SURELY YOU'RE JOKING, MR.FEYNMANN!

Αυτές τις μέρες διαβάζω ένα πολύ ωραίο βιβλίο, τη βιογραφία ουσιαστικά του Richard Feynmann, το Surely You'Re Joking, Mr.Feynmann! Ακολουθεί ένα απόσπασμα

"I finally fixed it because I had, and still have, persistence. Once I get on a puzzle, I can't get off. If my mother's friend had said, "Never mind, it's too much work", I'd have blown my top, because I want to beat this damn thing, as long as I've gone this far. I can't just leave it after I've found out so much about it. I have to keep going to find out ultimately what is the matter with it in the end.
That's a puzzle drive. It's what accounts for my wanting to decipher Mayan hieroglyphics, for trying to to open safes. I remember in high school, during first period a guy would come to me with a puzzle in geometry, or something which had been assigned in his advanced math class. I wouldn't stop until I figured the damn thing out -- it would take me fifteen or twenty minutes. But during the day, other guys would come to me with the same problem, and I'd do it for them in a flash. So for one guy, to do it took me twenty minutes, while there were five guys who thought I was a super-genius.
So I got a fancy reputation. During high school every puzzle that was known to man must have come to me. Every damn, crazy conundrum that people have invented, I knew. So when I got to MIT there was a dance, and one of the seniors had his girlfriend there, and she knew a lot of puzzles, and he was telling her that I was pretty good at them. So during the dance she came over to me and said, "The say you're a smart guy, so here's one for you: A man has eight cords of wood to chop..."
And I said, "He starts chopping every other one in three parts," because I had heard that one.
Then she'd go away and come back with another one, and I'd always know it.
This went on for quite a while, and finally, near the end of the dance, she came over, looking as if she was going to get me for sure this time, and she said, "A mother and daughter are travelling to Europe..."
"The daughter got the bubonic plague." She collapsed! That was hardly enough clues to get the answer to that one: It was the long story about how a mother and daughter stop at a hotel and stay in separate rooms, and the next day the mother goes to the daughter's room and there's nobody there, or somebody else is there, and she says, "Where's my daughter?" and the hotel keeper says, "What daughter?" and the register's got only the mother's name, and so on, and so on, and there's a big mystery as to what happened. The answer is, the daughter got bubonic plague, and the hotel, not wanting to have to close up, spirits the daughter away, cleans up the room, and erases all evidence of her having been there. It was a long tale, but I had heard it, so when the girl started out with, "A mother and daughter are travelling to Europe," I knew one thing that started that way, so I took a flying guess, and got it. "

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Υπέροχος άνθρωπος. Τον λατρεύω εδώ και αρκετά χρόνια. Ενδεχομένως να ακολουθήσουν και άλλα ποστ για αυτόν. Έχει γράψει φανταστικά βιβλία, είναι από τους καλύτερους επιστήμονες ever και γενικότερα η προσωπικότητα του είναι από τις κορυφαίες ever.

Έτσι λοιπόν, Surely You'Re Joking, Mr.Feynmann!!