As I left my house a wave of nausea swept over me and I threw up on the driveway. I was on my way to my first training in the burn building, which was part of my training as a firefighter. The burn building is a concrete shell of a building. It was filled with pallets...

Several years ago I watched the movie Cosi Come Sei. To be honest, I don’t recall the story of the movie at all, I watched the movie because the main actor Marcello Mastrioanni reminded me of my father. But I do remember one thing about the movie, this is when...

In my research I had developed a theory to extract information from recorded noise. I knew that developing a theory is one thing, but that without an application to real data the theory did not have much credibility. The problem was that I did not have any data I...

My father Wim passed away in 1994. My bothers and I deeply loved him and still miss him. After our father died, my brother Frank asked us if he could have our father’s watch. This question was unusual because my brother does not care about “stuff.” We told him that he...

In the still face experiment of Dr Tronick, a mother plays with her baby. The baby points and the mother responds by looking in the direction where her child points. She talks to the baby in a loving way. Suddenly the mother takes on a still face, meaning that she...

In the movie The Penguin Lessons a cynical and disillusioned English teacher Tom Michell moves to Argentina where he starts teaching at a boarding school. The movie is set in 1976 during the military coup in Argentina that marks the beginning of a dictatorship in...

The 2025 Tour de France has just finished. The riders covered 3338 kilometers and climbed more than 52 kilometers. Not only did the riders cover this distance and elevation gain during 21 stages; they did this while pushing themselves to the limit. The winner—Tadej...

Riding a bike in the mountains of Colorado, where I live, is interesting because there are no flat roads. Going downhill I am pushed by an invisible hand—gravity—and as a result the ride is exciting and physically easy. Going uphill requires low gears and hard work. I...

I am lucky man in many ways. One of them is that I received a great education with amazing teachers. After completing a 5-year program in theoretical physics at Utrecht University, I received a master’s degree in fluid dynamics at Princeton University, and then I...

I recently attended a goodbye party for one of my colleagues at the Wellness Center at my university. The party was well-attended, about 30 people were present. I counted 3 men among those that were present, and that included myself. Apparently, my male colleagues are...