Page Two

by Nick Barbaro

The Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle, broadly, states that you cannot at the same time measure both where something is and where it's going. In fact, the more closely you try to pin down either variable, the more wildly unpredictable the other becomes.

The HUP has other corollaries and manifestations; among those which have caught the public imagination (or messed with the public psyche, depending on your point of view) are:

• The very act of measuring something changes it. You cannot, for instance, determine the location of an atomic particle directly, without exerting enough force on it to change its location.
• You can be in two places at once - at least you can if you're a subatomic particle. In a quantum mechanical world, you can never predict where a particle will be with 100% certainty; you can only speak in terms of probabilities. Moreover, these probabilities are ingrained in the very essence of matter. You want to know precisely where something is, or is going to be, at a particular point in time? Well, until you measure it precisely (which of course changes most everything about it), you can't really tell. In fact, your "thing" can't really be said to be anywhere at all; instead, you might say, it's somewhat over here, and a little bit over there, and there, and there, and at the same moment - just very slightly, mind you - it's also at the whole other end of the galaxy.

Surely readers have by now grasped the point here, as it applies to predicting and effecting regional growth in Central Texas (p.18). But when you really start to think about it, you can see the subtle hand of HUP all around you. The South by Southwest Music Fest, for instance, clearly exists in many different places at the same time. Starting at 7:55pm Wednesday, March 18, at the Austin Music Hall with the Austin Music Awards, SXSW manifests itself in various places around town at 9pm, and continues doing so - with equal probability - throughout the weekend, March 18-22. And that doesn't even take into account the Interactive Conference, or the six screens of SXSW Film.

There are three more issues between now and then, and (if I don't throw things off course by trying to describe the future too precisely) it appears probable that they will fall in this order:

• Musicians Register next week, Feb. 27
• Austin Gaming/Interactive Arts March 6
• SXSW Film March 13, and the aforementioned
• Music Awards results March 20.

Then there's Ross Rebagliati, bless his heart, the Canadian snowboarder who was the topic of my last week's "Page Two." As of last issue, Rebagliati, having tested positive for marijuana in his bloodstream, was no longer the owner of an Olympic gold medal. Or was he? Even as that issue was rolling off the presses, at 3am CST, the Court for Arbitration of Sport (no doubt scrambling to avert the firestorm of public outrage the column was about to induce), reversed the Olympic Committee's decision and reinstated Rebagliati's medal. So was he - at the point I was trying to determine it - a medal winner? Well (of course), yes and no.

Anyway, the follow-up brought a few more choice reactions from the participants. First, the head of the Canadian Olympic Committee piqued national pride by noting that Whistler, British Columbia, where Rebagliati lives, has marijuana "four times more potent than in any other area." And Whistler was, well, stoked. "We were proud of Ross before," gushed mayor Hugh O'Reilly to the Associated Press. "We're really proud now."

Rebagliati, meanwhile, was hardly contrite. "I'm not going to change my friends," he said at a news conference. "I don't care what you think about that. My friends are real and I'm going to stand behind them."

"I might have to wear a gas mask from now on," he continued, "but whatever."