Rememberment

Mom worked shifts at two jobs - as a cleaner in schools and in a local shop - and then had to look after the whole family at home as well. I still don't understand how she did it. Perhaps it was  her  who secretly had superpowers instead of me. My perpetual ear infections didn't make life any easier. Either Dad or one of my brothers drove us oh so many times to see the doctor who then stuck a needle deep inside my ear, and through my eardrum, to let the pus flow out. It was the most horrible pain I had ever experienced. Afterwards the doctor always commended me for being such a brave boy, which I couldn't really agree with as I became absolutely terrified of the procedure. It was not like I had much choice in the matter - Mom said that if they didn't puncture my eardrums, they might burst by themselves which would be way worse. Dad wasn't well either and had to spend weeks at a time in the Lung Sanatorium, where we visited him once or twice a week. Although I felt s...

Albert Einstein was pissed off.  First, Podolsky had just gone and submitted their paper without showing him the final version - it came out too formal and dry, and ended up burying the message under a mountain of jargon. Granted, he and Rosen had agreed to have Podolsky write it up, but it was still their joint effort. And now, The New York Times has the audacity to call  him out with their caption: "Einstein Attacks Quantum Theory". "Entschuldigen Sie, bitch?" His purpose wasn't to attack the theory - he knew full well that it was a valid one. Hell, he was one of the people who built the damn thing. It worked. He was just deeply worried what it would mean if it was true . You see, his was the world of determinism - that the universe works in nice, predictable ways of cause and effect. But Quantum Theory didn't want to play nice; it wanted to play dice, so to speak, bringing a nasty element of randomness to how everything works. It wouldn't even allow t...

My second-oldest brother, Esa, shared my passion for comics.  He subscribed to a couple of magazines - The Amazing Spider-Man and the X-Men, and often took me with him to a secondhand bookstore where we traded his old magazines for unread ones. After school I would often just lay in bed and dive into the fantastic adventures of Spider-Man, who was my favourite. When done reading, I might put on my red woolen tights, wear a paper mask and zoom around the house as Spider-Man incarnate. Spidey was the best, however here's me doing my best Havok impression. Behind me is my dad, probably doing his best "Lord have mercy" impression. Superheroes were so cool that I often just lived inside my head for a whole day and fantasized of being one myself. And the real world occasionally reminded me that I wasn't. My brother's workshop was still unfinished, and one day they brought a big load of glass wool to our home yard. The stuff was soft and packed in big plastic rolls and p...

In the 70s, an ornitologist named Amotz Zahavi was wondering about something. As we know, male peacocks have a big, beautiful tail which they show off to attract female attention. Other species are also known for doing something similar. What bothered Zahavi was the fact that the peacock's extravagant tail should be a negative thing from an evolutionary standpoint - they are cumbersome and make the birds less agile, not to mention easier to spot by predators. He figured that the message they're sending is "I'm such a badass that I can afford to haul this thing around, and still be able to survive". In essence, the peacocks are paying a price to signal their fitness. The higher the cost, the higher the inner qualities of that individual must be in order to afford it. Because of this, the signal is hard to fake. And credibility is a valuable commodity. Zahavi's work laid the foundations for what is now known as the costly signaling theory , which applies to many...