Eugene’s Inferno
Dangerous Cold in Chicago
According to Dante, Hell frequently freezes over. He imagined much of Hell to be cold. Of course, a Florentine’s vision of a glacial perdition would be any Midwesterner’s idea of a brisk November.
When reading L’Inferno I remember thinking “I could come up with better eternal torments than that. ” Dante’s notions would not qualify him an intern in Human Resources. Let’s tour the Adultery Section: Circle Two. Tempestous lovers are trapped forever in a whirlwind. It is a good metaphor but not much of a punishment. No, their extra-curricular activities should be videotaped and eternally shown on late night cable television, to the standard accompaniment of appallingly bad jazz. The embarrassment would be much worse than windburn.
(Don’t quibble that a 14th century Italian couldn’t have envisioned television and video recorders. Dante concocted an entire cosmological system. And if Dante needed a little tech advice, he could have asked Marco Polo what the Chinese and Japanese were working on.).
Let’s drop by another sin: gluttony. According to Dante’s itinerary, in the Third Circle those who have succumbed to their debauched appetites lie in the garbage and waste they created. However, I think that describes the typical college dorm room. That may be Dante’s idea of Hell, but for most of us it was one of the happiest times of our lives. No, the appropriate eternal punishment for gluttons would be to look at themselves in bathing suits and realize why they’re not in the Second Circle of Hell.
I really don’t have the time to worsen all of Hell, but I’d like to do one more neighborhood. In the First Circle are those souls who had every virtue but the right religion. The virtuous pagans (and according to Dante, that includes chivalrous Moslems) are only tortured by the thought of their inferiority. Now, in my Hell I would really rub in Christian perfection. Everyone in the First Circle would be reincarnated as Jerry and Millie Helper, living next door to Rob and Laura Petrie.
: Boyles Law
The following is an actual question given on a University of Washington 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. Therefore, 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 pro 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?
Additional Details
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 THE ONLY “A”.
I might have believed this story but for the “additional details”. Life may afford you one punchline to a story but not two. That is the distinction between reality and comedy. If this story were true, I would feel sorry for Teresa; she must be desperate to settle for such a snide lout.
“Life may afford you one punchline…but not two.” Profoundly true.