocating this) but it is their constitutional right to buy a game that shows rape, torture and exploding body parts. 

I usually side with the US Supreme Court and most of the time I can see their reasoning.  I haven't read the decision but I would assume there is more to it than we are getting on Fox News.

Here is the part about Ms. Ruzika.  She said that the US Supreme Court was wrong (no suprise) and that we needed to protect our children from these sorts of violent games.  I couldn't believe that she was saying what I was thinking.  I can die now!