Only two good things ever came out of Italy, and Sophia Loren's got both of them

My late father was a UCC (United Church of Christ) minister, but he was also quite a chauvinist. The title of this piece was just one example of his sayings. Fortunately, he restricted his chauvinism to the privacy of our home, although why my mother didn't kill him years ago remains a mystery to me and my siblings.
My mother was an elementary school teacher and, while she didn't take crap from anyone else, she seemed to have a fair degree of tolerance for him. Sometimes, though, he came close to stepping over the line. Her pet name for him was "Jackass" and he seemed to always know that, when he was addressed by that endearing moniker, that it was time to back off or die.
My younger sister, the other female in the house, also occasionally was the target of his not-always appreciated sense of humor. Her nickname, based upon her chest, was "Flatso". Despite such endearments, they were actually quite close. (Her nickname for him was "Geezer".)
In public, my father conducted himself the way you would expect a minister to act: respectful, supportive, and humorous without being extreme. He was a volunteer fireman, drove the ambulance, and mentored younger clergymen. If only they knew what he was really like.
In life, we learn by seeing both how things are done and how they are not done. My father provided both examples, though most were how things should be done. Among the things I learned from him were:
- honesty
- importance of family and friends
- being respectful toward others
- money isn't everything
- if you're going to be a jerk, do it in private
- some women have to unbutton their blouses to count to two
(Damn; sorry about that. Not everything I learned was helpful.)
For me, being a nurse and working in a profession that is 95% female, I would never follow in his footsteps to chauvinism. If I had, I would probably be dead (or severely disabled). Despite the challenges of growing up with my father, and the challenges I gave him growing up, I guess I turned out OK.

How Hot is it in Hell?

This is a true story.

A thermodynamics professor had written a take home exam for his graduate students. It had one question: "Is Hell exothermic (gives off heat) or endothermic (absorbs heat)? Support your answer with a proof.
Most of the students wrote proofs of their beliefs using Boyle's Law (gas cools off when it expands and heats up 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 that souls are moving into Hell and the  rate 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. Some of these religions state that if you are not a member of their religion, you will go to Hell. Since there are more than one of these religions and since people do not belong to more than one religion, we can project that all people and 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 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) Of course, 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 postulation given to me by Ms. Therese Banyan during my Freshman year that "It would be a cold night in Hell before I sleep with you", and take into account the fact that I still have not succeeded in having sexual relations with her, than #2 cannot be true, and so Hell is exothermic.
The student got the only A.