Most people have some vague idea that the Uncertainty Principle is a rule that the pocket-protector crowd gets all excited about because of what it says about the behavior of really teeny things that have no bearing on the real world. ("Now go away and let me watch TV, listen to my CD player, play with my computer, etc." Said without a trace of irony, usually - Hail Eris.)

However, what most people don't know, and wouldn't believe if they did, is that the Uncertainty Principle applies to everything. Quarks. Electrons. Molecules. Baseballs. Planets. Galaxies. And, most emphatically, human beings. How do you think you can get lost all the time when the damn map looks so simple?

This is the Uncertainty Principle:

To vastly oversimplify, it says, "the uncertainty of where something is multiplied by the uncertainty of how fast it is moving must always be greater than a given number." (The number, h, is Planck's Constant. No, I won't tell you what it is. Why should I do all the work?)

Notice that it doesn't say anything about how big the thing is. It applies to all waveforms. You are a waveform. (That's the next lesson.) Now, Planck's Constant is a very, very small number. So you can, if you care to, and if you do why are you reading this, be fairly certain about where you are and how fast you're moving. But you can never be completly sure. And therefore, you are always uncertain. It's really sort of reassuring in a way, isn't it?

Incidentally, that "p" really stands for "momentum," which is mass times velocity. The less sure you are of your mass, the surer you can be about where you are and where you're going, so forget about it, already. Eat the damn Twinkie and feel good about life.

A rational person would say, "Well, maybe so, but I can ignore this in my daily life of driving cars and working elevators."

A smart person would say, "The Hand of the Goddess writes large as well as small. Hail Eris!"

I say, "Pass the Twinkies."

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