Reminder of Uncertainty

This is a reminder of today’s event here at the USC campus. I’ve no idea what is going to happen. Uncertain, I suppose I should say. That’s the fun of it…. we’ll just see what serendipity brings.

To kick off the events, I’m going to show that lovely clip from one of my favourite Coen brothers movies, “The Man Who Wasn’t There”, where the fancy lawyer from out of town, Freddie Riedenschneider, (played wonderfully by Tony Shalhoub) all of a sudden does this long speech about the Uncertainty Principle. I couldn’t believe it when I first saw it…. – it is rather overstated by the end of the scene, but as a piece of drama, it is excellent. Have you seen it? If not, get it. It’s an excellent movie all around.

Anyway, for more information on the event, see earlier post here. See poster below (large pdf here). Come back here for more discussion, or just give your impressions of the event!

uncertainty at USC poster

-cvj

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3 Responses to Reminder of Uncertainty

  1. Henry Yuen says:

    That was an intriguing seminar, and I applaud all your efforts in putting together the wonderful evening. However, I would like to remark that it didn’t seem like the division between the solid, concrete Uncertainty Principle of Physics and the more vague, liberally-applied uncertainty of the humanities was reconciled. What I noticed was a brief application of the concept of “uncertainty” in the humanities’ speakers’ presentations, whereas Dr. Clifford Johnson kept on refining and clarifying the definition of the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, to delineate it from popular (mis)conception. I suppose my point is that I perceived the moral of the symposium (as it arose) was that one cannot arbitrarily apply the same principles from one vastly different world to another. The thing was that I was looking for an underlying connection between physics and the humanities. Perhaps I’m limited in my abilities to find such connections – what do you guys think?


    [Note: copy of comment has ben placed at a different location. See here. -cvj]

  2. Clifford says:

    I’m confused. What are you disagreeing with me about? I love “O! Brother…” as well. I believe I said “One of my favourite…”… I cannot choose a favourite among them….. there’s “Fargo” and “Miller’s Crossing”, and “The Big Lebowski”… just for starters. In fact, the only one of theirs that I think is a dud -almost without any merit at all- is their disastrous attempt to remake “The Lady Killers”.

    Cheers,

    -cvj

  3. I will politely disagree with you ” o! brother Where at thou” cracked me up, simply the funniest comedy I have ever watched.