The tremendous demonstration

As regular readers of my blog know, I love to teach. Sharing my unique knowledge and perspective on the world gives me immense satisfaction, and will in all future possible worlds bring me great fame and countless facebook "likes."

One of my favorite teaching techniques is what I call the "Tremendous Demonstration." It goes something like this: I state a thesis, do something totally amazing, the audience applauds, then I blush and say "thank you! ... thank you! ... thank you!" as I leave the stage; then I spend the evening responding to fan mail. It is a pleasure.

I find that the deeper the truth revealed, the more tremendous the demonstration required to prove my point.  For example, I was recently lecturing a group of physicists on the origins of motion when one of them blurted out (1):

!

The others nodded along in agreement.

Newton's 2nd law, a counter-example

"If that were true," I said, "how could I do... this!" and I showed them how a constant force can lead to accelerations that aren't even differentiable, let alone constant (see picture).

"Perhaps," the physicist mused, "your will manifests as a physical force?"

Now, the physicist had a good point because my will actually can manifest as a "physical" force. As it turns out, my entire being is an act of will. But I had to do something: the other physicists were growing excited, and one of them had taken out some sort of gadget she felt could illuminate the situation. It had an unpleasant, angular look to it.

I was not about to let a lucky hunch and some excitable but not very open-minded academics run all over my prepared notes. The right course of action, I decided, was to deflect the conversation from my amazing willpower and focus it on something else, such as my unbounded hugeness. So I opened my true mouth an infinitesimal sliver and gave them a taste of the black seas of infinity and showed them the location of their placid little island of calm within those grand, dark vistas (2).

There was a long silence. The physicist put away her angular gadget. Several were taking notes, trying to write down and comprehend what they had just seen. I gave them another moment to take it all in before returning to my lecture. Later, I found that this one brief lecture had spawned a number of peculiar submissions to academic journals, on topics ranging from Philosophy to Religion to Physics. I am happy that I was able to inspire my audience, but in the future I think I will keep my lectures more grounded and avoid discussions of mechanics.

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Footnotes!
(1) thanks wikipedia! Everyone donate to wikipedia!
(2) paraphrased from