Miscellany and Trivia

Alexinus was an ancient Greek philosopher you’ve probably never heard of – and for good reason. Alexinus thought he was good enough to start his own philosophy school, and he moved all the way from Elis to Olympia to do so.

When asked why he made the move, he said it was because he wanted the school to be called the “Olympian,” and that wouldn’t make sense in Elis.

Unfortunately, the school was not prepared, ran out of provisions quickly after students arrived, and wasn’t cleaned. The students decided the place was dirty and left, leaving Alexinus with one servant.

Jean-Paul Charles Aymard Sartre was an existentialist and political philosopher in the ’60s and ’70s. Some of his work was so good that he was awarded the Nobel Prize in Literature in 1964. The only problem was that he didn’t want it.

He claimed that winning the award would associate him with the Nobel committee forever. The press was very interested in someone turning down a Nobel Prize, but their attempts to contact Sartre went unanswered. Sartre hid in his sister-in-law’s apartment until they all went away

Rene Descartes’s “I think, therefore I am” is possibly the most quoted idea in all of philosophy. His ideas are said to be the grounding for most Western philosophy, and he may have come up with many of those ideas in an oven. Exactly when and where is up for debate, but according to Descartes himself, it did happen.

It wasn’t an oven as you might imagine, but a stone room where a fire always burned. Temperatures were raised when it was needed for cooking, but it was kept relatively low during other times of the day. They certainly weren’t designed for people, but that didn’t stop Descartes from sleeping in one and having dreams that he eventually turned into the grounding of his life’s work.

Johnny paid his way through college by waitering in a restaurant.

“What's the usual tip” asked a customer.

“Well,” said Johnny, “this is my first day, but the other guys said that, if I got five dollars out of you, I’d be doing great.”

“Is that so?” growled the customer. “In that case, here's twenty dollars.”

“Thanks. I'll put it in my college fund,” Johnny said.

“By the way, what are you studying?” asked the customer.

“Applied psychology.”

A man was walking in the street one day when he was brutally beaten and robbed.
As he lay unconscious and bleeding, a psychologist, who happened to be passing by, rushed up to him and exclaimed, 

“My God! Whoever did this really needs help!”

A psychotherapist returned from a conference in the Rocky mountains, where the delegates spent more time on the icy ski slopes than attending lectures and seminars.
When she got back, her husband asked her, “So, how did it go?”

“Fine,” she replied, "but I've never seen so many Freudians slip.”

At a job interview for a new receptionist:

“I see you used to be employed by a psychologist. Why did you leave?”

“Well, I just couldn't win. If I was late to work, I was hostile; if I was early, I was anxious; and if I was on time, I was obsessional.”

One day at a trial, an eminent psychologist was called to testify. A severe no nonsense professional, she sat down in the witness chair unaware that its rear legs were set precariously on the back of the raised platform.

“Will you state your name?” asked the district attorney.

Tilting back in her chair she opened her mouth to answer, but instead catapulted head-over-heels backward and landed in a stack of exhibits and recording equipment. Everyone watched in stunned silence as she extricated herself, rearranged her disheveled dress and hair and was re-seated on the witness stand. The glare she directed at onlookers dared anyone to so much as smirk.

“Well, doctor,” continued the district attorney without changing expression, “we could start with an easier question.”