Random Thoughts

[Rev. Rye]

Just found out about this on Cracked:

an American physics professor at Columbia disrobed in front of students in an effort to show them how hard quantum mechanics is. He did this in front of a video of 9/11 footage, the entire show apparently being an effort to "confuse them" so that their weary brains might be more ready to accept the bizarreness of quantum physics. See, this is why that screen mounted to Stephen Hawking's wheelchair is just a continuous scrolling slideshow of penises.

I should point out, however, that the authors of this article misrepresented the actual lecture, since he didn't so much disrobe as change clothes, the video he showed included footage of 9/11, Bin Laden, Saddam Hussein, Hitler, Stalin, Mussolini, and the bomb-riding scene from Dr. Strangelove. And it doesn't mention the part where he blindfolded and stabbed a stuffed toy dog. Since it's all low-quality, and it isn't all that graphic anyway, I've decided to post this without hide tags:





And this could just be me, someone who's seen a lot of horrible shit on the Internet, but this just isn't shocking enough to properly convey the sort of brain-breaking insanity he was going for. I can remember Sweet Movie, which, if all the reviews I've read of it, had the same motif going for it, showing shocking imagery in an attempt at getting the audience reborn, but, as intriguing as the idea was, it all got too bogged down in bodily fluids, rape, bodily fluids, footage of Soviet war atrocities, and bodily fluids to mean much of anything. Come on, man, there has to be some film student at Columbia University with an aptitude for shock that can help you strike a proper medium! Proper juxtaposition and some crazier shit might help things.