[asa] QED

This weekend we were able to attend a production of Peter Parnell's play QED on the life of Richard Feynman. We had seen this play previously when it was first produced on Broadway when Feynman was played by Alan Alda. Keith Jochim played Feynman this time and did almost as well.

One brief segment of the play struck me as odd. The script had Feynman exchanging a conversation with a colleague concerning a simulation of the role of sexual selection in evolution they were doing jointly. Feynman's comment was that the simulation showed a remarkable modulation of rate of development that seemed to be similar to punctuated equilibrium. The topic then changed abruptly, never to be addressed again. I don't recall ever reading about anything Feynman published in this area. Do any of you know about such a topic in Feynman's work?

A well known topic touched on in the play was the reflection/transmission of photons and how when 100 photons strike a pane of glass, 96 will be transmitted and 4 will be reflected--how does a photon know whether to transmit or to reflect? In the discussion following the play, led by Nobel prize winner Jerome Friedman, someone asked him if we didn't have the answer by now. Friedman semurred, saying no one knows.

This production was only in the preview phase now but will be live in July and August in Boston for any of you that are in this area then. Well worth seeing.

Randy

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Received on Sun May 4 14:58:38 2008