Archimedes Ponders When It's OK to Run Through the Streets Naked Shouting, "Eureka!"

Controlling enthusiasm can be difficult. Whether you have an urge to run through the street singing “Oh, What a Beautiful Morning” from “Oklahoma” or to show up drunk at your boss’s house and expose your bare chest to a group of total strangers, the desire to stand out in a crowd can be overwhelming.

In approximately 250 BC, I had my own encounter with inappropriate enthusiasm. One day a “tyrant king” (read bookie) approached me, wanting to find out if a gold statue he’d commissioned was a fraud. I worked on the problem for days, finally coming to a staggering realization while bathing. Water displacement can be used as a means to measure an object’s volume. Excited at my achievement, a leaped up and ran through the streets naked shouting “Eureka!”

As a result, I know a little something about making an ass of yourself in public.

Displays like my “Eureka Special” may seem indefensible, but every so often a momentous experience deserves a proportional response. For example, feel free to run naked in the streets if you:

… receive an unexpected tax refund,
… find out you’re not the father,
… lose a very serious bet to a very serious person,
… need to escape an intervention,
… just completed a PhD,
… just want to,
… just saw the Red Sox win a World Series,
… have recently fallen in love
… illustrated your theory about what’s going on with ABC’s “Lost” looks pretty decent.

Quite frankly, mainstream U.S. culture could stand a bit more public ridiculousness. People in this great land all too often err on the side of timidity, choosing quiet complacency over risk-taking, then overcompensating for their tentativeness by jumping out of planes or trying to climb big rocks. Human audacity, when appropriately directed, can be a beautiful thing.

My advice, as a result, is to try making an ass of yourself a bit more often. Let your inner chimp hurl some poo at the zookeeper. Say something stupid. Wear a loud shirt. Do as you will, but harm no one. And never forget that the buoyant force on a submerged object is equal to the weight of the fluid that is displaced by the object.

Discovering how volume and water displacement relate to each other was only one of my many achievements. I was one of the most famous inventors/mathematicians of my time period. I described laws of buoyancy, made advancements in calculus, and, according to folklore, constructed giant magnifying lenses to destroy Roman sea ships. (Just between us, that one never really happened.) I establish Pi to be approximately 22/7 (off by less than one one-hundredth of a percent). If you want to remember me as “that crazy Sicilian” who ran through the streets naked, however, I won’t hold it against you.