The only mechanics they're used to deal with their Bimmers

It ain't easy being a pseudointellectual. It's of course de rigeur to subscribe to the New Yorker and at least one of the Atlantic or Harper's. But once you factor in perusal of McSweeney's, consumption of a drink at least as pretentious as a free trade shade grown mochaccino latte, you start to see why it's tasking. But at some point, every up-and-coming would-be Stoppard-quoter finds him/her/itself at a critical juncture: needing more science.

Somewhere on the scale of knowledge after learning the difference between Hindenburg and Heisenberg and before "learning" about string theory (yeah, metaphor's great, but how many times have I seen an International Relations major (in my fraternity, we called them IR unemployed majors) try to woo a girl at a party with long, soft elucidations on the nature of the cosmos only to learn that she was herself a physics major and he was laying Lipton instead of lepton?), there's early-20th Century quantum theory to be tackled.

The problem is that it makes no sense. I mean, it does if you have a Ph.D. in physics. Or the ability to think. But quantum theory does not jive in any way shape or form with the world we experience. Its most famous analogy, involving the possible attempted murder (or is it attempted possible murder?) of a feline was originally proposed to show how ludicrous the whole get up was. This failed attempt at satire (and I know how that feels) was followed up by a play written by Michael Frayn, a playwright principally known for choreographing an amalgamation of staging gone wrong. The best analogy he presents is a skier going both to the left and the right of a tree simultaneously, which is obviously false because it doesn't account for the more compromising routes of Michael Kennedy or Sonny Bono.

Mythology, having the benefit of being crazy and hence accounting for any possible though, affords us several examples. Orpheus and Lot's Wife both looked back at the lost of, respectively, their beloved and their not-being-a-pillar-of-salt. But, this hardly counts, for the true pseudointellectual must have progressed with 2000 years of thought, instead of finding inspiration in the same fire and brimstone that Calvinists have been spewing for centuries.

But, finally, I have found an example of Heisenberg's principle in a way that even the most blatant of tidbits-of-knowledge seekers can understand. ApplyYourself is a way that people apply to Business School. Well, entities like people but without souls apply to Business School. But ApplyYourself was Holier than the bastard lovechild of John Paul II and a Sieve, so applicants could look at their status before it was reported to them. Several hundred people did so. Several hundred people are now not going to Business School.

That's right, most of the schools affected (Harvard first among them) decided to reject anyone who looked at their status, even if their status was admitted. Why! Perfect! Observing the value of a variable affects it! Just what Heisenberg was talking about. So take some solace, Mr. Looky McGlancerson, in the fact that your downfall will help is the comprehension of others' physical goals.

(Seriously, though, this is an important lesson in ethics for would-be businessmen: If you can do something unethical in a forum as anonymous as the internet, do it to your competitor. If only Enron had forged ExxonMobil's books instead of their own, they never would have lost their futon in the Lincoln Bedroom.)